Boston University was founded in a time when most higher education was just for men and just for people of European descent. But from our earliest history we have welcomed women and African Americans. You may already know that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., received his PhD from our Graduate School in 1955, but did you know that in 1877, BU was the first American university to award a PhD to a woman, classical scholar Helen Magill? The College of Arts and Sciences draws inspiration today from that history of pioneering inclusion.
Stories from our Past
Helen Magill (White) came to BU with a BA from Swarthmore College (1873). Here she studied classical Greek civilization, earning her PhD in 1877. After BU, she studied Classics at the University of Cambridge (England), placing third in her honor examinations at Newnham College (1881). Coming back to the US, she help found and served as director of Howard Collegiate Institute in West Bridgewater, MA (1883-1887) and went on to teach at Evelyn College for Women, a woman’s annex to Princeton University.
John Wesley Edward Bowen was the second person of African descent and the first person born a slave to receive a Ph.D. in the USA. He received his Bachelor’s degree from BU in 1885 and then, in 1887, he completed the Ph.D. in historical theology, with extra work in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, and Arabic. A student of Philosophy professor Borden Parker Bowne, founder of “Boston Personalism,” Bowen was a spokesman for Black Personalism and a passionate apologist for equal access to higher education. The journal he co-founded, The Voice of the Negro, published the work of important turn-of-the-century African American activists.