Twilight and Reason--Higher Education and the African American Experience


	Higher Education and the African American Experience

Timeline

Black Milestones in Higher Education

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1916 to 1954

1916 Gideon Smith graduates from Michigan State University. Smith was one of the first two African Americans in the United States to play college football, and one of the first African Americans to play professional football. In 1921 he joined the faculty of Virginia's Hampton Institute as football coach and Professor of Physical Education. He would remain in that post until his retirement in 1955. Brown University football standout Frederick Douglass "Fritz" Pollard becomes the first African American to play in the Rose Bowl. Martha Jane Hunley Blackburn becomes the first African American woman to graduate from Ohio University.

1919 Dr. James Leonard Farmer, Sr. is assigned to Wiley College where he becomes the first African American professor in Texas with an earned Ph.D (Boston University, 1918). Charles Hamilton Houston becomes the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review.

1921 Three Black female scholars become the first African American women to earn Ph.D.s. They are Georgiana Simpson (German Language and Literature, University of Chicago), Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (Economics, University of Pennsylvania), and Eva Beatrice Dykes (English Philology, Radcliffe College).

1922 William Leo Hansberry teaches the first course in African civilization to be offered at an American university, at Howard University. African American women affiliated with the University of Pittsburg form the Council of Negro College Women (CNCW).

1924 Elbert Frank Cox becomes the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics (Cornell University).

1925 Anna Julia Cooper becomes the fourth African American woman to earn a Ph.D. (Sorbonne). Elbert Frank Cox becomes the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics (Cornell University).

1926 The SAT is administered to high school students for the first time. The test is developed by Carl C. Brigham, whose own reserach on IQ determines that Americans' intellectual development will continue to decline as the mixing of races accelerates (in A Study of American Intelligence). Otelia Cromwell becomes the first African American woman to earn at Ph.D. from Yale (English).

1930 Fisk University becomes the first African-American institution to gain accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

1931 Jane Bolin becomes the first African American woman to receive a law degree from Yale. Enid Cook becomes the first African American to graduate from Bryn Mawr College.

1932 Nella Larsen Imes becomes the first African American woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. Samuel M. Nabrit becomes the first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Brown University (Biology).

1933 Ruth Ella Moore becomes the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in Bacteriology (Ohio State University).

1935 Jessie Jarue Mark becomes the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Botany (Iowa State University).

1936 MacNolia Cox becomes the first African American to reach the National Spelling Bee Competition.

1937 Clara Belle Williams becomes the first African American graduate of New Mexico State University (B.A., English). On February 13, 2005 the University named its English building Clara Belle Williams Hall, in her honor. Dwight O.W. Holmes becomes the first president and the first African American president of Morgan College (later Morgan State University), in Baltimore, Maryland.

1938 Jean Hamilton Walls becomes the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburg (dissertation title: A Study of Seventy-Eight Negro Graduates of the University of Pittsburgh from 1920-1936). See also 1910.

1939 Jerome "Brud" Holland, the first African American football player at Cornell University, graduates with highest academic honors.

1941 Walter Thomas Daniel becomes the first African American to ear a Ph.D. in Engineering (Iowa State University).

1942 William Allison Davis becomes the first African American professor at the University of Chicago (Education). Marguerite Thomas Williams becomes the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Geology (The Catholic University of America).

1943 Euphemia Lofton Haynes becomes the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics (The Catholic University of America).

1944 Frederick Douglass Patterson establishes the United Negro College Fund, an organization founded to support Black colleges and Black students.

1946 Albert E. Manley becomes the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University.

1947 Sylvester Smith, the first African American student admitted to St. Louis University, graduates with a master's degree in Educational Administration. Smith would go on to become Missouri's first African American school superintendant. Dr. Oscar Ritchie becomes the first African American to be appointed to the faculty of Ohio's Kent State University.

1948 Dr. David W. Dickson becomes the first African American member of the faculty at Michigan State University (English). In May of this year, Alpha Phi Alpha becomes the first Black fraternity established at Michigan State. On January 1st of this year the Educational Testing Service (ETS) begins administering the SAT and other intelligence and achievement exams.

1949 Jay Saunders Redding accepts a visiting professorship at Brown University, becoming the first African American to serve on the faculty of that institution.

1950 Heman Marion Sweatt's successful legal challenge to the segregationist admissions policies of the UT Law School leads to the integration of The University of Texas. Frederick I. Scott, the first African American undergraduate to be admitted to the University, becomes the first African American to receive a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University. Lincoln University becomes the first African American college or university to become affiliated with the College Entrance Examinations Board (CEEB).

1951 Richard Johnson becomes the first African American faculty member at Indiana University (Music). Cheyney Training School for Teachers changes its name to Cheyney State Teachers College.

1952 Manet Fowler becomes the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from a U.S. university.

1953 Jack Hodge becomes the first African American to earn a degree at West Virginia University (1953). Walter Nathaniel Ridley becomes the first African American to earn a degree from the University of Virginia, an Ed.D.

1954 In the Brown vs. Board of Education decision the Supreme Court rules unanimously that segregation in public education is unconstitutional. John Reuben Steeler becomes the first African American to receive a doctorate at West Virginia University. David Blackwell becomes the first African American appointed Full Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Andrew Jackson Foster becomes the first African American to earn an undergraduate degree from Galludet University. Ernest Morial becomes the first African Amercan to graduate from Louisana State University Law School.