scholia - University of Otago

THREE NINETEENTH-CENTURY
CLASSICISTS OF AFRICAN DESCENT
Michele Valerie Ronnick
Department of Classics, Greek and Latin, Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA
Abstract The impact of classical studies upon the creative and professional Jives of people of
African descent who lived in the past two centuries is a worthy, and heretofore little explored,
field of scholarly inquiry. Here is a brief study of that dynamic, traced through the lives of a trio
of nineteenth-century intellectuals of African-American descent.
Few classicists are aware that among the members of the American
Philological Association (AP A) during the latter half of the nineteenth century
were several men of African descent. for little or nothing has been written
about them in this regard. But in fact post-Civil War America was marked by
heated debates over the questions related to the education of the newly freed
slaves. This was particularly true about the position of the study of the classics.
Intellectuals on both sides of the question-white, black, male and femaleargued
over the relative merits of utilitarian training vis-a-vis pursuit of a
liberal arts education, whose core curriculum was based in the main upon the
study of ancient Greek and Latin. 1
Between especially the years 1880 and 1920 prominent men of African
descent such as Booker T. Washington, Alexander Crummell, W. E. B. DuBois
and Martin R. Delany played key roles in shaping the resulting discourse. The
three men featured in this essay-Edward Blyden (1832-1912), Theodore
Greener (1844-1922) and William Scarborough ( 1852-1926)-played equally
prominent roles. Each one had been trained in the classics. All were known
individually for their outstanding achievements as engaged intellectuals, public
citizens and concerned educators, and all of them became members of the
APA-Blyden in 1880, Greener in 1881 and Scarborough in 1882.
Here in brief are their stories. The lives of these men, whose training in
Greek and Latin shaped their lives, illustrate in small an area of study that has
been sadly overlooked by scholars-the impact the Graeco-Roman heritage has
had upon the experience of people of African descent in America and the
western world. My effort here is an initial one, made with a view to filling in
1 On this topic see M. V. Ronnick, '"A Pick Instead of Greek and Latin." The African­
American Quest for Useful Knowledge: 1880-1920,' The Negro Educational Review 47
( 1996) 60-72.
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