Stories from 200.colgate.edu

Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the political and spiritual leader of the early civil rights movement — and complex figure — became the first person to represent Harlem in Washington, D.C.

Likely among the first African Americans to graduate from a U.S. college, Henry Livingston Simpson, Classes of 1853 (AB) and 1855 (theological degree), went on to lead a national African American Baptist missionary organization.

Student advocacy beginning in the 1960s led to many institutional changes, including the establishment of a cultural center. From humble but earnest beginnings in the 1970s eventually grew the Africana, Latin, Asian, and Native American (or, ALANA) Cultural Center.

The Myanmar native was a popular speaker and missionary who attended all three spurs of the early university campus: the grammar school, the undergraduate course, and the theological school.