Chris RabbtoYale Class of 1992
This woman, Christiana Taylor Livingston Williams (1812 - 1898), was the property and daughter of enslaver & Columbia Unversity graduate, Philip Henry Livingston (1769 - 1831).
His father, enslaver Philip Philip Livingston (1741 - 1787), fled New York after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and settled in Jamaica where his family owned sugar plantations and hundreds of women, men and children, one of whom was Barbara Williams, likely born in Port Maria, St. Mary Parish, circa 1782.
Barbara was torn from her family when only a small child and brought to Manhattan (where slavery was ubiquitous at that time). There, she served in multiple Livingston households.
Philip Henry married his cousin Maria Livingston in 1788, and in 1812 he raped Barbara, producing from this illicit union my GGG grandmother, Christiana (pictured below).
Christiana’s grandfather was none other than Philip Livingston, one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, himself an enslaver in a 5-generation line of major enslavers.
His father, the original Philip Livingston (1716 - 1778), was one of Yale’s earliest benefactors. (See photo below of the Livingston Archway in Branford College.)
I suspect that had I known about this aspect of my family history while a student at Yale, my attention and activism on campus would’ve extended far beyond my objections to Calhoun College and been far more . . . intense.
This issue cannot be washed away with a name-change or a scholarship or diversity panels.
This is structural.
The connection between Yale, slavery and my own family is what I can’t help but think about on the Fourth of July and many other days of the year.
And my conscience does not allow me to process these echoes of terror in silence. This history is not a stain on my family, but on the institution itself and its enduring legacy.
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