George Washington Henderson -- First African-American Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Minister, Educator, Champion of His Race

Born in Virginia in 1850, Henderson was employed as a servant by Henry Carpenter, adjutant in the Eighth Vermont Regiment in the Civil War. In 1865 he accompanied Carpenter to his home in Belvidere and began to learn his letters. After study with Oscar Atwood in Underhill and at Barre Academy, he entered the University of Vermont and graduated at the top of his class in 1877. He taught in schools in Jericho, Craftsbury, and Newport. After graduating in 1883 from Yale Divinity School, he went south in 1888 to serve as Congregational minister in New Orleans. He was author, in 1894, of the first formal protest against lynching in the U.S. From 1890 to 1932 he taught theology and classical languages in Straight (now Dillard), Fisk, and Wilberforce Universities. He died in Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1936.