Edward Bouchet Day

Friday, September 25th was the 5th annual Edward Bouchet Day at Hopkins. This day celebrates Hopkins alumnus, Edward Bouchet 1870 HGS, who went on to become the first African American man to graduate from Yale University, as well as first to receive a PhD in Physics in the United States. Bouchet's dedication to education, despite racial challenges, designates him as a trailblazer in the quest for racial equality. As diversity and equality are still pressing issues today, his story teaches an important lesson about perseverance and meeting challenges to the Hopkins students of today.

Over the course of the day, twenty-five 9th grade students from the local New Haven schools attended classes and activities with 9th grade Hopkins students. The day's events were organized by Assistant Director of Admission, Angela Wardlaw '84.

At morning assembly, special speaker James Rawlings, President of the New Haven chapter of the NAACP, appealed to the students to remember their less fortunate peers. He spoke of students attending public schools a few blocks away, who didn't choose to come from low-income families, but for whom poor education and few opportunities lead many toward lives surrounded by crime. He implored Hopkins students to use their privilege to help aid their peers, whether by peer tutoring, community involvement or choosing career paths advocating equal rights. He also asked them to open their eyes to the systemic barriers to equality that are inherent in our society, and use their education to break down these walls.

Following Rawlings speech, Nation, a local award-winning drill/dance team performed an energetic routine. The group was founded by director and drum leader, Douglas Bethea, as a way to engage youth in a project to take pride in as well as to keep them off the streets.

After the performance, history teacher Jonathan Meltzer spoke to the students about Edward Bouchet and his legacy. The following are Mr. Meltzer's remarks:

A challenging aspect of teaching American history, as it is my pleasure to do here, is trying to balance the uplifting and hopeful moments with the darker chapters in our past.  In many ways, the history of this country has been one of progress—of increasing equality, of rights gained, and of challenges overcome.  At the same time, we cannot pretend that the history of this country is one devoid of tragedy—of people being persecuted, denied opportunities, or otherwise treated as unequal. The life of Edward Bouchet reflects both aspects of our history, and offers a chance to engage with both our triumphs and our shortcomings

Many of you have heard about Bouchet over the years, but for those of you who haven’t, here’s a little background: He was born in New Haven in 1852, a time when the vast majority of African Americans in the United States were enslaved in the South.  Northern blacks did fare better, but when Bouchet was ready to be educated, there were only three schools in New Haven open to black children.  He attended an all black elementary school, and then in 1868, he enrolled at Hopkins Grammar School.  He graduated first in the Hopkins class of 1870, and went on to graduate from Yale in 1874, the first black man to do so, and near the top of the class.  Just two years later, he received a PhD in Physics, just the sixth American to receive a Physics PhD, and not surprisingly, the first African American.

You may wonder, given all of these accomplishments, why I described any part of Bouchet’s life as a tragedy.  After all, a Hopkins degree is a pretty big deal—and Yale is fine too.  But we have followed Bouchet only through his 24th birthday.  His remaining 42 years would be defined not by his abilities, but instead by the color of his skin.  Every other person in the United States who had a PhD could find employment as a college professor if that’s what he wanted, but not Bouchet. Instead, he began to teach at the only type of school that would hire him: an all black high school in Philadelphia.  He eventually taught at six or seven high schools in his lifetime, as far west as Texas.  Many of us, especially your teachers, view a life devoted to teaching high school as a fulfilling one. But for Bouchet to be denied the college professorship he so clearly deserved and for him to be forced to move from segregated school to segregated school was surely a tragedy—and no doubt one of many for 19th century female and minority intellectuals of all kinds.

Still, my purpose today is not to depress you with a speech about the evils of American history.  This is a day of celebration, and one of the pleasures of being a history teacher is celebrating the moments of kindness and greatness that shine through the clouds of prejudice in unexpected and uplifting ways.

And so we set aside this day to celebrate that 140 years ago, while Catholic children in Boston were beaten by their teachers for reciting their church’s version of the Ten Commandments instead of that of the dominant Protestant religions, while Chinese workers were exploited as they built railroads in the American West, and while the Ku Klux Klan was forming across the unreconstructed South, our school did something exceptional.  It did something we think of today as unremarkable, but was at the time both brave and singular: it chose to rise above the pervasive bigotry of the day and recognize excellence where others would not even look.

There was no doubt that Edward Bouchet was excellent—that he embodied the intellectual firepower and commitment to scholarship that Hopkins strove for in 1868 and continues to strive for today.  Where others saw a black man and turned away, Hopkins recognized that such superficial glances were not enough.  It’s a legacy of open-mindedness, commitment to justice, and academic achievement that we can all be proud of.

One of the challenges for me of trying to think about someone like Edward Bouchet, who in many ways feels so distant from us, is to try to understand how his story, no matter how simultaneously frustrating and inspiring, connects to today.  Even for history teachers, it can be hard to find that way of relating to a world that can often seem so far away.  But perhaps even if we can’t understand what it might have been like to attend Hopkins a century and a half ago, we can still find inspiration.

No matter how often I think about it, I still look back in awe at the greatness Hopkins showed by taking in Edward Bouchet when others would not.  Above the petty and hateful wisdom of the day—a wisdom that would deny Bouchet the life he wanted and deserved—Hopkins placed opportunity and excellence.

How, then, can we most honor Bouchet? How we can make sure that his legacy lives on in us, who define Hopkins today? It seems that the greatest service we can do is to try to recapture just a bit of that bravery and greatness that our school showed so many years ago.

We can do this, each and every one of us, by doing our part to open up opportunities for someone at this school, someone in this country, or someone in the wider world for whom those doors would otherwise be closed.  We must find the Edward Bouchets of our day, and help them achieve the kind of life that Bouchet himself was never able to enjoy.  It could begin today with helping our visiting students feel comfortable on The Hill, or it could be an unexpected chance months from now.  But if we all make that effort, if we all recommit ourselves to the higher principles on which this school was founded, we can assure that in our 350th year, not only does the remarkable vision of Edward Hopkins live on, but so does the proud legacy of Edward Bouchet.

-Jonathan Meltzer