{"id":63913,"date":"2022-06-19T23:27:30","date_gmt":"2022-06-19T23:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63913"},"modified":"2022-06-19T23:27:31","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T23:27:31","slug":"the-proud-portrait-of-richard-t-greener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63913","title":{"rendered":"The Proud Portrait of Richard T. Greener"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Proud Portrait of Richard T. Greener<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Crimson<\/a>
\n2020-09-17<\/p>\n

Sophia S. Liang<\/strong><\/a>, Staff Writer<\/p>\n

<\/a>
A new portrait of Richard T. Greener<\/a> was unveiled at a ceremony in Annenberg Hall<\/a> in 2016. By Thomas W. Franck<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Greener\u2019s rosy recollection of Harvard<\/a> reflects a series of contradictions that characterized his life, both during and after college. Greener was a light-skinned Black man straddling racial divides in a segregated world. He received life-changing opportunities at a university where he struggled with loneliness and lacked faculty support. And despite his tremendous contributions in activism and public service, he remains relatively unknown to historians today.<\/em><\/p>\n

In an 1881 speech at the Harvard Club of New York<\/a>, Richard T. Greener<\/a>, Class of 1870, lavished his alma mater with praise: \u201c[Harvard] answered the rising spirit of independence and liberty by abolishing all distinctions founded upon color, blood, and rank,\u201d he told an applauding audience. \u201cThere has been but one test for all. Ability, character, and merit \u2014 these are the sole passports to her favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such sentimental remarks may come as something of a surprise coming from the first Black graduate of Harvard College<\/a>. The University, after all, had not been a friendly place to most who came before him and many who came after \u2014 nor, at times, to Greener. Indeed, the Harvard Club of Washington, D.C.<\/a> would reject his own application four years later for no reason other than his race.<\/p>\n

Greener\u2019s rosy recollection of Harvard reflects a series of contradictions that characterized his life, both during and after college. Greener was a light-skinned Black man straddling racial divides in a segregated world. He received life-changing opportunities at a university where he struggled with loneliness and lacked faculty support. And despite his tremendous contributions in activism and public service, he remains relatively unknown to historians today…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greener\u2019s rosy recollection of Harvard reflects a series of contradictions that characterized his life, both during and after college. Greener was a light-skinned Black man straddling racial divides in a segregated world. He received life-changing opportunities at a university where he struggled with loneliness and lacked faculty support. And despite his tremendous contributions in activism and public service, he remains relatively unknown to historians today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,2895,459,8,20],"tags":[631,10335,11805,33576,33575,33574],"class_list":["post-63913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-campus-life","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-harvard-university","tag-richard-t-greener","tag-richard-theodore-greener","tag-sophia-liang","tag-sophia-s-liang","tag-the-crimson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63914,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63913\/revisions\/63914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}