In 1874, Edward Bouchet became the first African American to graduate from Yale College. Or so the university's histories tell us—and we've reported it ourselves more than once.
Yet that very year, a Quaker publication from Philadelphia recognized an earlier pioneer:
"The first colored graduate of the Academical Department of
Yale," it says, "was Richard Henry Green, in 1857." At least two other
newspapers published similar items around the same time in 1874.
Green, a New Haven native who died in 1877 at age 43, seems to
have been lost from Yale history. Now he has been found again, thanks to
research by an archivist at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City.
“It’s a fascinating story," the archivist, Rick Stattler,
says in a phone interview. "I sort of stumbled across it by accident"
while researching Green family papers that will be auctioned in April.
When he discovered that Richard Henry Green "may have been a pioneer African American student at Yale, I was a little skeptical," Stattler says. "But it turned out to be true.”
A "Mulatto" Clerk
How Green's race was viewed at Yale—by the college, by his
classmates, and by Green himself—is unknown. Yale records don't mention
his race, and no images or physical descriptions of him have been found,
says Judith Schiff, the university's chief research archivist and author of the Yale Alumni Magazine's "Old Yale" column.
But the 1850 US census lists Richard Henry Green as a 17-year-old
"mulatto" clerk, living in New Haven with other "mulatto" family
members. The 1860 census records Green's race as "black."
And in 1874, while Green was still alive and with Edward
Bouchet seemingly making history, somebody at the Society of Friends in
Philadelphia knew that Green was actually "the first colored graduate" of Yale College.
New Haven Roots
Green's father, Richard Green, was a bootmaker—one of just a handful of African American tradesman at the time in New Haven—and a founding officer of St. Luke's Episcopal Church,
a historically black house of worship on Whalley Avenue, about a
half-mile from Yale's Old Campus. In the 1840s, the elder Green was a candidate to become an Episcopal deacon, although he was never ordained.
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