Honoring Edward Bouchet

On Monday September 24th Hopkins honored Edward Bouchet, who graduated from Hopkins in 1870 as his class valedictorian. This special assembly, organized by Assistant Director of Admissions Angela Wardlaw '84, was highlighted with a performance by the Yale Gospel Choir; Hopkins' very own Vanessa Mendoza '05 is Choir vice-president. This is the third year that Hopkins has celebrated Edward Bouchet Day.

About Edward Bouchet
Edward A. Bouchet was born September 15, 1852 on Bradley Street in New Haven, Connecticut to William Francis and Susan Bouchet. His father was born in South Carolina, traveled from Charleston to New Haven as the servant of a Yale College student: freed when the student graduated, he remained in New Haven where he worked as a porter at the Palladium Building on Orange Street and at Yale College. The Bouchets had four children. Edward, their youngest and their only son, attended the Artisan Street Colored School for his primary education and Hopkins Grammar School for his secondary studies, graduating valedictorian in 1870. He entered Yale and in 1874 became the first African American to graduate from the college. Achieving orations, highest honors from Yale College, he was chosen from among graduates of highest distinction, one of the very few in his class, for initiation into Phi Beta Kappa, the earliest college graduate of his race to be selected by our nation’s oldest and most prestigious Greek letter honor society. Edward A. Bouchet continued his studies at Yale and earned the Ph.D. in physics in 1876, the first African American to earn the Ph.D. in physics in this country, indeed in this hemisphere. A precious gift to his science and education, New Haven and America, he devoted his life to teaching young men and women of African descent.