“Herr Paul Huttrig are giving me german lessons. I
like him because he speak such broken English he
is all for America.” Harrison’s forthright assess-
ments of her fellow passengers foreshadow the de-
tailed and shrewd notes that she will make
throughout the diary.
The Macmillan Company published My Great
Wide, Beautiful World shortly after the Atlantic
Monthlyinstallments appeared. The autobiographi-
cal travel narrative, which Harrison completed in
conjunction with Mrs. Mildred Morris, is reminis-
cent of pre-Harlem Renaissance narratives includ-
ing Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures of Mrs.
Seacole in Many Lands(1857) and Nancy Prince’s
Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy
Prince(1850). Harrison was a contemporary of pio-
neering traveler and anthropologist ZORANEALE
HURSTON, as well as other Harlem Renaissance
era individuals such as LANGSTON HUGHES,
CLAUDE MCKAY,COUNTEE CULLEN, and
DOROTHY WEST, whose travels throughout the
Caribbean and Europe made a great impact on
their perspectives and literary sensibilities.
Bibliography
Harrison, Juanita. “My Great Wide Beautiful World,” At-
lantic Monthly(October 1935): 434–512; (Novem-
ber 1935): 601–612.
———. My Great, Wide Beautiful World.With preface by
Mildred Morris. New York: Macmillan, 1936.
Reprinted with introduction by Adele Logan
Alexander. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.
Harvard University
One of the premier educational institutions in the
world. Founded in 1636, the university in Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, admitted men only until the
late 1870s. The Harvard annex began admitting
female students in 1879. RADCLIFFECOLLEGE, the
Harvard school for women, received its charter in
- During its first 229 years, Harvard College
did not admit African Americans. The Medical
School, however, admitted three talented young
men of color in 1850. Unfortunately, white stu-
dents were stridently opposed to the presence of
Martin Delany, Daniel Laing, and Isaac Snowden.
Student protests prompted the Medical School to
expel the three men of color.
The first African-American student to enter
Harvard College was Richard T. Greener in 1865.
By the time that W. E. B. DUBOISentered Harvard
College with the class of 1890, the school still was
not providing residential quarters for its students of
color. DuBois, for instance, lived with a Cambridge
family during his tenure at the school.
The history of African Americans at Harvard
is most often linked to the graduation of W. E. B.
DuBois, who in 1896 became the first African
American to earn a Ph.D. DuBois transferred to
Harvard from FISKUNIVERSITYand completed two
years of study before earning his bachelor of arts in
1890 and a master of arts in 1891. After ground-
breaking studies in philosophy and study in Ger-
many, DuBois returned to Harvard and completed
the requirements for the Ph.D. He enjoyed an in-
fluential career as a scholar and university profes-
sor. He was the editor of THE CRISIS and a
founding member of the NATIONALASSOCIATION
FOR THEADVANCEMENT OFCOLOREDPEOPLE.
Contemporaries of DuBois included the
formidable intellectual and activist WILLIAM
MONROE TROTTER. The first student of color
elected to PHIBETAKAPPAat Harvard, Trotter
went on to graduate magna cum laudein 1895 and
earned a master’s degree one year later. He is best
known for his outspoken challenges to accommo-
dationism and Booker T. Washington. Trotter’s
newspaper, The Guardian,was a vital political pub-
lication and encouraged many Bostonians to take
up civil rights activism in the years leading up to
the Harlem Renaissance. ALAINLOCKEgraduated
in the class of 1908 after a stellar career at Har-
vard. In 1912 the Phi Beta Kappa scholar became
the first African American to win a RHODES
SCHOLARSHIP. Six years later, Locke, a graduate
student in philosophy, joined an elite Harvard
group when he became the third African-American
man to earn a Ph.D. there.
Women became part of the Cambridge intel-
lectual society at Harvard through their admit-
tance to Radcliffe College. Caroline Stewart, who
later became Caroline Bond Day, attended Rad-
cliffe from 1916 until her graduation with a bache-
lor’s degree in 1919. Day pursued a career in
higher education following her graduation. In
Texas she was dean of women at Paul Quinn Col-
lege, and English Department chair at Prairie View224 Harvard University