The Nation's Highest-Ranked Colleges and Universities Name Some of Their Distinguished Black Alumni

SOME OF THE nation's most prestigious colleges and universities have been graduating black students for as long as 180 years. But until the late 1960s and early 1970s most of the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities enrolled very few black students. Nevertheless, at the current time, all of the nation's elite institutions of higher education have amassed an admirable record of graduating a diverse group of African-American students. Each of these prestigious colleges and universities has a number of distinguished African-American alumni who have gone on to make a mark in the world.

JBHE asked the nation's 25 highest-ranked universities and 25 highest-ranked liberal arts colleges to provide information on up to five black alumni who earned degrees at their institutions and went on to make significant contributions to society. We emphasized that this was not an attempt to rank black alumni on relative importance but rather to give an indication of the rich history of African-American graduates at these institutions. Of these 50 high-ranking colleges and universities, Columbia University, Claremont McKenna College, and Vassar College declined to participate in our survey.

Some colleges and universities offered fewer than five selections. Other educational institutions offered more than five nominees, and for these schools JBHE editors pared the list to include just five individuals. For the schools that submitted more than five names, alumni whose major accomplishments were in athletics or entertainment were the most likely to be eliminated.

Here we present a selection of distinguished black alumni of the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. The alumni are listed under the names of the educational institutions, in alphabetical order. The year the black alumnus graduated from the institution is listed in parentheses immediately after the alumnus' name.

A Small Sampling of Distinguished Black Alumni of the Nation's Highest-Ranked Universities

Brown University

- Spencer Crew (1971) is the executive director and CEO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. He is the former director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

- Gayl Jones (Ph.D.,1975) is the author of four novels, a collection of short stories, and several volumes of poetry. In 1998 Jones published The Healing, a novel that was a finalist for the National Book Award.

- Samuel M. Nabrit (Ph.D.,1932)...