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WHO WAS THE first African-American student admitted to Harvard College?
The story of Beverly Garnett Williams, the first African-American student admitted to Harvard College, is murky, lost in the mists of history. Williams was probably born around 1830, but the place is unknown; Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia are all listed in one source or another.
We do know that around 1836 the Rev. Joseph Parker, a white minister of the First Baptist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported, "There was brought and given to me a slave boy." Parker claimed the child was owned by a bank in Montgomery, Alabama, part of the collateral for a mortgage on the property of a failed businessman.
This gift seems unlikely, and it is easier to believe that Beverly Garnett Williams was actually the biracial child...