Richard Theodore Greener, a native of Philadelphia, became the first African American to graduate from Harvard College. He later served the United States in diplomatic posts in India and Russia. Greener lived in Boston and Cambridge as a child and entered Harvard in 1865 and received an A.B. degree from the institution in 1870. After graduation he was appointed principal of the Male Department at Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth which later became Cheyney University. Three years later Greener became professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at the University of South Carolina where he also served as librarian and taught Greek, Mathematics and Constitutional Law. While there Greener entered the Law School and received an LL.B degree in 1876.
Active in the Republican Party, Greener was appointed United States Consul at Bombay, India in 1898 by President William McKinley. Later that year he was transferred to Vladivostok, Russia, where he served as commercial agent until 1905. During his term Greener reported to Washington on the construction of the Tran Siberian Railroad, the rapid growth of the European Russian population in the region, the status of the local Jewish population, and the local impact of China’s Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Recognizing Siberia’s growing importance to United States economic interests, Greener called unsuccessfully for the U.S. State Department to establish a consul-general in Vladivostok. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 Greener supervised the evacuation of the Japanese from Sakhalin Island. In October, 1905 Greener was recalled from Vladivostok. He retired to Chicago the following year and died there in 1922.
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