College and Graduate School
Schmoke entered Yale University in the fall of 1967. He played quarterback on the freshman team that year. While at Yale, Schmoke and his classmates started a day care center on campus for the children of University's janitors and cafeteria workers who lived in New Haven. The center was named after Calvin Hill, a former Yale football star and still stands today. Schmoke has been acknowledged as the undergraduate student leader who helped quell the possibility of riot on the Yale campus in the wake of the New Haven Black Panther trials in the spring of 1970. As New Haven filled with radical protesters, Yale students demanded the suspension of classes. A bitterly divided faculty met to discuss strategy, and invited a student leader to address the gathering. Schmoke, who was Secretary of the Class of 1971 and a leader of the Black Student Alliance at Yale, was selected to represent the students. He spoke only a few sentences: "The students on this campus are confused, they're frightened. They don't know what to think. You are older than we are, and are more experienced. We want guidance from you, moral leadership. On behalf of my fellow students, I beg you to give it to us." This moment is credited with helping to dispel the growing tensions: the university voted to bend its rules, making classes "voluntarily optional" to the end of the term, and despite small outbreaks of violence, no campus-wide unrest resulted.
After graduating from Yale with a degree in history (1971), Schmoke studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1976.
Read more about this topic: Kurt Schmoke
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