Mary Jane Patterson

First African American Woman College Graduate

Mary Jane Patterson was the first African American woman to earn a bachelor's degree (Oberlin College, 1862). She became a successful teacher and was later appointed as the first black principal at America's first public high school for blacks (Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, Washington, DC, 1871). Patterson spent her career creating new educational opportunities for African Americans after the Civil War.

Childhood and Early Years
Mary Jane Patterson was born on September 12, 1840, in Raleigh, North Carolina, the daughter of Henry Irving Patterson and Emmeline Taylor Patterson. Mary was probably the oldest of at least seven siblings. Her father, a boyhood friend of future U.S. President Andrew Johnson, was a bricklayer and plasterer. About 1852 he either obtained his freedom or escaped from slavery and moved his family out of North Carolina.

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Charlotte Ray

First African American Woman Lawyer

Not only was Charlotte Ray the first African American woman lawyer in the United States, she was one of the first women to practice in the District of Columbia and the third American woman of any race to earn a law degree (Howard University Law School, 1872).

Childhood and Early Years
Charlotte E. Ray was born in New York City on January 13, 1850 to Charlotte and Reverend Charles Bennett Ray. She had six siblings, including two sisters, Cordelia and Florence. Reverend Ray was an important figure in the abolitionist movement and edited a paper called The Colored American. Education was important to the Rays, and all of their girls went to college.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Charlotte began attending the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in Washington, DC, one of the few schools that offered a quality education to young African American women. The Institution was founded by Myrtilla Miner after the school in Mississippi where she taught refused her permission to conduct classes for African American girls.

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Mary Ellen Pleasant

Humanitarian and Businesswoman

Pleasant was a civil rights activist and entrepreneur who used her fortune to further the abolitionist movement. She worked on the Underground Railroad in several states, including California during the Gold Rush and won significant civil rights in the courts, earning the name 'Mother of Civil Rights in California.'

Childhood and Early Years
Mary Ellen Pleasant altered and embellished her story in several memoirs to offset the criticisms levied against her toward the end of her life, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. By her own account she was born Mary Ellen Williams on August 19, 1814, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to an African American mother and Louis Alexander Williams, a well educated merchant from the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).

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