Why was Greener forgotten in 1922?
Despite his accomplishments in the era just after the Civil War, by the time of his death much of the country was eager to ignore and erase the contributions of Black men and women. Downplaying the work of people such as Greener helped portray the Reconstruction era as a failure, and it papered over the violence of anti-Black racism in the early 20th century. But by restoring the story of his remarkable life, we can challenge those false narratives and uncover paths untaken.
Though born free in Philadelphia in 1844, Greener grew up in an America where most who looked like him were enslaved. His family moved to Boston when he was a boy, and he had intermittent access to education, eventually making his way to preparatory programs at Oberlin and then Phillips Academy at Andover, where he was their first Black graduate in 1865, the year the Civil War ended. He entered Harvard and in 1870 became the institution’s first Black graduate.
Greener distinguished himself at Harvard, winning oratory and writing prizes, and he sometimes contributed to the Advocate, a student publication. When Charles Sumner, the most outspoken abolitionist in the U.S. Senate, read an article Greener had written, he became a mentor and friend.
In 1873, Greener was recruited to teach philosophy at the University of South Carolina. During Reconstruction, a new state constitution gave Black men the vote and broadened educational opportunities. Thanks to Black voters, South Carolina, for the first time, had a majority-Black state legislature. The legislature then elected Black trustees to the university’s board who desegregated the student body. Upon hiring Greener, the board desegregated the faculty as well.
While at the University of South Carolina, Greener was a busy man. In addition to teaching, he served for a time as a librarian, reorganizing the library, based in part on his experience with the catalogue and circulation system at Harvard and aided by his knowledge of Latin, Greek and French. He attended the law school, graduating in 1876. Informed by his own experience of repeating his freshman year, Greener helped create a preparatory program for incoming students, a “sub-freshman class.” He also taught in the state-operated normal school on campus that trained teachers, the vast majority of them Black women.
That this integrated university existed in South Carolina less than a decade after the end of the Civil War is nothing short of remarkable. Greener, his colleagues and his students taught and learned in buildings named for former enslavers where their antebellum predecessors had preached states’ rights and nullification. Greener delivered a eulogy to Sumner in 1874 in one of those buildings, on the dais of Rutledge Chapel, the same place where Preston Brooks, Sumner’s attacker on the floor of the Senate in 1856, delivered his recitations and disputations as a student.
While in South Carolina, Greener put his eloquence as a speaker to good use by advocating for civil rights, often putting his life in danger. At one speaking engagement he had a gun pointed at him, only to be pulled to safety by a state senator. On Election Day in 1876 he was attacked twice while working at the polls.
The integrated university was not to last. With the end of Reconstruction, the University of South Carolina closed its doors to African Americans in 1877, and wouldn’t open them again until 1963.
Greener had a varied career after his time in South Carolina, at times experiencing great success and at others, distressing failure. He served as dean of the Howard University law school, as the administrator for the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial and as a diplomat in Vladivostok, Russia.
Although forgotten for most of the 20th century, he has been rediscovered in recent years thanks in part to social awakenings and increased access to newly discovered archival sources. While some may still wish to ignore this history, that is no longer possible. These stories, brought to light, are potent examples of parts of our history we still don’t fully understand.
In 2010, my colleague Katherine Chaddock and I attended a historical conference in Cambridge, where she happened upon a plaque about Greener placed by the Cambridge Historical Commission in an alcove of a building near Harvard Square. Once back in Columbia, she showed it to students who asked why the University of South Carolina didn’t have something honoring Greener. That question provided the spark for us and another colleague, Lydia Brandt, to bring Greener’s story to life. (As the University of South Carolina celebrated its bicentennial in 2001, a play about Greener entitled “The White Problem,” the name of one of his essays, was commissioned and performed. There is a scholarship in his name, but his name and story were still largely unknown on campus.)
Harvard recently released a report, “Harvard & The Legacy of Slavery,” and held a one-day symposium about reckoning with this history. Greener is mentioned in the report as an example of Black resistance to racism. Greener wrote in his essay “The White Problem” in 1894, that “Slavery has been abolished in America; the trail of the serpent, however, yet marks the ground.” That trail helps explain the erasure of figures such as Greener.
Although it comes a century too late, this much-delayed eulogy reminds us of Greener’s remarkable and complicated life and makes clear how important it is to remember. He stands as an important symbol of the unfulfilled promises of the Reconstruction era. His story teaches us what he and others accomplished during a volatile and crucial part of our history. And it reminds of how the course of history might have been different and how understanding this history can inform our future as a nation.
