Todd Duncan, the pioneering opera singer, circa 1930s. Mr. Duncan was the first African-American to perform with a major opera company, the New York City Opera. Other career highlights include being selected by George Gershwin to originate the role of Porgy in “Porgy and Bess” and being the first person to record the now classic song, “Unchained Melody.” Mr. Duncan also held a master’s degree from Columbia University and taught voice at Howard University for over fifty years, well into his nineties. He died in 1998.

waheedpix:

Ezelle

Nashville TN, 1910’s

[Fisk University Album]

©WaheedPhotoArchive, 2012

Ezelle, Nashville Tennessee, 1910’s. Fisk University Album.

Richard Theodore Greener (1844-1922) was the first Black graduate of Harvard University (Class of 1870). His papers, including his Harvard diploma, his law license, photos and papers connected to his diplomatic role in Russia and his friendship with President Ulysses S. Grant, were recently discovered in an attic on the South Side of Chicago - just before the house was demolished. Absolutely MONUMENTAL!

vieilles-annonces:

Howard University Graduating Class of 1900 on Flickr.

Howard University’s Class of 1900. 

Educator, Writer, Activist Mary Church Terrell. Born in Memphis, Tennessee to wealthy parents who were former slaves (her father, Robert Reed Church, was the South’s first black millionaire), Ms. Church Terrell earned bachelor’s (1884) and master’s (1888) degrees from Oberlin College. She also studied in Europe for several years and was fluent in German, Spanish and French. Her language fluency came in handy in 1904 when she was invited to speak at the International Congress of Women in Berlin, Germany.  The only black woman in attendance, she delivered her speech in German, French and English.  

Ms. Church Terrell was a founder and the first president of the National Association of Colored Women (Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a vice president). Adapting the motto “Lifting As We Climb,” the organization was formed, in part, in response to an attack on the character and respectability of African American women by an influential journalist who referred to them as “thieves and prostitutes”.

Ms. Church Terrell died in 1954, at the age of 90, not long after leading the fight to desegregate restaurants in Washington, D.C.

Howard University students photographed in their dorm by LIFE magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt for a November 1946 photo essay. See other Howard students here.

Howard University theater students photographed in 1946 by LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Educator Nannie Helen Burroughs, circa 1910s. 

Ernie Barnes, Chicago Cub shortstop in 1960 surrounded by textbooks as he attends class at the University of Chicago. Mr. Banks, who would go on to spend his entire 18-year career with the Cubs, took night courses in English and Sociology at the school. 

Photo via Bettman/Corbis

Paul Robeson as a junior at Rutgers University. He was valedictorian for his graduating class in 1919.

Educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown on her wedding day in 1912.  Founder of the historic Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina, Ms. Brown was also one of the invaluable suffragists who worked for black women to have the same equal rights black men and white women were fighting for in the early 20th century.  

She was also the great aunt of singer Natalie Cole. In fact, she raised Natalie’s mother Maria and her sisters (her brother’s children) when their mother died in childbirth. Ms. Brown died in 1961.

Howard University freshman Rose Esters, a history major, and Sarah White, a pre-med student. Another photo from Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1946 LIFE magazine photo essay, these women were photographed in their Truth Hall dormitory room.