Black Milestones in Higher Education: Hoosier Edition

History and Overview: The first students arrived on the campus of Indiana University in 1824. The first Black student to earn a degree from this institution graduated in 1895. Since then over 13,000 African Americans have graduated from IU.

As of fall 2006 IU enrolled 29,828 undergraduates and over 8500 graduate and professional degree students at it’s flagship campus in Bloomington, for a total enrollment of approximately 38,200. 1,699 of those students are Black.

Black Milestones at Indiana University:

• 1893 — Preston Eagleson integrates IU athletics by becoming the first Black student to play sports for the University (football, 3 seasons).
• 1895 — Marcellus Neal becomes the first African American student to graduate from Indiana University (B.A. in Mathematics).
• 1906 — Preston Eagleson becomes the first African American to earn a master’s degree at IU (M.A., Philosophy).
• 1911 — On the evening of January 5, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. (the nation’s second oldest African American fraternity) is founded by then Indiana University students Elder Watson Diggs; John Milton Lee; Byron K. Armstrong; Guy Levis Grant; Ezra D. Alexander; Henry T. Asher; Marcus P. Blakemore; Paul W. Caine; Edward G. Irvin and George W. Edmonds (the Reverend Founders).
• 1919 — Frances Elizabeth Marshall becomes the first African American woman to graduate from Indiana University (B.A. in English).
• 1947 — IU’s Bill Garrett becomes the Big Ten’s first African American basketball player.
• 1959 — Richard Johnson becomes IU’s first tenured African American professor (Music). In the same year undergraduate Nancy Streets becomes the first African American “Miss IU.”
• 1960 — Thomas Atkins becomes IU’s first Black Student Body President and the first African American in the Big Ten to hold that post.
• 1981 — Edward High becomes the first African American president of the IU Alumni Association.
• 1997 — Cora Smith Breckenridge becomes the first African American on the IU Board of Trustees.

Marcellus Neal and Frances Elizabeth Marshall,

the first African American man and the first African American

woman to graduate from IU

Posted by Ajuan Mance