The Arc of Inclusion.

The "first four" African Americans to be admitted to Pomfret in the fall of 1964 were: John Irick '65, Jim Parker '67, Martin Bolton '68, and Carl McAuley '68. Their arrival followed the Civil Rights Era and Headmaster Jay Milnor's administration partnering with the Fund for Negro Students and the National Scholarship Service.

Under Headmaster Jay Milnor, Pomfret launched its first formal community-engagement program: an Outreach initiative anchored by the Hartford Tutoring Project, in which Pomfret students tutored at-risk youth in Hartford. The Pontefract described its aim as having "social, cultural, and even racial dimensions." Outreach predated SPHERE by three years and was the school's first formalized, off-campus engagement with students from communities of color.

Under Headmaster Jay Milnor, Pomfret joined a program to assist minority students in Hartford, which became known as the Supplementary Program in Hartford for Educational Reinforcement and Enrichment (SPHERE). Hagop Merjian, Pomfret faculty from 1961 to 1999, served as Pomfret's on-site director. At its peak, SPHERE brought 60+ students to campus for six-week summer sessions of reading, writing, speaking, English, and sports. 80 percent of SPHERE graduates later attended Pomfret's regular summer school.

The Board of Trustees voted to admit female day students beginning in the fall of 1968. The student newspaper, The Pontefract, bannered the news, noting it was received "to the joy of most, and the unhappiness of a few." Girls would initially join as day students only, with boarding to follow in subsequent years. Headmaster Jay Milnor and Admissions Director John Howland qualified the move in print: girls "are not being admitted in an attempt to turn the school into a coeducational institution. This is a step which is still a long way off — even if it is ever taken at all." The full transition would in fact unfold across the next quarter-century.

The Afro-Latin Society was formed in 1968 — the venue where Pomfret minority students found support, with the goal to enable them to have a community voice and help each other adjust to the cultural climate on campus. A late-1968 Pontefract poll of students and faculty crystallized the moment: ninety percent supported the formation of the society, and seventy-seven percent agreed Pomfret had a racial problem. The society served for a decade (1968-1978) until VOICE was founded in 1984. Its memorial bench stands as a reminder.

Female day students enrolled at Pomfret for the first time. Among the original cohort: Naomi Vega (who would become the first female graduate), along with "The Original Six of '68" — six girls who entered in 1968 and would graduate in 1972 as Pomfret's first true coeducational class. Boarding for girls would follow in subsequent years.

Louise M. Warner became the first woman to serve on the Pomfret Board of Trustees. Her appointment came two years after the 1968 vote to admit female day students and two years before female boarding began on campus — placing women in institutional decision-making at Pomfret several years before the school had a meaningfully coeducational student body. In 1992, Warner would become one of the first two recipients of the William Beach Olmsted Distinguished Service Award.

Pomfret became a founding member of SPHERE, a consortium of eleven Hartford-area independent schools that came together to broaden the diversity of their student bodies and support students of color transitioning to predominantly white institutions.

Pomfret graduated its first true coeducational class for all four years — "The Original Six of '68." While the class boasted a total of thirteen female graduates, there were six in particular who entered in 1968, and unbeknownst to them at the time, made Pomfret School history: Mary Albro '72, Michelle Bourgeois '72, Mary Valentine Feathers '72, B. Eve Geissinger '72, Lindsey Cole Miesmer '72, and Lt. Col. Carla Jean Smith '72.

Pomfret welcomed its first female boarders in autumn 1972 — twenty years before the existing "Full Coeducation" milestone of 1992 marked the completion of that transition. Meg Morbach was named the school's first Administrative Assistant for girls' affairs; the Danenbergs and Goodwins served as dorm parents for newly designated female residential areas in Middle Two and Middle Three. The same fall meeting documented Pomfret's minority enrollment at a record level: 17 Black students, 13 Latino students, and 2 Asian students.

Five female students, including Donna (Reynolds) Lynch '75, approached Headmaster Joseph Milnor about forming a girls' ice hockey team. The club practiced late at night using hand-me-down boys' equipment, coached by Brad Hastings '68 (later headmaster).

New Headmaster Kenneth Deitch arrived to lead Pomfret through a near-existential financial crisis. Enrollment had been sliding since the early 1960s and the school carried roughly $500,000 in operating deficits — its worst financial position in eight decades. Deitch launched an emergency fundraising drive, anchored by trustee Henry "Hank" Strong '41's $450,000 pledge in 1975. Without that survival window, the institutional financial-aid program of 1975 and the broader DEI commitments of the decades that followed would not have been institutionally possible.

Pomfret awarded its first official institutional financial aid package, a critical step toward making the school accessible to students from a broader range of socioeconomic backgrounds.

The girls' hockey club was elevated to a varsity team. Pomfret became one of the six original prep schools to offer girls' ice hockey, alongside Loomis Chaffee, Taft, Choate, Northfield Mount Hermon, and Williston.

Declan Randels arrived from England as Pomfret's first foreign exchange student under the formal American Field Service (AFS) program. Informal predecessors had come earlier — Swedish hockey player Nils Hansen in the late 1940s and a British exchange student named Pirie who was valedictorian of the Class of 1950 — but AFS marked Pomfret's first sustained, institutional commitment to international exchange, arriving in the same year as the school's first formal financial-aid package.

Michael Gary, growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, attended Pomfret through the A Better Chance program. He later described Pomfret as "the best decision of my life," and would return as the school's first Director of Multicultural Affairs.

Junior Michael Gary '82 organized the first annual Afro-Latin Day at Pomfret — a daylong cultural-celebration program rooted in the Afro-Latin Society of 1968. The rock group "Julius and the Soul Corruptors" performed. The event would become an annual tradition and prefigured Gary's 1995 return to Pomfret as the school's first Director of Multicultural Affairs.

VOICE was founded in 1984 by Desi DelValle '85 and Alex Pena '85. VOICE was open to all students who might consider themselves a minority, which included international students and day students. The spelling of VOICE is not an acronym. When VOICE started in 1984, it was "Voice." When the Reunion occurred in 2002, Ginny Eaton changed the lettering to "VOICE" so that it would "make a voice" by being in all capital letters.

Brothers Michael Schwartz '66 and Eric Schwartz '69 endowed the Schwartz Visiting Fellows program, bringing a major public figure to campus each year for a week of seminars with students. The inaugural fellow was Shirley Chisholm — the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress and the first African American woman to seek a major-party nomination for the U.S. presidency. The Fellows program has continued for more than three decades and remains one of Pomfret's most visible vehicles for connecting students with leaders shaping public life.

Headmaster Patrick Bassett appointed history teacher Stoney Reed Leonard as the school's first Dean of Women, described as "an instigator for raising the consciousness of women's issues." Bassett also authorized a campus chapter of the Council for Women in Independent Schools, co-chaired by faculty members Margie Hueppl and Caroline Twomey. The appointments came after the New England Association's Evaluation Committee specifically recommended Pomfret "make a strong commitment to appoint more women to high-level administrative positions" — the institutional response to an external accreditation finding rather than a purely internal initiative.

Patrick Bassett launched the Multicultural Awareness Program (MAP) under the 1991-92 school-year theme "Unity amidst diversity." Over the next three years, students of color rose from 13 percent to 18 percent of the student body, and international students from 3 percent to 10 percent — the first decade in which Pomfret's diversity numbers were tracked, named, and used as a public institutional commitment rather than a back-of-house statistic.

Under newly appointed Headmaster Bradford Hastings '68, Pomfret completed its transition to full coeducation, with female boarding students fully integrated into the residential community. This came 24 years after the first female day students were admitted.