Black History Month at FASEB: First black American college graduate (B.A.): Alexander Lucius Twilight, 1823, Middlebury College; First black American woman to receive a B.A. degree: Mary Jane Patterson, 1862, Oberlin College. First black American to receive a Ph.D.: Edward A. Bouchet, 1876, received a Ph.D. from Yale University. In 1921, three individuals became the first U.S. black women to earn Ph.D.s: Georgiana Simpson, University of Chicago; Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, University of Pennsylvania; and Eva Beatrice Dykes, Radcliffe College.

Illustration and creation by ms. Lisa C. Jackson