Richard Greener was a pioneering scholar, educator, dean of the Howard University Law School and diplomat, breaking the color barrier to become the first African American to graduate from Harvard and Phillips Academy, and the first Black college professor at the University of South Carolina.

Richard Theodore Greener was born in Philadelphia and moved to Cambridge, MA with his parents at age nine. 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. Greener worked a variety of jobs and met and befriended many Boston elites. One of his employers helped him to enroll at Phillips Academy to prepare him academically for admission to Harvard, and in 1865 he became Phillip’s first African American graduate.

He was admitted to Harvard in 1865 as "an experiment" by the administration and paved the way for many more African American Harvard graduates. The periodical, The Independent, editorialized that, with Greener’s admission, Harvard had “taken its stand upon the principle of equal rights, irrespective of color.” At Harvard, he twice won the Bowdoin Prize, the oldest and most prestigious literary student award. He graduated in 1870 with honors.

Greener went on to achieve other impressive firsts. In 1873, he became the first African American professor and the youngest faculty member at South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), where he taught metaphysics, Latin, Greek, and constitutional history. He also served as librarian and helped to reorganize and catalog the library's holdings, which were in disarray after the Civil War. In 1875, he became the first African American to be elected a member of the American Philological Association, the primary academic society for classical studies in North America. In 1898, he became the first African American diplomat to represent the United States in a white majority country when he was appointed to a post in Russia.

While a faculty member at South Carolina, he attended the School of Law, graduating in 1876. Counselor Greener was an active and notable voice for the rights of African Americans in the Reconstruction period, serving as both associate editor of Frederick Douglass’ newspaper, New National Era and dean of Howard University Law School.

In 2018, Phillips Academy 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.” The same year, Harvard founded the Greener Scott Scholars Mentorship Program in honor of Greener and Alberta Virginia Scott, the first Black graduate of Radcliffe College. The University of South Carolina erected a statue in his honor, also in 2018.

More than a century after Greener graduated from Harvard and Phillips, his resilience, determination, and achievements are sources of inspiration to all current students at both schools.

Sources:

https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/alumni/richard-theodore-greenerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Theodore_Greener