Duke University
North Carolina
1838
Formerly “Trinity College”
Trinity College students selected dark blue no later than 1888 or 1889, apparently to honor the new President of Trinity, John F. Crowell, who was a graduate of Yale. (This story may be apocryphal – while blue and green were both associated with Yale at that time, dark blue wouldn’t become Yale’s official school color until 1894.) Trinity athletic uniforms in the 1910s began to use white as a contrasting color, but neither white nor dark blue were ever officially stated to be the colors of Trinity College or Duke University.
When a special doctoral gown for Duke graduates was authorized in 1961, the faculty committee had to officially define the shade of Duke’s blue. Their recommendation, which was not made until 1965, was that the shade be defined as “neither royal nor Yale, but Prussian blue.” The committee’s definition is strange, because Webster’s dictionary defines “Prussian blue” as a synonym for the traditional shade of “royal blue”, which was a dark purplish-blue.
At any rate, on 23 September 1965 the Board of Trustees of Duke University unanimously approved the committee’s suggestion that Prussian blue be the official shade of Duke’s blue.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): navy blue (1895-1931); blue/white (1934-1935)
Academic costume was required to be worn by delegates, special guests, members of the Board of Trustees, and faculty at the inauguration of William P. Few as President of Trinity College in November 1910. An order form for caps and gowns was provided for any alumni that also wished to participate while wearing academic costume, and hoods were to be worn by those that had earned masters or doctoral degrees. So the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) must have assigned an academic hood lining to Trinity no later than 1910, but a description of this lining does not appear in an IBAC source until 1927, where the lining (for the newly-named Duke University) was described as royal blue with a white chevron.
By 1969 the IBAC had redefined the shade of Duke’s hood lining as having a white chevron on a lining of “Yale blue”, which was another way the IBAC described a dark shade of blue.
Unfortunately, this hood lining description was a duplication of the hood linings already assigned to Pennsylvania State University and Middlebury College. To resolve this problem, here Duke’s original royal blue lining and white chevron have been restored, as this shade of blue more closely resembles the official “Prussian blue” university color.