Richard Henry Greene: Difference between revisions
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'''Richard Henry Green''' (1833-1877) was the first [[African Americans|African American]] to graduate from [[Yale University]] and a schoolteacher and physician. During the [[American Civil War]], he served as an acting assistant [[Naval surgeon|surgeon]] in the [[United States Navy]]. |
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| birth_name = Richard Henry Green |
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| birth_date = 1833 |
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| birth_place = [[New Haven, Connecticut]], US |
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| death_date = March 23, 1877 |
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| death_place = Hoosick, New York, US |
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| burial_place = Old Bennington Cemetery, Vermont |
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| education = B.A., Yale College, 1857. MD, Dartmouth University, 1864. |
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| occupation = Physician |
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| spouse = Charlotte "Lottie" Greene |
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|module = {{Infobox military person |
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|embed = yes |
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|branch_label = Service |
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|branch = U.S. Navy |
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|rank = Assistant Surgeon |
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|serviceyears = 1863-1865 |
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}} |
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}} |
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{{Short description|African-American physician}} |
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[[File:Gravestone flag A532DCF5-1E16-4630-942F-A8C1DB760E22.jpg|thumb|Gravestone in Old Bennington Cemetery, Vermont]] |
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'''Richard Henry Greene''' (1833–1877) was the first [[African Americans|African American]] to graduate from [[Yale University]]. After a brief stint as a schoolteacher, he worked mainly as a physician in [[Hoosick, New York]]. During the [[American Civil War]], he received an MD from [[Dartmouth Medical College|Dartmouth]] and served as an acting assistant [[Naval surgeon|surgeon]] in the [[United States Navy]]. Since 2014, research has unearthed documents about his life and two photographs, which shed light on his personal views, racial identity, personal and professional life, and death.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Branch |first=Mark Alden |date=March–April 2023 |title=History, found. Richard Henry Greene was the first Black graduate of Yale College. Now we can see him . |url=https://yalealumnimagazine.org/articles/5622-history-found |journal=Yale Alumni Journal |pages=32–35}}</ref><ref name=":2" /> |
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== Early life == |
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[[File:To Lottie medicine DBF70973-D1EB-4B0E-92FD-437AB9C19EB7 1 201 a.jpg|thumb|Letter to wife Lottie about studying medicine at Dartmouth, Oct. 8, 1863]] |
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⚫ | Greene was born in [[New Haven, Connecticut]], to Richard Green, a [[Shoemaking|bootmaker]] who worked and lived some four blocks from the Yale campus, near the corner of State and Chapel Streets. Coming from Wilmington, North Carolina, by 1843 he co-owned a bootmaking company, Wright & Green.<ref name=":0" /> The elder Green helped establish [[St. Luke's Episcopal Church (New Haven, Connecticut)|St. Luke’s Episcopal Church]], an African-American church on nearby Park Street.<ref name=":0">{{cite news|last=Schiff|first=Judith|title=The life of Richard Henry Green|url=https://yalealumnimagazine.org/articles/3875-the-life-of-richard-henry-green|access-date=November 19, 2022|website=Yale Alumni Magazine}}</ref> |
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To prepare for admission, |
To prepare for admission to college, Greene studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics with Lucius Wooster Fitch, an 1840 graduate of Yale and a son of the Yale College pastor. He entered Yale in 1853 and he [[Commuting#Commuting College Students|commuted from his home]] in a Black neighborhood, which caused him to be marked late for its 6 a.m. mandatory prayer service, or for class, for which he was apparently excused.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /> In college, among his friends with the son of [[Henry Dutton (politician)|Henry Dutton]] (a Yale professor who became the Governor of Connecticut).<ref name=":0" /> Greene later joined the literary society [[Brothers in Unity]] and the [[Sigma Delta]] fraternity. He graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1857.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2">{{cite news|last=Kaminer|first=Ariel|date=March 1, 2014|title=Discovery Leads Yale to Revise a Chapter of Its Black History|work=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/nyregion/discovery-leads-yale-to-revise-a-chapter-of-its-black-history.html|access-date=November 19, 2022|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> |
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Beginning in March 1860, he studied medicine at [[Dartmouth College]], and he received his [[Doctor of Medicine|MD]] in 1864.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /> In letters to his fiancee, Greene wrote, "I am studying all my strength will allow -- from morning until late at night for I feel a great lack of acquirement."<ref name=":1" /> |
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== Military service == |
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⚫ | Two years into the American Civil War, in November 1863, |
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[[File:Mood in south 9BF84E64-75C1-4989-BE6B-55BC8AFDE204 1 201 a.jpg|thumb|Letter about mood in the South during the Civil War]] |
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⚫ | Two years into the American Civil War, in November 1863, Greene entered the U.S. Navy as an acting assistant surgeon. According to an 1877 letter from his father to the Yale secretary, Greene "was sent to the U.S. Steamer [[USS State of Georgia (1851)|''State of Georgia'']] [[Union blockade|blockading]] off N. Carolina under [[David Dixon Porter|Admiral Porter]]. He was on that vessel about a year, when she was taken out of commission, and he was put on waiting order 3 weeks. During that time he was married to Miss Charlotte Caldwell of Bennington, VT. Then he was ordered to the Steamer [[USS Seneca (1861)|Seneca]] and was at the [[Second Battle of Fort Fisher|taking of Fort Fisher]], & the other fortifications in the [[Cape Fear River|Cape Fear river]]."<ref name=":0" /> On the [[USS Seneca (1861)|USS ''Seneca'']] and he handled cases of [[yellow fever]], and [[smallpox]].<ref name=":1" /> |
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Greene wrote to his wife Lottie about seeing [[Norfolk, Virginia]] and he attested to local views of the Union occupation:<blockquote>All the young men have gone out of the place with the Confederates and a kind of gloom hangs over the city. A good many of the secesh [Secessionist] ladies remain—they turn their heads when they meet any of our officers. . . . I really cannot conceive that we shall ever be a united people. Words can hardly express the bitterness of the Southerners toward the North.<ref name=":1" /></blockquote>In September 1864, he was granted [[Leave (military)|military leave]] to marry in Bennington, Vermont. He left the military in 1865.<ref name=":1" /> |
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Meanwhile, he studied medicine at [[Dartmouth College]], where he received an [[Doctor of Medicine|MD]] in 1864.<ref name=":0" /> |
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== Life in New York == |
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After the war, Green and his wife moved to [[Hoosick, New York]], where he practiced medicine and apparently changed the spelling of his surname to Greene.<ref name=":0" /> |
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[[File:Ltr about service to country and men drinking 679D0A10-E36F-45F0-9E1A-BB16D67FB381 1 201 a.jpg|thumb|Letter discussing service to his country, men drinking, and ministry]] |
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After the war, Greene and his wife (known as Lottie) initially lived in [[Cambridge, New York]], and then moved moved to [[Hoosick, New York]]. He practiced medicine after the war,<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> though he did consider whether to return to teaching or to take up Christian ministry.<ref name=":1" /> |
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"He was fond of the study of natural history and spent much time collecting plants and objects of interest in that department. He was a most amiable and genial man, and a practical Christian. He was a member of the County Medical society since 1872", according to an 1897 book, ''Landmarks of Rensselaer County, New York.''<ref>{{ |
"He was fond of the study of natural history and spent much time collecting plants and objects of interest in that department. He was a most amiable and genial man, and a practical Christian. He was a member of the County Medical society since 1872", according to an 1897 book, ''Landmarks of Rensselaer County, New York.''<ref>{{cite book|last=Anderson|first=George Baker|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TuNPAQAAIAAJ&q=amiable+and+genial|title=Landmarks of Rensselaer County, New York|year=1897|publisher=D. Mason|page=170}}</ref> According to Yale's journalist, he was a "respected physician" as indicated by a letter from a Connecticut patient, "I felt a confidence in you which I do not entertain toward any physician near us."<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /> |
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== Death and descendents == |
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Greene died in Hoosick on March 23, 1877, |
Greene died in Hoosick on March 23, 1877, "of disease of the heart leaving a wife & daughter," according to his father's letter.<ref name=":0" /> His burial plot in Bennington contains a military headstone and a biographical plaque.<ref name=":1" /> |
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[[File:Re father money B902AAB6-EFC7-4BF9-9E71-D51046B566A2.jpg|thumb|Letter discussing financial challenges]] |
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Branch, a Yale journalist, speculates that Greene experienced [[John Henryism]], that is, health deterioration while coping with social discrimination, such as racism.<ref name=":1" /> As he wrote to Lottie, "You knew when you accepted me you accepted a poor man who could not look forward in any way to a life of wealth and ease but to a life of labor and perhaps straitened circumstances."<ref name=":1" /> |
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Greene's home in Hoosick was still owned (as of 2023) by a descendent, who recalled being told about his medical books.<ref name=":1" /> |
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{{reflist}} |
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== |
== Racial identity == |
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Greene grew up in a Black neighborhood in New Haven. His father was listed in city records as African-American ("[[colored]]") and Greene himself was recorded by the federal census as "[[mulatto]]" in 1850 and as black in 1860, one of his last years in New Haven.<ref name=":0" /> However, Greene's wife was white and Yale historian Judith Schiff speculates that he [[Passing (racial identity)|lived as a white person]] and she notes that he was recorded in the 1870 federal census as white.<ref name=":0" /> |
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Still, Branch notes that the census record "is not dispositive... there is no reference to his being Black in any of the scant published records about him in his years in the Navy or afterward."<ref name=":1" /> As the researcher who discovered Greene's papers said told the New York Times, "It’s quite possible the census taker may have shown up at the door, seen Green[e] and listed him as white in his own judgment. Or he might have only seen the daughter and the mother and then filled in for the father.”<ref name=":2" /> |
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== Research == |
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[[File:Memorial plaque AFEF386C-6CCA-4CC6-A36F-910410EDB022.jpg|thumb|Memorial plaque with corrected name and Yale connection]] |
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Greene's status as an early graduate of Yale was reported as early as 1875 in the ''American Educational Annual.<ref name=":0" />'' Yet it was not until 2014 that more information about Greene was published, following the discovery of some of his letters, and other documents, by Rick Stattler, an [[American history]] expert at [[Swann Galleries]].<ref name=":2" /> Documents pertaining to Greene are archived by the [[Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library]], including letters, financial records, memorabilia, and papers of his wife, daughter, and a brother-in-law.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=Collection: Richard Henry Green papers {{!}} Archives at Yale |url=https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/5241 |access-date=2024-06-17 |website=archives.yale.edu}}</ref> The Greene collection was donated by William Reese, a Yale alumnus and rare book collector.<ref name=":3" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Raymond |first=Lindsey |date=2010-09-24 |title=One man, 65,000 manuscripts |url=https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2010/09/24/one-man-65000-manuscripts/ |access-date=2024-06-17 |website=Yale Daily News |language=en}}</ref> |
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{{Reflist}} |
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==External links== |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Richard Henry}} |
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Richard Henry}} |
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[[Category:1877 deaths]] |
[[Category:1877 deaths]] |
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[[Category:Yale College alumni]] |
[[Category:Yale College alumni]] |
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[[Category:African-American United States Navy personnel]] |
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[[Category:Union Navy surgeons]] |
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[[Category:African-American physicians]] |
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[[Category:American physicians by state]] |
Latest revision as of 12:29, 24 June 2024
Richard Henry Greene | |
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Born | Richard Henry Green 1833 |
Died | March 23, 1877 Hoosick, New York, US |
Burial place | Old Bennington Cemetery, Vermont |
Bildung | B.A., Yale College, 1857. MD, Dartmouth University, 1864. |
Occupation | Physician |
Spouse | Charlotte "Lottie" Greene |
Military career | |
Service | U.S. Navy |
Years of service | 1863-1865 |
Rank | Assistant Surgeon |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Gravestone_flag_A532DCF5-1E16-4630-942F-A8C1DB760E22.jpg/220px-Gravestone_flag_A532DCF5-1E16-4630-942F-A8C1DB760E22.jpg)
Richard Henry Greene (1833–1877) was the first African American to graduate from Yale University. After a brief stint as a schoolteacher, he worked mainly as a physician in Hoosick, New York. During the American Civil War, he received an MD from Dartmouth and served as an acting assistant surgeon in the United States Navy. Since 2014, research has unearthed documents about his life and two photographs, which shed light on his personal views, racial identity, personal and professional life, and death.[1][2]
Early life
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/To_Lottie_medicine_DBF70973-D1EB-4B0E-92FD-437AB9C19EB7_1_201_a.jpg/220px-To_Lottie_medicine_DBF70973-D1EB-4B0E-92FD-437AB9C19EB7_1_201_a.jpg)
Greene was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Richard Green, a bootmaker who worked and lived some four blocks from the Yale campus, near the corner of State and Chapel Streets. Coming from Wilmington, North Carolina, by 1843 he co-owned a bootmaking company, Wright & Green.[3] The elder Green helped establish St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, an African-American church on nearby Park Street.[3]
To prepare for admission to college, Greene studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics with Lucius Wooster Fitch, an 1840 graduate of Yale and a son of the Yale College pastor. He entered Yale in 1853 and he commuted from his home in a Black neighborhood, which caused him to be marked late for its 6 a.m. mandatory prayer service, or for class, for which he was apparently excused.[1][3] In college, among his friends with the son of Henry Dutton (a Yale professor who became the Governor of Connecticut).[3] Greene later joined the literary society Brothers in Unity and the Sigma Delta fraternity. He graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1857.[3][2] After graduating, Greene taught school in Milford, Connecticut, and after a year and a half took a teaching job at the Bennington Seminary in Bennington, Vermont.[3] by 1861, he had changed the spelling of his surname to Greene.[3][1]
Beginning in March 1860, he studied medicine at Dartmouth College, and he received his MD in 1864.[1][3] In letters to his fiancee, Greene wrote, "I am studying all my strength will allow -- from morning until late at night for I feel a great lack of acquirement."[1]
Military service
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Mood_in_south_9BF84E64-75C1-4989-BE6B-55BC8AFDE204_1_201_a.jpg/220px-Mood_in_south_9BF84E64-75C1-4989-BE6B-55BC8AFDE204_1_201_a.jpg)
Two years into the American Civil War, in November 1863, Greene entered the U.S. Navy as an acting assistant surgeon. According to an 1877 letter from his father to the Yale secretary, Greene "was sent to the U.S. Steamer State of Georgia blockading off N. Carolina under Admiral Porter. He was on that vessel about a year, when she was taken out of commission, and he was put on waiting order 3 weeks. During that time he was married to Miss Charlotte Caldwell of Bennington, VT. Then he was ordered to the Steamer Seneca and was at the taking of Fort Fisher, & the other fortifications in the Cape Fear river."[3] On the USS Seneca and he handled cases of yellow fever, and smallpox.[1]
Greene wrote to his wife Lottie about seeing Norfolk, Virginia and he attested to local views of the Union occupation:
All the young men have gone out of the place with the Confederates and a kind of gloom hangs over the city. A good many of the secesh [Secessionist] ladies remain—they turn their heads when they meet any of our officers. . . . I really cannot conceive that we shall ever be a united people. Words can hardly express the bitterness of the Southerners toward the North.[1]
In September 1864, he was granted military leave to marry in Bennington, Vermont. He left the military in 1865.[1]
Life in New York
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Ltr_about_service_to_country_and_men_drinking_679D0A10-E36F-45F0-9E1A-BB16D67FB381_1_201_a.jpg/220px-Ltr_about_service_to_country_and_men_drinking_679D0A10-E36F-45F0-9E1A-BB16D67FB381_1_201_a.jpg)
After the war, Greene and his wife (known as Lottie) initially lived in Cambridge, New York, and then moved moved to Hoosick, New York. He practiced medicine after the war,[3][1] though he did consider whether to return to teaching or to take up Christian ministry.[1]
"He was fond of the study of natural history and spent much time collecting plants and objects of interest in that department. He was a most amiable and genial man, and a practical Christian. He was a member of the County Medical society since 1872", according to an 1897 book, Landmarks of Rensselaer County, New York.[4] According to Yale's journalist, he was a "respected physician" as indicated by a letter from a Connecticut patient, "I felt a confidence in you which I do not entertain toward any physician near us."[1][3]
Death and descendents
[edit]Greene died in Hoosick on March 23, 1877, "of disease of the heart leaving a wife & daughter," according to his father's letter.[3] His burial plot in Bennington contains a military headstone and a biographical plaque.[1]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Re_father_money_B902AAB6-EFC7-4BF9-9E71-D51046B566A2.jpg/220px-Re_father_money_B902AAB6-EFC7-4BF9-9E71-D51046B566A2.jpg)
Branch, a Yale journalist, speculates that Greene experienced John Henryism, that is, health deterioration while coping with social discrimination, such as racism.[1] As he wrote to Lottie, "You knew when you accepted me you accepted a poor man who could not look forward in any way to a life of wealth and ease but to a life of labor and perhaps straitened circumstances."[1]
Greene's home in Hoosick was still owned (as of 2023) by a descendent, who recalled being told about his medical books.[1]
Racial identity
[edit]Greene grew up in a Black neighborhood in New Haven. His father was listed in city records as African-American ("colored") and Greene himself was recorded by the federal census as "mulatto" in 1850 and as black in 1860, one of his last years in New Haven.[3] However, Greene's wife was white and Yale historian Judith Schiff speculates that he lived as a white person and she notes that he was recorded in the 1870 federal census as white.[3]
Still, Branch notes that the census record "is not dispositive... there is no reference to his being Black in any of the scant published records about him in his years in the Navy or afterward."[1] As the researcher who discovered Greene's papers said told the New York Times, "It’s quite possible the census taker may have shown up at the door, seen Green[e] and listed him as white in his own judgment. Or he might have only seen the daughter and the mother and then filled in for the father.”[2]
Forschung
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Memorial_plaque_AFEF386C-6CCA-4CC6-A36F-910410EDB022.jpg/220px-Memorial_plaque_AFEF386C-6CCA-4CC6-A36F-910410EDB022.jpg)
Greene's status as an early graduate of Yale was reported as early as 1875 in the American Educational Annual.[3] Yet it was not until 2014 that more information about Greene was published, following the discovery of some of his letters, and other documents, by Rick Stattler, an American history expert at Swann Galleries.[2] Documents pertaining to Greene are archived by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, including letters, financial records, memorabilia, and papers of his wife, daughter, and a brother-in-law.[5] The Greene collection was donated by William Reese, a Yale alumnus and rare book collector.[5][6]
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Branch, Mark Alden (March–April 2023). "History, found. Richard Henry Greene was the first Black graduate of Yale College. Now we can see him ". Yale Alumni Journal: 32–35.
- ^ a b c d Kaminer, Ariel (March 1, 2014). "Discovery Leads Yale to Revise a Chapter of Its Black History". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Schiff, Judith. "The life of Richard Henry Green". Yale Alumni Magazine. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
- ^ Anderson, George Baker (1897). Landmarks of Rensselaer County, New York. D. Mason. p. 170.
- ^ a b "Collection: Richard Henry Green papers | Archives at Yale". archives.yale.edu. Retrieved 2024-06-17.
- ^ Raymond, Lindsey (2010-09-24). "One man, 65,000 manuscripts". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 2024-06-17.