Changemaker 18: Richard Theodore Greener

Today's changemaker is Richard Theodore Greener. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1844, Greener became the first Black graduate of Harvard College, the first Black member of the American Philological Association and the first Black professor at the University of South Carolina from 1873 to 1877. 

He had to leave school as a teenager because Boston public schools did not accept Black students, and private schools were expensive. He had to work to support his family and studied during duty as a night watchman. 

When the University of South Carolina closed its doors to Black students and faculty in 1876, Greener left to become the Dean of the Howard University School of Law. He was committed to equal rights and social justice and was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1867. Greener became the secretary of the Grant Memorial Association in New York State. He later turned to literary work and became the associate editor of the National Encyclopedia of American Biography. In 1898, he was appointed as the US Consul in Vladivostok, Russia, by President McKinley and retired from the Foreign Service in 1905.

While it had been thought his papers were destroyed, Greener’s largely obscured legacy was discovered in 2009 when many of his documents, photos and books were found in an abandoned house in Chicago's South Side.

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Learn more about Greener here, here and here.

Photo credit: The Crisis, Vol. 13, No. 4, February 1917 / Public Domain