This month in history (140 years ago)
Mary Henrietta Graham in 1876 became the first African-American female student to be admitted to the university and the first black person to graduate. In 1880 she received a Bachelor’s of Philosophy in literature. She went on to marry Ferdinand Lee Barnett, an attorney and civil rights activist, in 1882. The two moved to Chicago and worked on Barnett’s paper, the Chicago Conservator, which was the first black newspaper in the city. Graham died in 1890.
— From Bentley Historical Library and “Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930”
