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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of
3Representatives wish to recognize Richard Theodore Greener,
4the first African American graduate of Harvard College; and
 
5    WHEREAS, Richard Greener was born in Philadelphia,
6Pennsylvania on January 30, 1844; he quit school in his
7mid-teens to earn money for his family, but one of his
8employers helped him enroll in preparatory school at Oberlin
9College; he graduated from Phillips Academy in 1865 and spent
10three years at Oberlin College before transferring to Harvard
11College; his admission to Harvard was "an experiment" by the
12administration and paved the way for more black graduates of
13Harvard; he graduated from Harvard College in 1870; and
 
14    WHEREAS, In 1875, Richard Greener became the first African
15American to be elected as a member of the American Philological
16Association; he graduated from law school at South Carolina
17University and practiced law in South Carolina and then
18Washington, D.C. before joining the Howard University School of
19Law as a professor and eventually dean; and
 
20    WHEREAS, In 1875, Richard Greener was chosen by the General
21Assembly of South Carolina to be a member of a commission to
22revise the South Carolina school system; in 1880, he became a

 

 

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1law clerk of the first comptroller of the United States
2Treasury; from 1876 to 1879, he represented South Carolina in
3the Union League of America and was president of the South
4Carolina Republican Association in 1887; from 1885 to 1892, he
5served as secretary of the Grant Monument Association, where he
6is credited with having led the initial fundraising effort that
7eventually brought in donations from 90,000 people worldwide to
8construct Grant's Tomb, still the largest mausoleum in North
9America; from 1885 to 1890, he was chief examiner of the civil
10service board for New York City and County; in the 1896
11election, he served as the head of the Colored Bureau of the
12National Republican Party in Chicago; in 1898, he was appointed
13as the United States Commercial Agent in Vladivostok, Russia;
14he left the foreign service in 1905; and
 
15    WHEREAS, Richard Greener received several awards and
16recognitions; while at Harvard in 1868 and 1870, he earned the
17Bowdoin Prize; he received two honorary Doctorates of Laws, one
18from Monrovia College in Liberia in 1882 and the other from
19Howard University in 1907; in 1902, the Chinese government
20decorated him with the Order of the Double Dragon; Phillips
21Academy has the Richard T. Greener 1865 Endowed Scholarship;
22the University of South Carolina's Black Alumni Council
23sponsors the Richard T. Greener Endowment Fund; the central
24quadrangle at Phillips Academy was named in his honor in 2018,
25and the University of South Carolina is honoring his legacy by

 

 

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1erecting a statue; and
 
2    WHEREAS, Richard Greener eventually settled in Chicago,
3where he worked for an insurance company and practiced law and
4occasionally lectured on his life and times; his Harvard
5diploma and other personal papers were rediscovered in an attic
6on the South Side of Chicago in 2009; therefore, be it
 
7    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
8HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
9we recognize Richard Theodore Greener, the first African
10American graduate of Harvard College; and be it further
 
11    RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
12presented to the family of Richard Greener as a symbol of our
13respect and esteem.