HR0638 101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0638 LRB101 16108 MST 65538 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives wish to recognize Richard Theodore Greener, the first African American graduate of Harvard College; and

WHEREAS, Richard Greener was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 30, 1844; he quit school in his mid-teens to earn money for his family, but one of his employers helped him enroll in preparatory school at Oberlin College; he graduated from Phillips Academy in 1865 and spent three years at Oberlin College before transferring to Harvard College; his admission to Harvard was "an experiment" by the administration and paved the way for more black graduates of Harvard; he graduated from Harvard College in 1870; and

WHEREAS, In 1875, Richard Greener became the first African American to be elected as a member of the American Philological Association; he graduated from law school at South Carolina University and practiced law in South Carolina and then Washington, D.C. before joining the Howard University School of Law as a professor and eventually dean; and

WHEREAS, In 1875, Richard Greener was chosen by the General Assembly of South Carolina to be a member of a commission to revise the South Carolina school system; in 1880, he became a law clerk of the first comptroller of the United States Treasury; from 1876 to 1879, he represented South Carolina in the Union League of America and was president of the South Carolina Republican Association in 1887; from 1885 to 1892, he served as secretary of the Grant Monument Association, where he is credited with having led the initial fundraising effort that eventually brought in donations from 90,000 people worldwide to construct Grant's Tomb, still the largest mausoleum in North America; from 1885 to 1890, he was chief examiner of the civil service board for New York City and County; in the 1896 election, he served as the head of the Colored Bureau of the National Republican Party in Chicago; in 1898, he was appointed as the United States Commercial Agent in Vladivostok, Russia; he left the foreign service in 1905; and

WHEREAS, Richard Greener received several awards and recognitions; while at Harvard in 1868 and 1870, he earned the Bowdoin Prize; he received two honorary Doctorates of Laws, one from Monrovia College in Liberia in 1882 and the other from Howard University in 1907; in 1902, the Chinese government decorated him with the Order of the Double Dragon; Phillips Academy has the Richard T. Greener 1865 Endowed Scholarship; the University of South Carolina's Black Alumni Council sponsors the Richard T. Greener Endowment Fund; the central quadrangle at Phillips Academy was named in his honor in 2018, and the University of South Carolina is honoring his legacy by erecting a statue; and

WHEREAS, Richard Greener eventually settled in Chicago, where he worked for an insurance company and practiced law and occasionally lectured on his life and times; his Harvard diploma and other personal papers were rediscovered in an attic on the South Side of Chicago in 2009; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we recognize Richard Theodore Greener, the first African American graduate of Harvard College; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Richard Greener as a symbol of our respect and esteem.