American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois was the first Black person to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois had earned a bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, a historically Black institution in Nashville, in 1888. He earned a second bachelor’s degree at Harvard in 1890. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895. He once said of his experience there, “I was in Harvard, but not of it.”
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