The vision for the 1st Black College that wouldn't be
College for Colored Youth in New Haven, CT According to UNCF (the United Negro College Fund ,) the first HBCU was and is Cheney University of Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth. It moved from Philadelphia to the George Cheney farm 25 miles west of Philly in 1902. What if I were to tell you that Cheney was not the first attempt at creating a college for African Americans. I was shocked to find out that in 1831 there was a proposal to build a college for African Americans in New Haven, CT along side the prestigious Yale University. That's a full six years before the Formation of Cheney University. The man with the vision was Simeon Jocelyn, a local pastor together with a lawyer out of New York, Arthur Tappan and others. Simeon Jocelyn attended Yale briefly in 1823 . He writes in th...