scholia - University of Otago

'Three Nineteenth-Century Classicists of African Descent', M. V. Ronnick 15
York City, he decided to seek a diplomatic appointment. In 1898 he accepted
an appointment as the ftrst American consul to Vladivostok, Russia and served
there until 1905. He then retired to Chicago and resided there until his death in
1922.
Much of his intellectual life was conducted in public and involved
considerable writing and speaking. In September of 1879 Greener spoke in a
debate with Frederick Douglass about the topic of African migration in the
United States from the south to the west, a plan that Greener supported. In June
of 1877 he presented a paper to the members of the American Philological
Association at their annual meeting, which was held at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, Maryland. His paper concerned the University's rare
book collection. WbiJe teaching law at Howard University four years later in
1881, he became the second African-American member of the APA.
Greener was a man of letters, whose writings include essays entitled
'Socrates as Teacher,' 'Benjamin Banneker' and 'John Milton.' His speeches
abounded with illustrations and quotations from classical antiquity, a feature
for which he was sometimes criticized. About the problem of racism, he wrote
in the National Quarterly Review of July 1880:
Those who know us most intimately, who have associated with us in the
nursery, at school, in college, in trade with the tenderer and confidential
relations of life, in health, in sickness, and in death, as trusted guides, as brave
soldiers, as magnanimous enemies, as educated and respected men and
women, give up all senseless antipathies, and feel ashamed to confess they
ever cherished any prejudice against a race whose record is as unsullied as that
of any in the land.
William Sanders Scarborough ( 1852-1926l
William Sanders Scarborough 7 (1852-1926) was born in 1852 with the status of
a slave in Macon, Georgia. His mother was owned by the household of Colonel
William de Graffereid, whose humane values allowed her to marry and live
independently with her husband, who worked for the Georgia Central Railroad.
Through the kindness of J. C. Thomas, a man described as 'an intense
Southerner,' young Scarborough received his early schooling, a thing which, if
6 Selected bibliography: W. J. Simmons, 'Professor William S. Scarborough, A.B., A.M.,
LL.D,' in Men of Mark (New York 1968) 410-18; F. P. Weisenburger, 'William Sanders
Scarborough: Early Life and Years at Wilberforce,' Ohio History 71 (1961) 203-26; F. P.
Weisenburger, 'William Sanders Scarborough: Scholarship, The Negro, Religion and
Politics,' Ohio History 72 (1962) 25-80, 85-87.
7 See plate 3, p. I 8.