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The Ivies are among the top school in the nation: prestigious, rich, pursued by the best and the brightest. They are also among the most expensive private school in the country, but offer full financial aid if you qualify but can’t afford the tuition.Keep in mind many graduate from these fine schools and go on to lead a life of mediocrity as some do not have the drive, luck or focus needed to succeed big time. So going to an Ivy league school is NOT a guarantee of success. By the same token one may not get into an ivy, but get a good education from another school and go on to be successful.The US has some 3,000 schools and colleges. if you look at just the top 10% (300 +/- schools), you will have lots to choose from to get a first rate education. Some are big public schools with tons of resources and research, some are outstanding small private schools that offer the same high quality education and prestige as the ivies. These schools can be found in any “Best Colleges” book, like those from Princeton, Yale, Fisk, Kaplan, etc. Then here are other schools that specialize in some fields that are not top 10%, but produce some very successful grads. I think every college, regardless of ranking, has some famous and or successful grads.There are many ways to measure success, but lets look at the most obvious: top CEOs making the most….Check this site out: 15 College and University Alma Maters of Top-Paid American CEOs Here is s summary of this site:15 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY ALMA MATERS OF TOP-PAID AMERICAN CEOS“Here is a list of 15 universities and colleges that serve as alma maters to 18 of the highest-paid American CEOs.-Lists current/ recent CEOs of American companies who completed their bachelor’s degree at an American institution of higher education.-CEO candidates listed here appeared in the top 20 of one of the “top CEOs/ execs” lists, including AFL-CIO, Equilar/ NY Times, and http://FindTheCompany.com- Schools are listed in reverse order based on the 2013 compensation of a top-paid CEO who graduated from a bachelor’s program there, starting. A school’s ranking is based on the ranking of the highest paid CEO(s) that received a bachelor’s degree there. As there were three schools in this list that had two top-18 CEOs as alumni, there are 15 schools representing 18 CEOs.15. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA“The University of Southern California (aka USC), located in Los Angeles, CA, was founded in 1880. It is a private non-profit research institution – the oldest in California. Aside from non-academic achievements, the school has earned nearly 290 Olympic medals as of 2012.“USC has many famous alumni from several walks of life, and most especially arts and entertainment (George Lucas, John Wayne, Will Ferrell, Neil Armstrong, Judd Apatow). It is also the alma mater of well-known businessmen, including Marc Benioff Russell, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Salesforce.com: The Customer Success Platform To Grow Your Business Inc, headquartered in San Francisco, CA. He received a BS in Business Administration from USC. He ranked #18 in our list, gaining about $31.33M in total compensation.“Benioff has been Chairman of Salesforce.com: The Customer Success Platform To Grow Your Business since co-founded the company in Feb 1999. His role as CEO started in Nov 2001. Prior to this, he was at Oracle. Currently, he serves on the Board for Cisco Systems and is a trustee at his alma mater, USC.14. BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, SUNY“Binghamton University, SUNY (aka SUNY-BU or BU), located in Vestal, New York, was founded in 1946 is a public institution. BU, which started as the liberal arts-focused, bachelor-level Harpur College, now offers bachelor-, master- and doctoral-level programs. The Greenes’ Guide considers BU to be a “Public Ivy” institution and it is ranked by USA Today as a top-10 best-value college for 2014, as well as being designated as a “high research activity” university.“SUNY-BU is the alma mater of David M. Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery Communications Class Inc., which is headquartered in Silver Spring, MD. Zaslav completed a BS degree at SUNY-BU, as well as a JD (Juris Doctor) in 1985 at Boston University‘s School of Law. He made #15 on our list, pulling in about $33.35M in total compensation.“Zaslav has served as CEO and President of Discovery Channel since Sept 2008, and served in executive positions at other media and entertainment companies including NBC Universal Inc. He is a board member of Univision Communications and Sirius XM Radio Inc. (whose predecessor company Sirius Satellite Radio was founded by Martine Rothblatt, and who ranked #11 in our list of top-paid American CEOs.)13. ITHACA COLLEGE“Ithaca College, located in Ithaca, NY, was founded in 1892, originally as a music conservatory. It is a private college with a long-standing top-10 ranking as a master’s institution (US News) and general top college (Princeton Review). While in the shadow of its Ivy league neighbor Cornell, it is stands on its own laurels.“Ithaca is the alma mater of numerous celebrities and power-brokers, including Robert A. Iger, CEO and Chairman of Walt Disney Co, headquartered in Burbank, CA. He earned a BS in 1973 from Ithaca’s Roy H. Park School of Communication — a school highly ranked for media and film as well as journalism. Iger ranked #14 in our list, pulling in about $34.32M in total compensation.“Iger has been CEO and President of Walt Disney since Mar 2012, and before that held the same titles at Walt Disney International (2000-2005), and ABC Group (1999-2000). At the international parent, Iger took over as CEO from Michael Eisner. Iger serves as a board member at other organizations, and has been a trustee for his alma mater as well as for American Film Institute.12. CORNELL UNIVERSITY“Cornell University, located in Ithaca, NY, was founded in 1865. It’s a private institution with an Ivy League designation. It is one of only a small handful of private universities that have a land grant (MIT is another).“Cornell is the alma mater of Leonard S. Schleifer, CEO, Director and President of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which is headquartered in Tarrytown, NY. He completed a BS from Cornell and later an MD and PHD in Pharmacology from University of Virginia, where he studied under Alfred Gilman (later a Nobel Laureate). He later trained as a neurologist at Cornell’s New York Hospital. (Cornell has a medical campus in NYC.) He spent 1984-1988 as an Assistant Professor at Cornell. Schleifer ranked #13 on our list, earning about $36.27M in total compensation, which contributed to his becoming a billionaire in early 2014, after 25 years with Regeneron.“Schleifer is a co-founder of Regeneron and has held his roles since 1988. He held the position of Chairman of the Board from 1990-94. His wife, Harriet, also has multiple degrees (two in education, and a law degree). Before Regeneron changed their strategy, they produced drugs to treat ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) and obesity – both of which were unsuccessful. More recently, they have been successful with a cholesterol drug and one to control blood vessel problems in the eye.11. YALE UNIVERSITY“Yale University, located in New Haven, CT – roughly 80 miles NE of New York City. It was founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, and renamed in Yale College in 1718. It became Yale University (private, Ivy League) in 1887 but awarded the first American in 1861. It’s the third-oldest higher ed institution in the U.S. and has one of the largest academic libraries.“Yale has numerous notable alumni, including presidents (Clinton, Bush Sr and Jr, Gerald Ford, Taft) and many billionaire alumni, members of congress, heads of state and more. It is also the alma mater of both Phillipe P. Dauman, CEO and President of Viacom Inc., and Jeffrey L. Bewkes, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Time Warner Inc., both of which are headquartered in NYC, NY. Dauman received a bachelor’s degree from Yale, and a JD (law) degree in 1978 from Columbia University’s Columbia Law School. He placed #12 on our list, pulling in about $37.18M in total compensation. Bewkes received a BA from Yale in 1974, as well as an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He placed #16, garnering about $32.5M in total compensation.“Dauman was Director of CBS (2005-2006), which was at one point owned by Viacom, after Sumner Redstone (Executive Chairman) launched a hostile takeover of Viacom. The current (post-2005) Viacom was spun off from CBS Corporation. Predecessor companies are the original Viacom, which became CBS Corporation, which then spun off the current Viacom, Gulf+Western (now Paramount Communications, Inc.), and Westinghouse Electric. To get even more confusing, the original Viacom started as CBS Films, Inc., which was a division of CBS the TV network. Dauman has been CEO and President of Viacom Inc. since Sep 2006 and held other CEO and executive positions in other companies, including DND Capital Partners LLC. He co-launched the Get Schooled initiative with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2009, which raises awareness of the public education crisis in the U.S.10. UCLA“University of California, Los Angeles (aka UCLA), located in Los Angeles, CA, was founded in 1919, with origins dating back to 1882 (as the State Normal School). It is a public research institution and third in the UC system, and one of two flagship campuses along with UC Berkeley.“UCLA is the alma mater of Martine A. Rothblatt, who is Chairman and CEO of United Therapeutics Corp, headquartered in Silver Spring, MD. Rothblatt earned a BA and combined law (JD) and MBA degrees from UCLA, then a PhD from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. She ranked #11 in our list, earning about $38.22M from her roles in United.“Rothblatt is considered the highest paid female/transgender executive in the U.S., but was actually born a man (Martin Rothblatt), undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 1994. She founded or co-founded several companies, including GeoStar and Sirius Radio. The latter she sold to fund United Therapeutics Corp, which she founded in order to find a cure for her ailing daughter. She also founded a religion, the Terasem Movement, which in a nutshell, is an amalgamation of Judaism, yoga and technology.9. CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE“Claremont McKenna College (CMC), located in Claremont, CA, was founded in 1946 as the Claremont Men’s College. It is a private coed liberal arts college that U.S. News and World Report has ranked highly. It is also ranked #2 for happiest students by Princeton Review.“CMC, which is part of Claremont Colleges, is the alma mater of both Henry Kravis and George R. Roberts. Roberts received a BA Economics from Claremont in 1966 and a JD (Juris Doctor) from University of California Hastings College of Law in 1969. Kravis received a BA in 1967 from Claremont and an MBA from Columbia University Business School.“Kravis and Roberts are two of three founding members of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts(KKR) and are both Co-CEO and Co-Chairman. Kravis is #9 on our list, taking home about $44.2M in total compensation, followed by Roberts at #10, who earned $44.1M.KKR – also co-founded byJerome Kohlberg, Jr. – is a financial services, investment banking, and private equity firm with a history of buyouts. One of their big leveraged buyouts was of RJR Nabisco — which was written about in the book “Barbarians at the Gate,” which was also a television movie.8. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA / WHARTON SCHOOL“The University of Pennsylvania (aka UPenn), located in Philadelphia, PA, was founded in 1740. Ben Franklin, a statue of who is displayed on campus, is considered to be the founder of UPenn. UPenn is one of the nine “Colonial Colleges” created before the United States of America was formed. It is also a founding member institution of the Association of American Universities. UPenn has been the home to the first American school of medicine and first college-level business school.“UPenn is the alma mater of both Jeffrey Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn Corp(headquartered in Mountain View, CA), and Brian L. Roberts, CEO, President and Chairman of the Board of Comcast Corp (headquartered in Philadelphia, PA). Weiner received a BS in Economics at UPenn’s Wharton School in 1992 and placed #8 on our list, with a total compensation package of about $49.07M. Roberts received a BS from Wharton and placed #17 on our list, with his compensation running about $31.37M.“Weiner has held the position of LinkedIn CEO since Jun 2009 and the Director position since Jul 2009, and previously was an interim President. He is also a Director of Intuit and has held executive positions in other companies including Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Yahoo!“Roberts has been Comcast CEO since Nov 2002, the position of President since Feb 1990, and the position of Chairman since May 2004. He holds a Director position at National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA). Roberts’ father, Ralph J. Roberts, co-founded Comcast.[Billionaire Donald Trump is also a graduate but is counted only partially as he spent 50% of his college time at Fordham University].7. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA“The University of Minnesota (aka U of M), located in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN, was founded in 1851 and is the oldest campus of the U of M system — and has one of the largest student populations in the U.S. It is a public research university with several campuses besides the Twin Cities.“U of M is the alma mater of John H. Hammergren, CEO of McKesson Corp, headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Hammergren earned a BBA in 1981 from U of M, and an MBA in 1987 from Xavier University‘s Williams College of Business. He ranked #7 on our list with a total compensation package of about $51.74M.“Hammergren was the the highest paid U.S. CEO in 2011, accordion to The Guardian in Dec of that year – with a total of over $145M pay and mostly stock options. Hammergren has held the position of CEO of McKesson since Apr 2001, and was a Director of Hewlett-Packard from 2005-2013.6. MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY“Mississippi State University (aka MSU), located in Starkville, MS, was founded in 1878. It is a public institution with a”very high research activity” designation, especially for doctoral research, and has a strong focus on agriculture and applied science, and a number of campuses throughout the state.“Drexel has the Richard C. Adkerson School of Accountancy, named after the CEO, Director, President, and Vice Chairman of the Board at Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold (headquartered in Phoenix, AZ). MSU is Adkerson’s alma mater, where he earned a Bachelor’s in Accounting (and an honorary doctorate), and later completed a management program at Harvard University. Adkerson ranked #6 on our list, taking in about $55.26M in total compensation. Adkerson has been CEO of Freeport-McMoRan since Dec 2003 and held executive roles in previous incarnations of the company as well as at other companies.5. DREXEL UNIVERSITY“Drexel University, located in Philadelphia, PA, was founded in 1891, originally as the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry by philanthropist financier Anthony Drexel. It is a top-ranking private research university with a co-op program that gives participating students more than a year of work experience.“Drexel is the alma mater of Walter Nicholas Howley, CEO Director and Chairman of the Board of Transdigm Group Inc., headquartered in Cleveland, OH. Howley completed a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1975 at Drexel, and an MBA in 1979 from Harvard University. Howley ranked #5 in our list, pulling in about $64.21M in total compensation.“Howley founded Transdigm, which is in the aerospace industry. He has had the role of either or both of President or CEO of Transdigm since it was founded in Dec 1998. He has had executive roles in other companies, and was a trustee of Case-Western Reserve University.“Drexel has the Richard C. Adkerson School of Accountancy, named after the CEO, Director, President, and Vice Chairman of the Board at Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold (headquartered in Phoenix, AZ). MSU is Adkerson’s alma mater, where he earned a Bachelor’s in Accounting (and an honorary doctorate), and later completed a management program at Harvard University. Adkerson ranked #6 on our list, taking in about $55.26M in total compensation. Adkerson has been CEO of Freeport-McMoRan since Dec 2003 and held executive roles in previous incarnations of the company as well as at other companies.4. BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY“Bucknell University, located in Lewisburg, PA, was founded in 1846 as University at Lewisburg. It is a private institution with Baptist origins and a focus on liberal arts – which includes schools /colleges in Arts and Sciences, Management and Engineering. Undergrad student population is about 3,600, and student-teacher ratio is very low at a 9:1 ratio.“Bucknell is the alma mater of Leslie “Les” Moonves, CEO and President of CBS Corp, which is headquartered in NYC, NY. Moonves, a former actor and once president of Warner Bros. Television, received a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell. He ranked #4 on our list, pulling in about $65.59M in total compensation.“Moonves switched his study major from pre-med to Spanish and found an interest in acting after graduation. He is highly regarded as a content programmer of network television, and during his time at CBS he has catered to mobile device content consumers with short video clips. He has held his roles of President and CEO of CBS Corp since Jan 2006. CBS has gone through various ownerships, including Westinghouse Electric and the original Viacom3. UC DAVIS“The University of California, Davis (aka UC Davis, UCD), located in Davis, CA (near Sacramento), was founded in 1905 as University Farm and underwent a number of name changes before becoming part of the UC system. US News places it in the top 10 public universities in their 2015 list, and amongst the best in the UC system. It is a member of the Association of American Universities, and is designated as a “very-high research activity” institution under the Carnegie Classification system, as well as a “Public Ivy” school.“UC Davis is the alma mater of Jay N. Levine, CEO and President of Springleaf Financial, headquartered in Evansville, IN. Levine completed a BA in Economics at Davis. (UC Davis’ Economics department has a top-10 ranking.) He placed #3 in our list, pulling in about $78.7M in total compensation.“Levine took up the position of CEO (and President and Director) in Oct 2011. Previously, he held similar positions at Capmark Financial Group Inc., Royal Bank of Scotland Global Banking and Markets and RBS Greenwich Capital — all of which are in the financial services industry.2. FORDHAM U“Fordham University, located in New York City, NY, was founded in 1841 originally as St. John’s College by New York’s Catholic Archdiocese. It is a private research university with a Jesuit tradition, and has both grad and postgrad colleges. Bachelor’s programs include BA, BS and BFA (Fine Arts) degrees. Grad programs include masters and doctoral degrees.“Fordham is the alma mater of Mario Joseph Gabelli, CEO, Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of GAMCO Investors Inc. (formerly GAMCO), which is headquartered in Rye, NY. Gabelli received a BA from Fordham. Gabelli placed #2 on our list with total compensation of about $85.05M. However, all of that amount comes from “other compensation,” none from salary, bonuses, stock, options, pension or non-equity incentives. Gabelli, who founded GAMCO (Gabelli Asset Management Company), has been a billionaire since about 2011. He has donated to numerous universities/ business schools. Bill Gates owns 1.3% of GAMCO via Cascade, LLC, his investment company.[Fordham has produced other billionaires. Billionaire Donald Trump also attended but is counted only partially as he spent 50% of his college time at Fordham University while graduating from The University of Pennsylvania].1. COLGATE UNIVERSITY“Colgate University, located in Hamilton Village, Hamilton, New York, was founded in 1819 by the Baptist Education Society. It is a private liberal arts college with several dozen undergrad programs that lead to a Bachelor of Arts degree.“Colgate is the alma mater of Charif Souki, who is Chairman, President and CEO, and Director of Cheniere Energy Inc, headquartered in Houston, TX. Souki also completed an MBA at Columbia University. For his many roles at Cheniere Energy, Souki took home nearly $142M ($141.95M) in compensation, making it to the top of our list of highest-paid American CEOs. Souki gained his CEO position in Dec 2002, and has been President on and off since then. He has several decades of investment banking experience in the oil and gas industry, with a focus on financing small-cap companies in that industry.”Notice something? There are only 3 Ivy League schools listed here (Yale, Cornell and UPenn). Other listings may have different criteria and have more schools, but this short list of the top 15 CEOs only has 3 Ivy schools!Now, notice schools that you may not have heard of or would never imagine to produce millionaire CEOs: Mississippi State, Ithaca College, Minnesota, Drexel, SUNY -Binghamton, Claremont-McKenna. Then there are some fine private schools you might be surprised to see; Colgate, Bucknell and Fordham. Note these three are in the Patriot League, a smaller, poorer version of the Ivy league that you might not be aware of.So you are not doomed: don’t assume only the Ivies can lead to success in life. Most any school can give you a fine education; it is up to you what you do with it in life.Go on line to find the requirements of the ivy schools you want and see if you meet them.

1. Rayford W. Logan (1897-1982)Born a year after Plessy v. Ferguson’s infamous “separate but equal” decree, Rayford Whittingham Logan was steeled as a child by stories about his free black lineage before the Civil War. His father toiled as a butler in the home of a prominent white family in Washington, D.C., that took an interest in Rayford’s education. After graduating first in his class from Dunbar High School in 1913, Logan attended Williams College in Massachusetts, where, four years later, he emerged a member of Phi Beta Kappa, ready to defend his country in the Great War. A member of the U.S. Army’s all-black 372nd Infantry Regiment, Logan took part in the battles of the Argonne in France in 1918 and was promoted from private to lieutenant.After the war, he stayed in France for five years, lending key support to W.E.B. Du Bois’ fledgling Pan-African Congress. He developed especially close ties to the diplomatic corps of Haiti, the new world’s first independent black republic. Returning to the United States in 1924, Logan soon took up teaching duties at Virginia Union and Atlanta universities while assisting Carter G. Woodson in building the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History into a thriving research institution.Somehow, Logan also found time to earn a master’s degree in history from Williams in 1929 and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1936 (incidentally, the university’s tercentenary). His Harvard dissertation, published as a book in 1941, was titled The Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Haiti, 1776-1891. It was groundbreaking, as Kenneth Janken writes in the African American National Biography: “In the 1920s and 1930s [Logan’s] scholarship on Haiti and colonial Africa earned him national recognition not only in the black diaspora—he was awarded Haiti’s Order of Honor and Merit in 1941 for his scholarship and advocacy—but also from influential, predominantly white organizations such as the Foreign Policy Association.”After Harvard, Logan embarked on a distinguished teaching career at Howard University, serving as chairman of the history department from 1942 to 1968—a period that to many marks the long arc of the civil rights movement’s heroic phase. In this era of thunderous change, Logan was the quintessential scholar-activist, helping to launch voter registration drives and citizenship schools—activities that would later serve as a blueprint for Freedom Summer.Logan played an especially critical role in the early years of World War II. Outside the halls of power, he organized mass protests against barring black soldiers from the Armed Forces, while inside, he lobbied and assisted President Franklin D. Roosevelt in drafting an order forbidding the exclusion.In 1941, Logan was at it again, collaborating with black labor leader A. Philip Randolph on what would have been the first March on Washington had FDR not issued Executive Order 8802, which opened defense jobs to white and black citizens. After the war, Logan broadened his activism still further, again in partnership with Du Bois, to bend the emerging United Nations “toward justice and decolonization in Africa,” as Janken explains.In the meantime, Logan devoted himself to editing the indispensible Dictionary of American Negro Biography (with Michael Winston) and was the author of such seminal studies as 1945’s The Negro and the Post-War World, 1948’s The African Mandates and World Politics and 1954’s The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901.Renowned African-American historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, my friend and colleague at Harvard, wrote to me of her former Howard professor, “[H]istory reveals Logan to be a prominent figure—an extremely influential historian in the Roosevelt era of the 1940s, from both a scholarly and political perspective (in the latter regard, not only for his work on Fair Employment but for his anticolonial writings on international trusteeship).” Logan died in Washington in 1981.2. Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995)It would be impossible to write about black history without mentioning the valiant efforts of that history’s most determined bibliographer, Dorothy Porter Wesley. The “Indiana Jones” of African Americana, Porter Wesley searched high and low, near and far, to secure lost books, manuscripts, letters, newspapers, speeches and reports. In the process, she became a priceless resource to scholars like me.Born Dorothy Burnett in Warrenton, Va., she graduated from New Jersey’s Montclair High School in 1923 and collected teaching credentials from the Palmer Method of Business Writing and the Myrtilla Miner Normal School in Washington, D.C.In 1930, she married the artist and Howard faculty member James Amos Porter. They had one daughter, Constance Porter Uzelac. While working in the library at Miner Teachers College in D.C. Porter Wesley was inspired by a role model, librarian Lula Allan, to switch career tracks, according to Uzelac in the African American National Biography. In 1931, a year after earning an A.B. at Howard, Porter Wesley became the first black woman to graduate with a B.S. from the Columbia University School of Library Service. There, with a Julius Rosenwald Fund scholarship, she also earned a master’s degree, in 1932.Uzelac writes:“Porter Wesley devoted her life to the acquisition and collection of materials relating to the African and African American diaspora. She joined the library staff at Howard University in 1928, and in 1930 she [was] appointed to administer and organize a Library of Negro Life and History from a small collection of three thousand titles presented to Howard University in 1914 by Jesse Moorland. The doors opened in 1933 as the Moorland Foundation, and the collection grew to nearly 200,000 items by her [Porter Wesley’s] retirement in 1973, when it became known as the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.”It would take up this entire column to name all of the scholars Porter Wesley guided through her library, but among them was “the herald of the Harlem Renaissance,” Alain Locke. John Henrik Clarke, a professor at Hunter College in New York, said of Porter Wesley: She was “in her prime Queen Mother of African-American bibliophiles and collectors.”Among Porter Wesley’s seminal scholarly works were her 1936 bibliography, “A Selected List of Books by and About the Negro” (issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce); 1945’s “Early American Negro Writings: A Bibliographical Study” and “North American Negro Poets”; 1970’s “Early Negro Writing, 1760 to 1837”; 1970’s “The Negro in the United States: A Bibliography”; 1978’s “Afro-Braziliana: A Working Bibliography”; 1986’s Remonds of Salem, Massachusetts: A Nineteenth Century Family Revisited; and, posthumously, with Uzelac, William Cooper Nell, Nineteenth-Century African American Abolitionist, Historian, Integrationist; Selected Writings From 1832–1874.In addition, Porter Wesley served as a representative of the National Council of Negro Women and on the executive council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and she was on the editorial board of the Black Abolitionists Papers and Beacon Press. In the early 1960s, as part of the African independence movement, she was asked by the Ford Foundation to help establish Nigeria’s national library collection.In 1994, President Bill Clinton bestowed on Porter Wesley the National Endowment for the Humanities Charles Frankel Prize, hailing her as “a preeminent archivist of African Americana.” She died the following year.3. Charles H. Wesley (1891-1987)Dorothy Porter Wesley’s second husband, Charles H. Wesley, was an outstanding historian in his own right. A native of Louisville, Ky., by age 14 Wesley had completed college prep courses at Fisk University, where he sang with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and studied classics before graduating with honors in 1911. Wesley then traveled to Yale University on a graduate fellowship and worked his way toward a master’s degree in history and economics two years later (again with honors)—all while waiting tables. After teaching and attending a year of law school at Howard, Wesley studied French in Europe, then returned to Washington, D.C., to serve as a minister and presiding elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.Wesley took a sabbatical from Howard to pursue his Ph.D. at Harvard, and two years after graduating in 1925 (Harvard’s third black Ph.D. in history behind Du Bois and Woodson), his sensational dissertation, “Negro Labor in the United States,” was published to rave reviews for soundly rejecting the then-dominant assumption that blacks were lazy and incapable of skilled work. (This reminds me of my good friend Stanley Crouch’s famous line in the Jack Johnson documentary Unforgivable Blackness, “For people who have been slaves for 150 years doing all the work to be called lazy and shiftless by the man who was sitting on the porch—that is a phenomenon in itself.”)Summarizing Wesley’s thesis in the African American National Biography, Robert L. Harris writes, “Wesley concluded that labor inequality during the early twentieth century resulted more from racial prejudice and discrimination against black workers than from any innate ability among whites.” Carter G. Woodson hailed Wesley’s triumph in the American Historical Review as “the only scientific treatment of Negro labor in the United States.”In all, Wesley wrote 12 books—among them 1937’s The Collapse of the Confederacy and, when he was 92, The History of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs: A Legacy of Service—as well as a forest of articles. His interests were wide ranging, from black fraternal organizations to Southern history and the history of slavery in the British Empire and in the United States. Among Welsey’s many achievements, in 1930 he became the first African American to win a Guggenheim Fellowship.A teacher and an administrator, Wesley was promoted to full professor at Howard en route to becoming chairman of the history department and dean both of the College of Liberal Arts and the graduate school. He later served as president of Wilberforce and Central State universities. As important as his decades of service were to the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, where he succeeded Woodson as executive director in 1950, Wesley was especially concerned with how history was being taught in the nation’s public schools, which, in a democracy, are laboratories for citizenship.He died in 1987, widely regarded, Harris writes, as “the dean of black historians.” Today, Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, which I’m proud to direct, awards the annual Charles Harris and Dorothy Porter Wesley Scholarship in honor of this dynamic duo.4. John Hope Franklin (1915-2009)No star in the constellation of all-time American historians burns brighter than John Hope Franklin’s, whose landmark 1947 book, From Slavery to Freedom, my Yale undergraduate black history course textbook, remains a fixture on my nightstand. The first comprehensive and popular history of the black experience in America, it was significantly updated and revised by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, herself the first African American to receive tenure from the history department at Harvard, in 2008.Franklin, too, like Du Bois, Woodson and Charles Wesley, had Harvard ties. He earned his Ph.D. in history there in 1941, and in 1969 the university offered him the first chairmanship of its nascent Afro-American studies department—although it refused to offer him a joint appointment in the history department, the same department in which he was trained. For Franklin, this was a deep professional insult, as it contradicted the central point of his scholarship: that African-American history was not to be ghettoized as a separate field of study but rather must be integrated into the study of history as a whole. The fact that Franklin was later awarded an honorary degree from Harvard and invited to speak “on behalf of the history profession” at the inauguration of the school’s first woman president, Drew Gilpin Faust, left little doubt about who had been right.Born in 1915 in Rentiesville, Okla., not long before the notorious Tulsa race riot, John Hope Franklin graduated as valedictorian of his high school and magna cum laude from Fisk University in 1935. After his graduate studies at Harvard, he taught at several historically black colleges and universities, including Fisk, St. Augustine’s College, North Carolina College and Howard.From Slavery to Freedom remains Franklin’s most influential book. Of the 20 volumes he wrote or edited, two others were particularly path breaking: The Militant South, 1800-1860 (1956) and Reconstruction After the Civil War (1961). He also wrote the definitive biography of an earlier black historian, George Washington Williams (1985) and, as a mark of his dedication to a truth that could be seen, arranged for a long overdue headstone for his subject in England.“John Hope Franklin is a true role model,” the late Maya Angelou observed. “He embodies the native optimism, i.e., that one can go from slavery to freedom, from ignorance to intelligence, can experience cruelty, yet manifest kindness.”In addition to his scholarship, Franklin was an adviser on the Brown v. Board decision of 1954 and marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery. He chaired the history departments at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago, was the first African-American leader of numerous professional organization and, in 1982, was appointed the James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke University, home today to the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies. Before his death in 2009, Franklin received the Presidential Medal of Freedom; he even had a species of orchid named after him.No one practiced history as a profession better than John Hope Franklin did, and I still can be brought to tears when I think of all he did for me personally, including recommending me for the first group of MacArthur Fellows. As I said on his passing, “[W]e are all his godchildren.”5. John W. Blassingame Sr. (1940-2000)Few have had a more direct influence on my own work than my late friend and Yale colleague John W. Blassingame Sr., a scholar’s scholar and a master of the archives. Blassingame, more than any other historian, recast our enslaved ancestors both as central figures and as acting, thoughtful subjects in America’s freedom epic.It’s hard to believe, but before Blassingame published his great work of scholarship, most historians were reluctant to use the testimony of the slave in their analyses of the institution of slavery, as if the slaves were somehow too biased to be “objective.” Blassingame turned to the authors of slave narratives to see what they had to say about how slavery functioned. But to do so, he had to establish them as reliable first-person narrators of this strange saga of American slavery, eyewitnesses from the inside of the “peculiar institution.”Now, thanks to “Blass,” as we called him back at Yale, the slave narratives, and the slave’s point of view, are firmly fixed in the American historiographical canon. We should not underestimate the importance of Blassingame’s contribution to slave historiography.Born and raised on the black side of the Jim Crow line in Covington and Social Circle, Ga., Blassingame earned a bachelor’s degree from Fort Valley College in 1960 and a master’s degree from Howard in 1961, where he worked under the direction of Rayford W. Logan. Blassingame was one of the breakthrough generation that, because of affirmative action, integrated the nation’s historically white colleges and universities in the latter half of the ’60s. He earned a Ph.D. in history from Yale in 1971 and taught at Carnegie-Mellon and Maryland before returning to Yale, where he eventually chaired the African-American studies program.“His impeccable training and credentials made him a stickler for the historical profession’s traditions, which emphasized the importance of primary sources,” writes Charles H. Ford in the African American National Biography. “[H]e was determined to use what had been considered the methods of conventional history to expose and reject the destructive myths of inherent white supremacy and its obverse, natural black dependency.”In the 1970s, Blassingame churned out article after book after edited volume, including New Perspectives on Black Studies (1971), Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (1973) and his earth-shattering magnum opus, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1972), which, Ford recounts, “was the first widely regarded historical monograph to use black autobiographies, songs, and folklore to expose vibrant African-inspired cultures that had shaped the making of mainstream American society and ideas. To Blassingame, slavery not only built America from a purely economic standpoint, but the slaves themselves from a wide variety of West African cultures influenced the most intimate and personal routines of their masters.”Blassingame sacrificed his deepest reserves of energy to authenticating the primary documents of African-American history, as illustrated in his 1977 volume Slave Testimony; the six volumes of Frederick Douglass’s papers he edited over two decades, from 1979 and 1999; and 1982’s Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (with fellow historian Mary Frances Berry). And no historian, in his exalted position in the field, was more generous with his students—to which I personally can attest. Even though Blassingame died at the tragically young age of 59, he lives on in our teaching and work. I wouldn’t be doing what I do for a living without John Blassingame’s support and inspiration or that of the professor of the first Afro-American history survey course I took in my sophomore year at Yale back in 1969—the Pulitzer-winning historian, William S. McFeely.In the landscape of memories I carry with me from those soaring days in New Haven, these two scholars are forever front and center.Thank YouThis list is certainly not exhaustive, and I am sure other scholars would have their own candidates. My own short list includes only African-American historians who are deceased, who were academically trained and whose work focused primarily on the black experience. If I had more space in this column, my own list would expand to include some younger scholars, such as my dear friend Manning Marable.But I would be remiss not to mention, even if just briefly, another Harvard professor who was certainly one of the pioneering black historians of his generation. Nathan Irvin Huggins (1927-1989), the first permanent director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research (as it was called then) and my predecessor in the position I now occupy, earned his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1962 in history (as did Du Bois, Woodson, Wesley, Logan and Franklin) with a thesis on Boston charities. But Huggins’ most important contribution to black history was his intellectual history titled Harlem Renaissance, published in 1971, a must read for anyone studying that remarkable cultural movement of the 1920s. I have not written more about Huggins’ work here because I want to return to it when I launch my new column for The Root on “firsts” in the black tradition. Remember, this is the 99th column out of 100 in this series, so stay tuned for that!Carter G. Woodson once said, “If you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have [a history, a record], the world will say to you, ‘You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else.’ They will say to you, ‘Who are you, anyway?’ ”The five pioneering African-American historians outlined above, in addition to W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, George Washington Williams and, of course, Joel A. Rogers, answered that question resoundingly. Our people’s debt to them is profound, for “making a way out of no way.”As always, you can find more "Amazing Facts About the Negro" on The Root, and check back each week as we count to 100.