Meet Some of the First Black and Indigenous Students at Tufts

A new exhibit at Tisch Library highlights five students of color from the late 1800s and early 1900s 

Finding who were among the first Black and Indigenous students at Tufts is not easy. The university was founded in 1852, and did not record demographic data about students until well into the 20th century. But as part of the Slavery, Colonialism, and Their Legacies at Tufts University initiative, archivists and students are making progress on identifying those pioneering students. 

Now their first efforts are on display in the main lobby of the Tisch Library in the new exhibit Deep Roots at Tufts University, which highlights the lives of two students from the late 1800s and three from the early 1900s. 

The exhibit, which will be up through June 2025, is anchored in the Tisch Library entryway by a wall-sized black-and-white photo of a tree-lined College Avenue from around 1870. The scene looks radically different now, of course—this stretch of College Avenue is home to Cousens Gym, the Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, and various athletic fields.

It’s a reminder of how different the world was in the university’s first decades.  There were only a handful of students then like Charles Sumner Wilson, one of the first people of African descent to attend Tufts College, as it was known. 

An exhibit panel showing a photo and text.

A panel about Charles Sumner Wilson at the “Deep Roots” exhibit. Photo: Alonso Nichols

His father was a mariner who may have been born in Africa, and his mother was “born free and descended from a Massachusetts family of African and Indigenous ancestry,” according to the exhibit. He studied for two years at Tufts in the mid-1870s, and went on to a law career in Maryland.

“I really wanted to pick representative examples of people of color, people with Afro-native backgrounds, women of color, and people who came from each of the different schools in Tufts as much as possible,” says John Hannigan, an archivist at the Tufts Archival Research Center and lead curator for the Deep Roots exhibit. 

That’s why the exhibit highlights, for example, Jesse Gideon Garnett, D1919, who was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree from the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. 

The archivists at Tufts were joined in their research by students taking part in the Slavery and Tufts Archival Research Seminar, led by Heather Curtis, professor of religion and history, Kendra Field, associate professor of history, and Kyera Singleton, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts and executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford. With support from Hannigan, one student in the class, Anastasia Leahy, A26, discovered the existence of Drue King, one of the first Black men to complete a medical degree at Tufts in 1914. 

Leahy had searched a database of African American newspapers for the word Tufts, “and his was one of the first names that popped up,” says Hannigan. “She picked him to research for the class, and it turned out that there was just so much information available about his life. He had a very influential career at the Tuskegee Institute. His son, grandson, and great-granddaughter all went on to attend Tufts.”

The exhibit, designed by Jennifer Liston Munson, AG97 (MFA), is modular, with large separate displays for each of the five individuals profiled, which can be displayed in differing locations.

Digging Deep in the Archives

The work to identify these early students of color at Tufts continues. Hannigan is making lists of all the students at Tufts in its first half century, and then looking them up online through genealogical databases, “trying to see if there are any records that could indicate if they’re people of color or not,” he says. “It’s tedious and time consuming, but I have been able to find some new students we didn’t know about.”

Exhibit panel showing photo and text, as a person walks by.

Some of the panels of the “Deep Roots” exhibit. Photo: Alonso Nichols

One is a student who Hannigan thinks is the first Black man to graduate from the medical school. “His name was Henry Peyton Johnson, born in Virginia in 1874, graduated from Tufts Medical in 1897. It was super exciting to find that,” he says.

He also realized that early Tufts catalogs in the archives list students and the rooms they lived in on campus. He went back to see where Charles Sumner Wilson was living, and went through the catalogs line by line until he found his roommate, a man named Charles Francello Lewis. 

An exhibit panel showing photos and text.

A panel about Charles Francello Lewis at the “Deep Roots” exhibit. Photo: Alonso Nichols

“I looked him up on the census records, and lo and behold, he was also a man of color, which makes sense for a New England university in the 1870s to house the only two people of color together, whether they knew each other or not,” Hannigan says.

“They lived in what was called Middle Hall at the time, now Packard Hall,” says Dan Santamaria, director of the Tufts Archival Research Center and university archivist. “I think that’s just an amazing archival research story.”

The Deep Roots exhibit is a great way to let people experience the benefits of archives at Tufts, says Santamaria. “Putting this exhibit in the main entryway of the library, which is one of the biggest and busiest buildings on campus, shows its importance and also demonstrates our approach to archival work overall,” he says. “We try to remove as many barriers as we can to the archives and to the research that we’re conducting—it’s right there as people are going about their lives and doing their work.”

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