Never officially recognized during her lifetime, the first African American woman to graduate from the university will be posthumously honored this spring
Journalism may be the first draft of history, but journalism can spawn the best draft of history. History overlooked Lucile Berkeley Buchanan, the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado, but journalism has brought her back into view.
Tipped off by a newspaper story, Polly McLean, a Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder associate professor of Media Studies, spent more than a decade exhuming Buchanan’s story and, finally, correcting history. For decades, the university’s official history erroneously stated that the first black woman to graduate from Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØearned her degree in 1924.
In fact, however, the first black woman to graduate from Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØdid so in 1918.
Now, a century after Buchanan’s alma mater barred her from walking across the Macky Auditorium stage to accept her degree, Buchanan is being more fully recognized.Ìý
The first African American woman to graduate will be honored because of McLean, the first black woman to earn tenure at Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder and the first black woman to head an academic unit.