Harvard and HBCU Connections: Pre-1946

This dataset is the final product of the Harvard University Archives Spring 2022 Pforzheimer Fellowship project "Harvard and HBCUs". It was created by Pforzheimer Fellow Donald "Field" Brown in collaboration with Edward Copenhagen (Harvard University Archives), Ross Mulcare (Harvard University Archives), and Jehan Sinclair (Harvard Library). To uncover underrepresented histories of people of color at Harvard, the Harvard University Archives conducted a research survey to identify individuals with connections to both Harvard and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) between 1800 and 1945. These individuals attended, taught, or received an honorary degree at Harvard prior to 1946 and also attended, taught, or received an honorary degree from an HBCU. The initial survey identified more than 200 people: from well-known historic Black scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois to the less known Rose Butler Browne, the first Black woman to receive a PhD in education from Harvard. This fellowship project transformed the findings of this survey into a structured dataset.