What Could Have Been

Film Screening at Center Church: What Could Have Been - America's 1st HBCU in New Haven in 1831 Center Church on the Green and Beinecke Library welcome all to a special screening of the documentary film "What Could Have Been" about the proposal for America’s first HBCU in New Haven in 1831. The screening, at Center Church on the Green at the heart of New Haven, will be followed by a conversation and q&a session with film director Tubyez Cropper and narrator Charles Warner, Jr. They are both lifelong New Haveners and graduates of New Haven Public Schools. Cropper is a Community Engagement Program Manager at Beinecke and Warner is Chair of the Connecticut Freedom Trail. This screening marks the 193rd anniversary of the New Haven town meeting where the white male property owners then eligible to vote thwarted the bold plans to build a Black college here. That meeting was held in the old State House on the Green, immediately behind the Center Church at the time.