Stephen Girard left $7.5 million for "poor white male orphans", and courts fought over the word "white" until 1968

Stephen Girard, a French-born merchant, opened Girard's Bank in 1812 and underwrote up to 95 percent of a federal war loan. He died in 1831 with an estate of about $7.5 million. His will left most of it to the City of Philadelphia for a college to take "as many poor white male orphans, between the ages of six and ten years, as the said income shall be adequate to maintain." It barred any "ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever" from holding any post there. His French relatives sued to break the charitable trust, with Daniel Webster as their counsel. In Vidal v. Girard's Executors (1844) the US Supreme Court upheld the will. The college opened on 1 January 1848. In 1957 the Supreme Court ruled that the city board running the trust was a state agency and could not turn away two Black boys. Pennsylvania's Orphans' Court then replaced the board with private trustees. Cecil B. Moore led protests from May 1965, and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there that August. On 7 March 1968 the federal Third Circuit held that the swap was still state action, which "pushed the College right back into its old and ugly unconstitutional position." The first four Black students entered on 11 September 1968. Girls were admitted from 1984. In 2026 Girard's remains lie in Founder's Hall, the college runs as a full-scholarship boarding school, and the Girard Estate reported a net position of $440.6 million in 2022.