Richard T. Greener
Class of 1870
Richard T. Greener
Harvard College’s first Black graduate, Richard T. Greener went on to become the first Black professor at the University of South Carolina and dean of the Howard University School of Law.
School: Harvard College
Degree: A.B.
Area of Impact: Education, Law, Public Service
HBCU Affiliation: Howard University
Friends in High Places
Born in Philadelphia in 1844, Richard T. Greener moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his parents at age 9. He dropped out of school at age 11 to help support the family after his father went to seek fortune in the California Gold Rush and never returned.
Through various jobs, the pre-teen Greener met and befriended Harvard-connected Boston elites like Judge Thomas Russell, who made his personal library available to Greener. He also went on boating excursions along the Charles River and engaged in stimulating conversations with Harvard Medical School professor Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Several years later Greener’s employer, a jeweler named Augustus Batchelder, funded his education at Ohio’s Oberlin Academy and later at the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, intended as an “experiment” by Batchelder to prepare Greener for admission to Harvard. Greener’s sponsor “was itching to see the educational experiment of a black student succeeding at Andover carried on to Harvard.”
Harvard President Thomas Hill supported the 21-year-old Greener’s admission to the university in 1865.
Life at Harvard
Greener’s first year was difficult. He struggled in math and science and, as the only Black student at the University, he felt lonely and isolated. He lived in College House, viewed at the time as the house for the “poor and struggling.” Greener recalled, in a biographical sketch written shortly after he graduated, that white students spread outlandish rumors about him, including “that I had escaped from slavery with innumerable difficulties; that I came direct from the cotton field to college; that I was a scout in the Union army; the son of a Rebel general, etc.” Yet Greener also had early successes: a gifted orator, he won second place in the Lee Prize for excellence reading aloud.
Greener withdrew after his first term to pursue intensive math tutoring and returned to Harvard the following year. Throughout the remainder of his studies, he performed well academically and was involved in extracurricular activities. He wrote for the literary magazine, the Harvard Advocate, and was a member of both the Pi Eta Society and the Thayer Club. He also won the Bowdoin Prize for his thesis on Irish land tenure. Greener graduated in 1870 with honors.
Open and scroll to read the document transcript
[Ink on vellum; visibly aged and badly water-stained]
[Printed in a curved arch at the top of the page]
Senatus-Collegii-Harvardiani-Academicus, [decorative horizontal line border]
CANTABRIGIAE IN CIVITATE MASSACHUSETTENSI,
Omnibus ad quos hae Literae pervenerint Salutem in Domino sempiternam.
[decorative horizontal line border]
NOS PRAESES et SOCII COLLEGII HARVARDIANI, consentientibus
honorandis ac reverendis Universitatis Inspectoribus in Comitus sollennibus,
Ricardum Theodorum Greener
alumnum ad gradum Baccalaurei in Artibus admisimus, eique
dedimus et concessimus omnia insignia et jura ad hunc honorem spectantia.
In cujus rei testimonium, literis hisce Universitatis sigillo munitis die
Junii XXVIII anno Salutis Humanae MDCCCLXX Reiquepublicae Americanae XCIV.
Nos Praeses et Aerarii Praefertus ae Secretarius Inspectorum,
auctoritate nobis commissa, nomina subscripsimus.
[A round Harvard seal is printed at the center of the page with two signatures to the left and one to the right.]
[nearly invisible handwritten signature] Nath Silsbee [pre-printed] Aerarii Praefectus.
[justified to right margin] [faded handwritten signature] Carolus Gul. Eliot [pre-printed] Praeses.
[handwritten signature, underlined] Nath. B. Shurtleff [pre-printed] Secretarius.
[end of document]
A Series of Firsts in the Fight for Equality
Greener went on to achieve other impressive firsts. He began his career as a teacher and principal at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia — now Black Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. With support from United States Senator Charles Sumner (A.B. 1830, LL.B. 1834), he then became principal at the Preparatory High School in Washington, DC — now Dunbar High School — the first public high school in the United States dedicated to the education of Black students. In 1873, he became the first Black professor and the youngest faculty member at South Carolina College — the precursor of today’s University of South Carolina — where he taught metaphysics, Latin, Greek, and constitutional history.
During the Reconstruction era, South Carolina was the first state university in the South to integrate its student body, and Greener was a fierce advocate for Black students. He also organized the library’s holdings, which had fallen into disarray during the Civil War, and became one of the first Black people to earn a law degree at the school. The institution’s integration was temporary, however, and it closed in 1877 only to reopen three years later to whites only.
Greener then put his legal education to work, opening a law practice in Washington, DC, and teaching at Howard University’s law school, where he was appointed dean in 1879.
In 1883, Greener famously engaged in public debate with Frederick Douglass over the future of Black leadership and politics, advocating a shift away from strategies that relied upon political parties and white allies. Douglass countered, urging young Black activists to work within the system. Greener held fast to his beliefs, arguing that white political declarations of support for Black freedom had done little to advance the cause. In fact, he declared, Black Americans had always led the way in the fight for freedom and equality, as he wrote in his 1894 essay “The White Problem”:
[…] it should be clearly, emphatically and proudly stated that instead of being a pauper pariah class as is supposed, there was no movement looking to the amelioration of [Black Americans’] condition, from 1808 until John Brown[’s] raid in 1859, — nothing which tended to unshackle the slave or remove the clogs from the free colored man, in which he was not the foremost, active, intelligent participant, never a suppliant, never a mere recipient.
In 1898, Greener became the first Black diplomat to represent the United States in a white majority country when he was appointed to a post in Russia, leaving his wife and children behind. When he returned to the United States, his family remained on the East Coast, while Greener took up a quiet life, settling on the South Side of Chicago with relatives and working as an insurance agent, practicing law, and giving lectures. He died in 1922 at age 78.
Rediscovering a Legacy
In 2009, Greener’s Harvard diploma and other personal papers narrowly escaped destruction by a demolition crew that razed his former home in the South Side neighborhood of Chicago.
“They were about to demolish [his steamer trunk] because they couldn’t get it down the stairs,” Rufus McDonald told National Public Radio in 2012. He gathered what was inside and took the collection to a rare book dealer in Chicago.
The find reinvigorated interest in Greener’s life and his contributions to Black history and culture. In 2016, Harvard unveiled a portrait of Greener, painted by Stephen E. Coit (A.B. ’71, M.B.A. ’77), that hangs in Annenberg Hall. In 2018, Phillips Andover renamed its campus quad the Richard T. Greener Quadrangle to laud him as “an intellectual force and a visionary leader whose character continued to blossom during his time at Andover.” And in the same year, the University of South Carolina erected a bronze statue of Greener outside the Thomas Cooper Library — the primary library for students on the campus — to honor his legacy. Professor Todd Shaw, the first Black head of the Political Science Department at USC, called it a “tribute to the principles of educational empowerment, full citizenship, and human equality” to which Greener dedicated his life.
More than a century after Greener graduated, his resilience, determination, and achievements are sources of inspiration to current Black students at Harvard, who in 2018 founded the Greener Scott Scholars Mentorship Program in honor of Greener and Alberta Virginia Scott, the first Black graduate of Radcliffe College.
Remarks by Professor Todd Shaw. Richard Greener Statue Unveiling. University of South Carolina. February 21, 2018./Courtesy of the University of South Carolina
Selected Sources
Chaddock, Katherine Reynolds. Uncompromising Activist: Richard Greener, First Black Graduate of Harvard College. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
Liang, Sophia S. “The Proud Portrait of Richard T. Greener.” The Harvard Crimson, September 17, 2020.
Corley, Cheryl. “Discovery Sparks Interest In Forgotten Black Scholar.” All Things Considered. NPR April 23, 2012.
Stuart, Ruth Ann and David M. Kahn. “Richard T. Greener His Life and Work: An Exhibit and Tribute Sponsored by the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation.” The General Grant National Memorial. New York, New York: National Park Service, 1980.
Greene, Robert and Tyler D. Parry. Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2021.
Greener, Richard T. “The White Problem.” Lend a Hand: A Record of Progress, Vol. 12, Issue 5. May 1894.
More profiles
Clement G. Morgan
In 1893, Clement Garnett Morgan became the first Black student to graduate from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He went on to make history as the first Black alderman in New England and…
W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois, the first Black person to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, used his talent and intellect to pave a path toward racial uplift.
Carter G. Woodson
Carter G. Woodson, known as “The Father of Black History,” was the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He created Negro History Week — the forerunner to Black History Month —…