honors Yale's first Chinese alumnus
As part of its annual "Wake the Dream" program marking February as Black History Month, the Yale University Library will host a lecture honoring Yung Wing, Yale's first Chinese alumnus, on Tuesday, Feb. 15.
Named in honor of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of diversity as expressed in his "I Have a Dream" speech, the "Wake the Dream" program is sponsored by Yale Library Human Resources.
Judith Ann Schiff, chief research archivist at the Yale Library, and Beatrice Bartlett, professor of history, will deliver the lecture at 1:30 p.m. in Sterling Memorial Library's lecture hall (enter from Wall Street). The talk is free and open to the public; light refreshments will follow in the Memorabilia Room.
Yung Wing was the first Chinese student to graduate from a U.S. university, earning his degree from Yale in 1854. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree at Yale's centennial commencement ceremony in 1876.
Yung Wing told his mentor Samuel Wells Williams, a missionary scholar in China and, later Yale's first professor of Chinese language and literature, that he enjoyed his experiences at Yale. Years later, in fact, Yung Wing served as deputy head of a Chinese government organization dedicated to bringing young Chinese to the United States for a Western education. Although short-lived, it was a significant precursor of Yale's subsequent partnerships with China.
In 1877, Yung Wing offered to donate over 1,200 books to Yale if the corporation would establish a professorship of Chinese language and literature for his mentor. The professorship was established, and Yung's gift of books became the core of the Yale Library's world-renowned East Asian Collection.
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