Reading “The Stained Glass Window” by Dr. David Levering Lewis (see Michael Henry Adams’ insightful review in our pages), I came across the name of William Sanders Scarborough. Unless you attended Wilberforce or Oberlin College or devoted hours of study to classical literature and history, he is a lesser-known scholar. Born in Macon, Ga. on Feb. 16, 1852, to a free father and enslaved mother, the law at that time prescribed him to follow his mother’s condition and he remained in Georgia to be with his mother. The law also prohibited him from learning to read and write, but he secretly acquired these skills with such proficiency that by the time he was ten he had many of the elements necessary to advance to higher learning.
At the end of the Civil War, he completed studies at Lewis High School in Macon before attending Atlanta University and two years at the abolitionist Oberlin College where he earned his undergraduate degree in 1875. He was hired by Wilberforce to head the school’s classical department. Not long after he married a white missionary, Cordelia Bierce. His reputation as a teacher won him a large academic following and this was soon increased with the publication of his books, “First Lessons in Greek” with an Appendix in 1881 and subsequently “Questions on Latin Grammar,” both of which secured his status as the first African American classical scholar.
The same year he began teaching at his high school, arsonists burned it down, a fire that so-called firemen allowed to continue. This was a terrible example of the racism that Scarborough received through his life, no matter his academic or scholarly status. In 1909, after becoming the president of Wilberforce, he was denied entry to an American Philological Association meeting in Baltimore. The association got caught between a rock and a hard place after the hotel refused to serve dinner if he was present, and if the association dared to cancel the conference, it faced a possible breach of contract litigation. His paper, slated for the conference, was read by a white member.
In 1892, he delivered a lecture on Plato at the University of Virginia in a room festooned with images of Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders. The only Blacks allowed in the room to hear the lecture were those working as servants. Teaching and writing consumed most of his waking hours, but he did find time to attend the London Session of the second Pan-African Congress in 1921. During the same year of the Congress, Scarborough was appointed to a position in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a position he would hold until his death.
Scarborough remained active in academic circles, becoming the third African American to join the American Philological Association and the first of his race to become a member of the Modern Language Association. Later the MLA named a book prize in his honor. Scarborough was also a member of the American Spelling Reform Association, a mason of the I.O., as well as working man in his church, where he addressed large crowds of onlookers. He was also a member in good-standing at several notable organizations and associations. In 1882, he received an LL.D from Liberia College.
In many respects, his ideas coincided with those of W.E.B Du Bois, and it earned him rounds of criticism from supporters of Booker T. Washington who took exception to their leader’s concepts about education and pursuing academic fields. From a profile on him in a book devoted to African American firsts, an article he wrote is cited where he vents his frustration: “We have too many dudes whose ideas do not rise above the possession of a new suit, a cane, a silk hat, patent leather shoes, a cigarette and a good time.”
By 1920, he resigned from teaching and entered the political arena, encouraging African Americans to join the Republican party. Two years after retiring, Scarborough died on September 9, 1926 in his home in Ohio. He was not only a forerunner in the classical realm, he was a model of advanced thinking among Black intellectuals.