Portraits of the First Three African American Graduates of Washington College

Thomas Edgar Morris, Class of 1962
Patricia Godbolt, Class of 1964
Shirley Dale Patterson, Class of 1965

Canvases: Soft pastel, charcoal & charcoal pencil on raw canvas under clear leveling gel
Frames: Cherry wood with composite gold leaf
2019

Washington College was founded in 1782 just after the American Revolution, making it the first college founded in the United States. Naturally, as the college was established within a slave society, it was strictly white only. For nearly a century after the end of the Civil War, the college did not allow any African American students to enroll. These images represent the first three African American graduates from the college.

That first African American student to enroll was Thomas E. Morris in 1959. Morris would go on to graduate in 1962, 180 years after America’s first college was founded and only 58 years ago today.

Morris was born in Ditchley, Virginia and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to becoming a pioneer in the class of 1962, Morris was educated at Douglass High School. On campus, Morris was a scholar, an all-round athlete, and a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. After graduation, Morris would go on to volunteer for the Peace Corps in the Philippines, complete graduate work at Morgan State University, and fulfill a 25-year mathematics teaching career in the Baltimore public school system.

Following Morris, Patricia Godbolt White was the first African American woman to enroll at Washington College. Just before her arrival to Chestertown, White was one of the Norfolk 17, the first African American students to enroll in the Norfolk, Virginia public school system in the wake of 1958 Virginian resistance to integration. As a 1960 honors graduate of Norview High School, she was the first African American to graduate from a desegregated Virginia school system. In 1964, White became the first African American woman to graduate from Washington College with a bachelor of science degree in biology. White then returned to Norfolk to earn a masters degree in urban studies education. Throughout the course of her 42-year career in Norfolk Public Schools, White rose to chair of the science department at Booker T. Washington High School. White also authored a book of inspirational poetry entitled Evolution of Espirit’d P.G..

Following White, Shirley Dale Patterson Adams was the second African American woman to enroll at Washington College. Born and raised in Baltimore, Adams was the daughter of an educator and a homemaker. After graduating from Western High School in 1961, she became a member of the class of ’65 earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. On campus, Adams served as president of the Washington College Society of Sciences and co-won the Clark-Porter Medal for integrity and for improving campus life. Two years after leaving Chestertown, Adams earned a master's degree in organic chemistry from the University of Delaware. Adams then followed in the footsteps of her Washington College predecessors and become an educator. She taught chemistry at what is now the Community College of Baltimore County at Essex and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County before launching a lifelong career as a distinguished chemist that would eventually land her in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Adams was the first African American member of the Board of Visitors and Governors of Washington College, upon which she served from 1985 to 2010.

Highlighting the history of the college’s far too recent first African American graduates is meant to help us better understand the issues Black students at Washington College deal with today. We should have a clear understanding of why it took 180 years for the college to graduate a Black student. We should think about why, almost 60 years later, Black students at Washington College are still a small minority among the student body and still face discrimination on and off campus.