KNOWLEDGE was always, is now and shall forever be a powerful weapon to wield in any endeavor. It can build nations or crush them in the dust as it marches on as is its nature for it cannot be contained. It must always be expanded upon in order to still be a BEACON. A passage from one of my favorite novels comes to mind, the book is Five Smooth Stones and the quote is “When your people come into the light of learning, Mr. Champlin, they must drive their learning and their God abreast, yoked together? That is what you mean?” “Yes,” said Geneva. “I reckon that’s what I means. We got God here now, with us; we got him close because we needs so bad. He ain’t never far from us. . .” The question was posed to Geneva by a white professor who was trying to understand her great need to educate her grandson to the highest levels possible.
I believe from the sale of our first ancestor on the Auction Block to the first time a Freedman was knowingly cheated of the proper price for cotton or a crop he raised we, African Americans as a people realized that if we were to survive here in this strange land that we must educate ourselves and our children if we were ever to be able to stand firmly in these United States and claim our just due. In this memory and in their honor, I present a few of those first here for it is in their footsteps that we continue the Journey of Education!
1st African American Male College Graduate
Alexander L. Twilight, A Collegiate Pioneer
September 26th, This date marks the birth of Alexander Lucius Twilight in 1795. He, to all relevant information was the first African-American college graduate.
Alexander Twilight was born in Corinth, Vt., to a free Black family, graduated from Middlebury College in 1823, with his baccalaureate degree making him, thus far, the first African American to receive a degree from an American college. He was licensed to preach by the Presbyterian Church and served several Congregational churches.
Twilight became principal of the Orleans County Grammar School in Brownington, Vermont, and in 1836 built a massive three-story granite building, Athenian Hall, which became Brownington Academy. In 1836, Twilight also served in the Vermont state legislature, the first African American to do so.
1st African American Female College Graduate
Mary Jane Patterson
(1840-1894)
from Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol II M - Z [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993] pp. 911-912
The 1860 census lists Mary Jane Patterson as one of fourteen residents in her parents’ household in Oberlin, Ohio. Two years later she graduated from Oberlin College, becoming the first Black woman to receive a B. A. degree from an established American college. Patterson devoted the rest of her life to the education of Black children.
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1840, Patterson was the oldest of Henry and Emeline Patterson’s seven children. In 1856, she and her family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where they joined a growing community of free Black families who worked to send their children to the college. Henry Patterson worked as a master mason, and for many years the family boarded large numbers of Black students in their home. Eventually, four Patterson children graduated from Oberlin College. all became teachers.
Mary Jane Patterson’s first known teaching appointment was in 1865, when she became an assistant to Fanny Jackson in the Female Department of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. In 1869, when Jackson was promoted to principal, Patterson accepted a teaching position in Washington, D. C., at the newly organized Preparatory High School for Colored Youth — later known as Dunbar High School. She served as the school’s first Black principal, from 1871-72, and was reappointed from 1873-74. During her administration, the name “Preparatory High School” was dropped, high school commencements were initiated, and a teacher-training department was added to the school. Patterson’s commitment to thoroughness as well as her “forceful” and “vivacious” personality helped her establish the school’s strong intellectual standards (Terrell 1917).
Patterson also devoted time and money to other Black institutions in Washington, D. C., especially to industrial schools for young Black women, as well as to the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People. She never married, nor did her two Oberlin-educated sisters (Chanie and Emeline), who later joined her and taught in district schools.
Mary Jane Patterson died in Washington, D. C., September 24, 1894, at the age of fifty-four. Her pioneering educational attainments and her achievements as a leading Black educator influenced generations of Black students.
Bibliography
Bigglestone, William. They Stopped in Oberlin: Black Residents and Visitors of the Nineteenth Century (1981); Oberlin College Archives. Alumni Records. “Mary Jane Patterson” file (1981), and Lawson-Merrill papers, “Mary Jane Patterson” file, and “Patterson Family” file; Perkins, Linda. “Fanny Jackson Coppin and the Institute of Colored Youth,” Ph. D. diss. (1978); Terrell, Mary Church, “History of the High School for Negroes in Washington,” Journal of Negro History (July 1917)
1st African American Rhodes Scholar
Alain Locke, writer, educator
Born: 1886 Died: 1954
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pa.
In addition to his long list of academic honors, Locke is credited with helping to initiate and propel the Harlem Renaissance. Locke graduated from Harvard University in 1907 and became the first black Rhodes scholar. He studied at Oxford from 1907 to 1910 and the University of Berlin from 1910 to 1911, then went on to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1918. Locke developed a strong interest in African culture and began encouraging black artists and musicians in America to explore their African roots through their work. Through his efforts, the Harlem Renaissance movement gained national attention. He edited and wrote numerous magazines, anthologies, and books about black life and culture. Locke taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C., for nearly 40 years.
1st African American Ph.D.
Edward Alexander Bouchet
physicist, chemist
Born: 1852 Died: 1918
Birthplace: New Haven, Conn.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Bouchet was the first African American to graduate (1874) from Yale College. In 1876, upon receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Yale, he became the first African American to earn a doctorate. Bouchet spent his career teaching college chemistry and physics.
1st African American College President
Bishop Daniel A. Payne
(1811 – 1893)
February 24th, On this date in 1811, Bishop Daniel A. Payne was born. He was a historian, educator and AME minister.
He was born in Charleston, South Carolina to free colored parents, London and Martha Payne. He attended a private school in Charleston, South Carolina and Gettysburg Seminary in Pennsylvania. He also did a great deal of studying on his own. Payne was the first Bishop to have formal theological seminary training. He, more than any other individual, is responsible for the A.M.E. church’s interest in trained ministry.
Payne was ordained an elder in the Lutheran Church in 1837. He was admitted to the Philadelphia Annual Conference in 1842. He was the first Black president of a Black college in the western world, (Wilberforce University), where he served as their president for sixteen years advising that the school be purchased by the African Methodist Church. Overall, Payne was the sixth Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He built and nurtured churches in Washington D.C., New York and Baltimore.
He was elected the Historiographer of the AME Church in 1848. Payne was elected a Bishop at the General Conference in New York City on May 7, 1852, where he presided over the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 7th Districts. He was a serious author, his books, “History of the A.M.E. Church,” 1891 and Recollections of Seventy Years 1888 were his greatest writings and were an authoritative source of history of the first 75 years of the church. He was married to Eliza Clark Payne, the father of one child and the stepfather of four children; Julia, John, Laura, Augusta and Peter. Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne died on November 2,1893.
Reference:
An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage
by Marvin Andrew McMickle
Judson Press, Copyright 2002
ISBN 0-817014-02-0
1st African American Ivy League College President
Ruth Simmons
(1945 - )
Simmons, Ruth, 1945-, American educator and college president, b. Grapeland, Tex., grad. Dillard Univ. (B.A., 1967) and Harcard (A.M., 1970; Ph.D., 1973). As a scholar she was primarily concerned with the francophone literature of Africa and the Caribbean. On the faculty and in the administration at Princeton Univ. from 1983 to 1990, she was associate dean of the faculty (1986-90). From 1990 to 1991 she was provost of Spelman College. She returned to Princeton in 1992, serving as vice provost. In 1995 she was named president of Smith College, becoming the first African-American woman to head a top-ranked college or university. While there she established the first women’s college engineering program and founded Meridians, a journal addressing the concerns of minority women. Simmons left Smith in 2001 to become president of Brown. Univ.
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