Black Higher Education Firsts and Other Milestones, #1

Here are the most recent additions to the Black Milestones in Higher Education timeline that I maintain over at twilightandreason.com:

1838 — Andrew Harris becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Vermont.

1867 — Robert Tanner Freeman becomes the first African American to earn at dental degree from an American college or university (Harvard University).

1874 — On July 31st of this year, Rev. Patrick F. Healy, S.J. becomes the first African American president of Georgtown University.

1877 — George Washington Henderson, long thought to be the first African American to graduate from the University of Vermont, becomes the second African American to graduate from the University of Vermont. Henderson graduates first in his class and becomes the first African American ever to be elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Edward Bouchet, the first African American to graduate from Yale University, and long thought to be the first U.S. Black person ever elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was actually voted into the prestigious honor society several years later, in 1885.

1937 — Dwight O.W. Holmes becomes the first African American president of Morgan College (later Morgan State University), in Baltimore, Maryland.

1958 — Clifton Wharton (who in 1987 became to first African American to head a Fortune 100 company) becomes the first African American to earn a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.

1978 — Dr. Clifton Wharton becomes the first African American Chancellor of the State University of New York System.

Posted by Ajuan Mance