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CalTech's First Black Graduate
My father, Grant Delbert Venerable (1904-1986), was the first graduate of African ancestry from the California Institute of Technology. He earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from CalTech in 1932. He was one of a small and illustrious group of "groundbreakers" who earned science or engineering degrees at CalTech in the period 1932 to 1966. These included Olympic sprinter James Luvalle (M.S., chemistry,1940), David Carlisle (B.S.), Jimmy Denton (B.S.), James King (B.S., chemistry), Joseph Rhodes (B.S.), and Gerald H. Thomas (B.S., physics, 1964) whom I have known since I was a teenager. There may be one or two I have unintentionally missed.
Grant D. Venerable entered Cal-Tech in 1929, having completed all the required courses in 1927 for the B.S. in mathematics at UCLA (then SBUC, the "Southern Branch" of the University of California), but was disqualified on a "technicality" by a stem mathematics chair, Earl Hedrick. By then 25 years of age, young...