What Could Have Been–a film about proposal for America’s first HBCU in 1831.

Tuesday, Feb 11
6:30 pm - 7:45 pm

Join us at North Branch Library on Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. for a screening and discussion of the short documentary film “What Could Have Been” about the proposal for America’s first HBCU in New Haven in 1831.  We will be joined by documentary creators Community Engagement Program Manager Tubyez Cropper and Director of Community Engagement Michael Morand at Beinecke Library at Yale. Morand is also the official City Historian of New Haven.  Cropper and Morand both work to recover and reckon with Connecticut stories worth knowing.

What Could Have Been” confronts the unfortunate history of how Black New Haven leaders helped lead the charge to create the nation’s first Black college in 1831—the dawn of the abolition movement—only to be rejected by white property owners of the city, despite the support of several prominent leaders.
Cropper has spent five years at the library highlighting local and national history that lives in the collections. He has collaborated with local high schools, libraries, museums, historical societies, and churches to convey the importance of access to primary sources in the archives. He has also used his creative eye to direct and produce documentaries and social media content to provide necessary visuals to lesser-known stories.
“The question ‘what could have been?’ genuinely makes you think about what New Haven and the United States could have been like if a historic decision such as the creation of a Black college were approved,” Cropper says. “What would relations have been like between Yale and this college, and what impactful Black figures that we know of today would have attended the college?”
With the documentary, Cropper aims to build awareness of the leading role New Haven played in the development of a growing nation, and the many intellectual and brave people of color who stood at the forefront. “It took valiant Black leaders, like Bias Stanley and Scipio Augustus, along with the courageous abolition mindset of white leaders like Simeon Jocelyn and William Lloyd Garrison to make such an impact on the way the nation progressed,” he says.
“History is so important because acknowledging the past helps us understand the multitude of perspectives that make up this world,” Cropper says. “By understanding the steppingstones that were put in place, at a time where it seemed almost impossible, we can prevent similar things from reoccurring.”

This film is related to the ground breaking exhibit at the New Haven Museum Shining the Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery which is up until Saturday, March 1, 2025.

For information on that exhibit, https://www.newhavenmuseum.org/48546-2/