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HIGHLIGHTS
OF EARLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY AT OHIO
UNIVERSITY
- John
Newton Templeton graduated from Ohio University in 1828.
He was the fourth African-American in the nation and the
first in the Midwest to graduate from college.
- African-American
Edward James Roye attended Ohio University for several
years beginning in 1833. A successful businessman, he was
elected president of Liberia in 1870 and is the only
Ohioan to become president of a foreign country.
- Joseph
Carter Corbin was the third African-American to attend
Ohio University, graduating in 1853. A noted linguist and
educator, Corbin established an early African-American
newspaper in Ohio, The Colored Citizen. In 1873, he
became president of the University of Arkansas at Pine
Bluff.
- Arthur
D. Carr, quarterback of the 1904 Bobcats football
team, was the first African-American football player at
Ohio University.
- Leonard
Barnett founded the DuBois Club, the first
African-American organization on campus, in 1915.
- In
1916, Martha Jane Hunley Blackburn became the first
African-American woman to graduate from Ohio University.
After graduation, she chaired the home economics
department at Wilberforce University (now Central State)
near Dayton and later taught in West Virginia high
schools.
- Ohio
University has had six African-American members of its
Board
of Trustees.
They are:
- John
R. Blackburn, father-in-law of the first
African-American female graduate, who served from 1885
to 1892
- Rev.
John Frederic Moreland of Cincinnati (1892 to 1896)
- Cleveland
businessman James E. Benson (1892 to 1911)
- Cincinnati
realtor Donald Spencer (1974 to 1983)
- Columbus
businessman Lewis R. Smoot Sr. (1987 to
1991)
- Current
board Vice Chair Patricia A. Ackerman.
(Source:
Connie Perdreau, a university adminstrator and author of "A
Black History of Athens County and OhioUniversity.")
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