A recent Reddit thread caught my attention because it combined several areas of Yale history I have spent years researching and collecting: Skull and Bones, delegation photographs, and the complicated realities of elite institutions in twentieth-century America.
The discussion centered around a striking photograph posted by a Reddit user who wrote that his father was “one of the first black men in Skull and Bones” at Yale. The image appears to show a Skull and Bones delegation portrait from the 1970s, with one Bonesman seemingly wearing blackface makeup. (see Reddit post here)
The post raises difficult historical questions. Which Skull and Bones delegation year is this? Who are the Bonesmen pictured? And what was it like for some of the earliest Black members of elite Yale societies to navigate these environments during the late 1960s and 1970s?
Public histories note that Skull and Bones initiated its first Black member, Orde Musgrave Coombs, into the Bones Delegation of 1965. Yet Yale’s 70th football captain, Levi Jackson, had already challenged longstanding barriers within Yale’s senior society system by famously declining taps from Skull and Bones and Scroll & Key before accepting election to the Berzelius Society (Delegation of 1950). Levi Jackson’s election in 1949 and Orde Musgrave’s election in 1964 made national news. Jackson once told me that Yale alumnus and future employer Henry Ford II later asked him at Ford headquarters why he had turned down Bones in favor of Berzelius.
That history makes this photograph potentially part of a deeply transitional period within Yale’s most famous secret society. What struck me most was the contrast between this image and earlier Skull and Bones delegation photographs from Yale’s past.
The earliest known Bones delegation photograph I could locate.
Source: Yale University Library Collections — Skull and Bones, 1861, 1868, 1871 (1861).
Yale’s Skull and Bones delegation photography tradition stretches back to the nineteenth century. Even Civil War-era images from the 1860s projected the formal, disciplined, and carefully curated identity associated with Yale’s elite secret societies. Of note, members of the Skull and Bones Delegation of 1861 were classmates of Heber S. Thompson (Yale 1861, later Wolf’s Head), who was the first Yale student to answer President Lincoln’s call following the Battle of Fort Sumter. Thompson and members of fellow Pennsylvania regiments are recognized as the “First Defenders” of the United States after the start of the Civil War. (See my Heber S. Thompson collection collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.)
Future 41st President George HW Bush standing next to grandfather clock.
(George HW Bush Presidential Library media file available here)
Another example is the polished 1948 Skull and Bones delegation portrait that included future President George H.W. Bush, where every member appears impeccably dressed and traditionally distinguished in appearance. Despite their dramatically different tones, the 1948 portrait and the later 1970s photograph share several unmistakable Skull and Bones traditions: a small central table, a Skull and Bones tablecloth, prominent skull-and-crossbones symbolism, the traditional grandfather clock set to 8:00 o’clock, and tightly staged group composition. The continuity of these visual rituals across decades makes the contrast in formality, cultural tone, and racial context between the two photographs even more striking.
That contrast becomes even more striking when viewed alongside two historic Skull and Bones photograph albums I donated to Yale University. One is the 1910 Skull and Bones “Black Book” delegation album that includes future Senator Robert A. Taft – son of 27th President William Howard Taft (Bones 1878) and grandson of Skull and Bones co-founder Alphonso Taft (Bones 1833) – along with other notable Yale figures. The other is a 1966 delegation album featuring future US Secretary of State John Kerry, Fedex founder Fred Smith, and Vietnam War hero Richard Warren Pershing, grandson of General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing. (See my AndForYale.com historical documents page here.)
Both albums project the formal, carefully curated image long associated with Skull and Bones and Yale leadership culture. Yet the later Reddit photograph presents something far more complicated and uncomfortable, hinting at tensions involving race, identity, conformity, and social acceptance during a period of enormous cultural change in America and at Yale itself.
As someone who has spent years collecting and donating Yale-related historical materials, I find this image historically significant regardless of the unanswered questions. Delegation photographs are often among the few surviving visual records of these societies’ internal culture and traditions.
Questions surrounding Skull and Bones traditions and artifacts have surfaced periodically over the decades, including longstanding controversies involving claims about Geronimo’s remains and references found in privately printed memoirs by members of the society. In 2023, I highlighted references from a 1975 memoir by Knight Woolley (Skull & Bones 1917), which discussed Fort Sill and events later connected to the Geronimo controversy. (See blog post here.)
At present, I have not been able to identify the exact delegation year or confirm the identities of those pictured. I would be very interested to hear from Yale alumni, historians, or collectors who may recognize this delegation photograph or know more about its historical context.
History is not always comfortable. But preserving and examining images like this honestly is part of understanding the full and complicated story of institutions like Yale and organizations such as Skull and Bones.
Ravi D. Goel, MD collects historical documents as a hobby. He has donated manuscripts and collections to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Amherst College, Dickinson College, Forest History Society, Harvard University, Minnesota Historical Society, Princeton University, Yale University, and YIVO Institute. Collection highlights are described here.
