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Yale Honors First Black PhD
While Edward Alexander Bouchet's father scrubbed the floors of Yale University and his mother laundered classmates' clothes, Bouchet became the first Black in the country to earn a PhD in physics, at Yale.
It was only a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation removed the shackles of American slaves, and Bouchet had earned a degree from one of the country's most prestigious schools.
She called it a tragedy - one that had been overlooked for decades.
But Black leaders and Yale officials sought to change that, in a recent ceremony they said was long overdue. In a city cemetery, they unveiled a memorial tombstone to Bouchet who, for all his achievements, had lain in an unmarked grave since his death in 1918.
"He came responding to a chance, hoping for new opportunities and chasing dreams as only young people can," said Curtis Patton, a Yale professor who has researched Bouchet's life.
The black granite memorial, beneath a portrait of Bouchet, lists the scholar's achievements: his bachelor's degree in 1874, his doctorate from Yale in 1876 and his entrance into Phi Beta Kappa.
But, said Patton, Bouchet's list of accomplishments is not complete without the story of how he overcame racial obstacles to earn his degree and later had to struggle to make use of it.
Born in New Haven in 1852, Bouchet was the son of a former slave who had left South Carolina as the servant of a Yale-bound student.
Bouchet entered Yale at a time when state law kept many Black students from officially enrolling - and he earned high honors on his way to a degree.
After earning his PhD, Bouchet could not get a research job. The scholar spent the next 26 years teaching at the School for Colored Youth in Philadelphia...