Key Events in Black Higher Education

JBHE Chronology of Major Landmarks in the Progress of African Americans in Higher Education

For most of American history, a majority of the black population in this country was prohibited from learning to read or write. Today African Americans are enrolling in higher education in record numbers. Here are some key events that occurred along the way.

1799: John Chavis, a Presbyterian minister and teacher, is the first black person on record to attend an American college or university. There is no record of his receiving a degree from what is now Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

1804: Middlebury College awards an honorary master’s degree to Lemuel Haynes, an African American who fought in the Revolutionary War.

1823: Alexander Lucius Twilight becomes the first known African American to graduate from a college in the United States. He received a bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College in Vermont.

1826: Edward Jones graduates from Amherst College. Jones is believed to be the second African American to earn a college degree.

1826: Two weeks after Edward Jones graduated from Amherst College, John Brown Russwurm graduates from Bowdoin College in Maine. He is the third African American to graduate from college in the U.S.

1828: Edward Mitchell graduates from Dartmouth College. He is believed to be the fourth African American to graduate from an American college.

1833: Oberlin College in Ohio is founded. From its founding the college is open to blacks and women and has a long history of dedication to African-American higher education.

1836: Isaiah G. DeGrasse received a bachelor’s degree from Newark College (now the University of Delaware). DeGrasse appears to be the first African American to graduate from any of the flagship state universities.

1837: What is now Cheyney University in Pennsylvania is established for free blacks. It does not become a degree-granting institution until 1932.

1837: James McCune Smith is the first African American to earn a medical degree when he graduates from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Smith returned to the U.S. to be a physician. He also owned two pharmacies.

1844: Oberlin College graduates its first black student, George B. Vashon, who became one of the founding professors at Howard University.

1847: David J. Peck is the first black to earn a degree from a medical college in the United States. Peck received his M.D. from Rush Medical College in Chicago and practiced in Philadelphia and later in Nicaragua.

1849: Charles L. Reason is named professor of belles-lettres, Greek, Latin and French at New York Central College in McGrawville, New York. He appears to be the first African American to teach at a mixed race institution of higher education in the U.S.

1850: Lucy Ann Stanton, a black woman, receives a certificate in literature from Oberlin College. She is a graduate of the college but did not receive a bachelor’s degree.

1850: Harvard Medical School accepts its first three black students, one of whom was Martin Delany. But Harvard later rescinds the invitations due to pressure from white students.

1854: Ashmun Institute (now Lincoln University) is founded as the first institute of higher education for black men. The school, in Oxford, Pennsylvania, later graduates Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall.

[List continues to 2013]

The JBHE research department would like to thank Caldwell Titcomb, professor emeritus at Brandeis University, for his assistance in the preparation of this timeline.