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1866 to 1915

1866     The Fisk School holds its first classes in former Union Army barracks in what is now downton Nashville, Tennessee (near the current location of Union Station). Fisk School founders John Ogden, the Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, and the Reverend Edward P. Smith name their institution after General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau.

1867     During its last session, the 39th Congress passes the charter establishing Howard University, only the third university to be founded in Washington, D.C., following Georgetown (1789) and George Washington (1821) Universities. Howard enrolled its first four students in May of this year. On August 22, 1867 Ogden, Cravath, and Smith's Fisk School is incorporated as Fisk University. The Augusta Institute (later Morehouse College) is established in the basement of Springfield Baptist Church, in Augusta, Georgia. Robert Tanner Freeman becomes the first African American to earn at dental degree from an American college or university (Harvard University).

1869    George Lewis Ruffin becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School. Howard University Law School becomes the United States' first Black law school.

1870    Richard Theodore Greener becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard University. Susan McKinney Steward graduates  as class valedictorian from the New York Medical College for Women, becoming the first Black woman in the state to earn a medical degree. 

1871    The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University begin their first national tour on October 6. The money that they earned on this would help build the fledgling university.

1874    Edward Alexander Bouchet becomes the first African American to receive a Bachelors Degree from Yale University. He ranks 6th in a class of 124 students. On July 31st of this year, Rev. Patrick F. Healy, S.J. becomes the first African American president of Georgtown University.

1876    Edward Alexander Bouchet becomes the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from an American university  (Physics, Yale University). Meharry Medical College, the first Black medical school in the United States, is founded by the Freedman's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

1877    Inman Page becomes the first African American to earn a bachelor's degree from Brown University. Henry O. Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy (West Point). George Washington Henderson graduates first in his class from UVM and becomes the first African American to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

1879     G. Alexander Clark becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Iowa Law School. The Augusta Institute (later Morehouse College) moves to the basements of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia and changes its name to Atlanta Baptist Seminary.

1881    Spelman College, the United States' first college for African American women, is founded by Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard. William Sanders Scarborough publishes First Lessons in Greek, a text book that would quickly become a standard volume in the field. Scarborough was inspired, in part, by John Calhoun's  notorious claim that if he could find a "Negro" who could "parse Greek" or explain Euclid, he would then admit that the Negro has "human potential."

1882    Nathan Francis Mossell becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Andrew Hilyer becomes the first African American student to graduate from the University of Minnesota.

1883    Daniel Hale Williams becomes the first African American to earn an M.D. from Chicago Medical College (later Northwestern University Medical School). 1883 – Hortense Parker becomes the first African American to graduate from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

1884     In November of this year Lincoln University becomes the first college or university in the United States to produce an alumni publication. Edward Alexander Bouchet, the first African American to graduate from Yale University (1874) is elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

1885    Daniel Hale Williams, M.D. becomes the first African American appointed to the faculty of Chicago Medical College (late Northwestern University Medical School). Atlanta Baptist Seminary (later Morehouse College) moves to its current location in Atlanta's West End. Gaius Charles Bolin is admitted to Williams College. Bolin would go on to become Williams' first African American graduate.

1886    Kelly Miller becomes the first African American to attend Johns Hopkins University, as a graduate student in mathematics.

1887     Harriet Alleyne Rice becomes the first African American to graduate from Wellesley College.

1888     W.E.B. DuBois graduates from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

1889    Biddle University (later Johnson C. Smith University) becomes the first Black four-year college or university in the American South to appoint an African American professor.

1891    Biddle University becomes the first Black four-year college or university in the American South to appoint an African American president. John Wesley Gilbert becomes the first African American to receive an advanced degree from Brown University (M.A.).

1892    The first Black football game in the United States is played between Biddle University and Livingston College. The game takes place on December 27th of that year. Robert Taylor becomes the first African American graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.).

1895    Ernest Houston Johnson becomes the first African American graduate of Stanford University (Economics). Marcellus Neal becomes the first African American to graduate from Indiana University (Math).

1896     W.E.B. DuBois becomes the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard University (History).

1897    Augustus Nathaniel Lushington becomes the first African American to earn a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M., University of Pennsylvania). Anita Florence Hemmings becomes the first African American to graduate from Vassar College. While she was enrolled, however, Vassar officials were unaware that she was Black.

1898     Martha Ralston becomes the first African American to graduate from Mount Holyoke College (formerly Mount Holyoke Female Seminary). Alberta Scott becomes the first African American woman to graduate from Radcliffe College.

1899    Mary Annette Anderson graduates from Middlebury College. The valedictorian of her class, Anderson is also the first African American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

1900     The presidents of twelve elite colleges form the College Entrance Examination Board, for the purpose of overseeing the administering of college admissions exams. Their immediate goal is to force the adoption of uniform curricular standards in New England boarding schools. Otelia Cromwell becomes the first African American woman to graduate from Smith College. She would go on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University (1910) and Ph.D. from Yale (English, 1926).

1901     The College Board administers is first college entrance exams. Algernon Brashear Jackson becomes the first African American graduate of Jefferson Medical College.

1904    In October of this year, Mary McLeod Bethune founds the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls. Eventually this institution would merge with the Cookman Institute for Men to become Bethune-Cookman College. William O. Thompson becomes the first African American graduate of Michigan Agricultural College (which would later become Michigan State University).

1905 Jessie Redoman Fauset becomes the first woman to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University, and the first Black woman even named to the prestigious honor society. French psychologist Alfred Binet creates the first IQ test.

1906    Alpha Phi Alpha, the first Greek letter fraternity for African Americans, is founded at Cornell University. Dr. John Hope is appointed the fourth president and the first Black president of Morehouse College.

1907    Alain Locke sails to England to attend Oxford University as the first African American Rhodes Scholar. Myrtle Craig becomes the first African American woman to graduate from Michigan Agricultural College (which would later become Michigan State University).

1909     Dr. Laurence C. Jones (U of Iowa, 1907) establishes the Piney Woods School in Mississippi, one of only a handful of historically Black boarding schools in the United States.

1910     Jean Hamilton Walls becomes the first African American woman to earn a bachelor's degree at the University of Pittsburg (mathematics and physics). See also 1938.

1911     On the evening of January 5, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. (the nation's second oldest African American fraternity) is founded by then Indiana University students Elder Watson Diggs; John Milton Lee; Byron K. Armstrong; Guy Levis Grant; Ezra D. Alexander; Henry T. Asher; Marcus P. Blakemore; Paul W. Caine; Edward G. Irvin and George W. Edmonds (the Reverend Founders).

1914    In July of this year, the Institute for Colored Youth, founded in 1837 by Richard Humphreys, changes its name to Cheyney Training School for Teachers.