preview

The Famous Black Mathematician. Kelly Miller

Decent Essays
Open Document
Famous Black Mathematician
Kelly Miller, mathematician, intellectual, and political activist, who was born on July 23, 1863 in Winnsboro, South Carolina to Kelly and Elizabeth Miller. Miller attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned a B.A. in 1886. While at Howard he served as a clerk in the US Pensions Office. Miller became the first graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in 1887, where he studied mathematics and physics. Increases in his tuition made Miller leave Johns Hopkins in 1889 without completing his graduate work. He continued his studies as a student, an English mathematician at the US Naval Observatory and briefly taught mathematics at M Street High School in Washington before being hired by Howard…show more content…
Excluded from most white colleges, black Americans would have to secure higher education in their own institutions, Miller argued, and some of them, like Howard, Fisk, and Atlanta Universities, would emphasize liberal education and the professions rather than the trades and manual arts. Recognized as one of the most influential black educators in the nation because of his extensive writing and his leadership at Howard, Miller was sought out by both camps in the controversy but was trusted by neither because of his refusal to dogmatically support either of the rival systems. Miller 's reputation as a "philosopher of the race question" was based on his brilliant articles, published anonymously in Boston. With some alterations, these articles later became the lead essay in his book Race Adjustment (1908). Miller 's essays insisted on the right of black Americans to protest against the injustices that had multiplied with the rise of the white supremacy movement in the South, as the Du Bois "radicals" did, but he also advocated racial solidarity, thrift, and institution-building as emphasized by the followers of Washington. Miller had two reputations as a public policy analyst, first as a compromiser between black radicals and conservatives, and second as a race spokesman during the prolonged crisis of disfranchisement and the denial of civil rights by white supremacists and their elected representatives in Congress. Miller 's
Get Access
Related
Get Access