Curating the
MIT Black Experience

The MIT Black History Project

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MIT Black History, then and now.

The MIT Black History Project began in 1995 with the goal of documenting the role of Black life at MIT since the Institute’s founding in 1861. These multiple roles have evolved over time and even exceeded those realized at many historically prestigious predominantly white institutions of higher learning. The Project’s continuing objective is to research and disseminate a varied set of materials that shed light on this rich, significant legacy.
Story Spotlight

NASA FIGURES

AN MIT CONSTELLATION

MIT's role in helping to create NASA includes stories of a black experience that add a unique dimension to space exploration and research.
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Story Spotlight

Faculty Notes

Teaching While Black at MIT

While the Institute has not always demonstrated a strong commitment to faculty diversity, ongoing efforts strive to change the face of teaching at MIT.
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Story Spotlight

Robert R. Taylor

First Black Student at MIT

MIT's first black graduate, nation's first accredited African-American architect, designer of Tuskegee Institute campus buildings prior to 1932, great-grandfather of Valerie Jarrett, and more...
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Story Spotlight

William Barton Rogers

Race and the Founding of MIT

Plans for a “polytechnic” institute in Boston were delayed by a dramatic moment in national history that happened to bring together MIT's founding and the issue of race: The Civil War.
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Story Spotlight

Tuskegee Airmen

Connecting Flights at MIT

At the outset of WWII, MIT contributed to the training of African-American military pilots popularly known as the Tuskegee Airmen.
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Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.
- Author, editor, publisher and historian Dr. Carter Woodson, deemed the Father of Black History
Gray and Green '54

Paul Gray and Gloria Green, 1949
Marie C. Turner

Marie C. Turner '09
Shirley A. Jackson, 1973

Shirley Jackson at MIT, 1973
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The forces that bring us to our present lives are tangled and complex...I am here as a witness. I am here in the name of story and its power to transform.
- Prof. Helen Elaine Lee in "Visible Men," 2013

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