"Patrick Francis Healy"(February 27,1830-January 10,1910)

Was the first African American to earn a PhD,the first to become  Jesuit priest.and the first to become president of a major university in the United States.At the time,his ancestry was little known as he was of majority European ancestry.Patrick,as he was known,was born in Macon Georgia to Irish-American plantation owner Michael Healy,of the healy family of Georgia,and bi-racial slave Mary Eliza.His brothers James and Michael also achieved notable first for

African Americans during the second half of the 19th century.Patrick was the third son of Mary Eliza and Michael Morris Healy,who joined in common law marriage in 1829.After Patrick father Michael bought his mother Mary Eliza,he fell in love with her and made her his common-law wife.Due to discriminatory law in Georgia which prohibited the education of slaves and required legislative approval for manumission of slaves,Michael arranged for his children to leave Georgia and move to the north to obtain their education.Michael sent his older sons first to a Quaker school in Flushing,New York.Despite Quaker's emphasis on equality,Patrick met some discrimination throughout his grade school years,not only because of his race,but also his Irish heritage and the fact that his father owned slaves,which the Quakers considered unforgivable.When Michael Healy heard of a new Jesuit college,the college of the Holy Cross in Worcester,Massachusetts,he sent his oldest sons,including Patrick,to study there in 1844.They were joined at Holy Cross by their younger brother Michael in 1849.Following Patrick's graduation in 1850,he entered the Jesuit order and continued his studies.The order sent him to Europe to study in 1858,as his "race"had become an issue in the Unites States.He attended the University of Leuven Belgium,earing his doctorate,becoming the first American of openly acknowledged part-African descent to do so.During this period he was also ordained to priesthood on September 3,1864.In 1866 he returned to the United States and taught philosophy at GeorgetownUniversity in Washington D.C.  Eight years later in 1874,he became its twenty-ninth president.Patrick influence on George town was so far-reaching that he often referred to as the school's  "second founder,"following Archbishop John Carroll.Patrick helped transform the small nineteenth-century college into a major university for the twentieth century.he modernized the curriculum by requiring courses in the sciences,particulary chemistry and physics.He expanded and upgraded the schools of law and medicine.He also broke the color barrier in Catholic education by becoming one of the most renowned black Jesuit priest of his time.The most visible result of Patrick presidency was the construction of a large building begun in 1877 and first used in 1881,a building name in his honor  as Healy Hall. Patrick left the college in 1882 and travelled extensively through the United States and Europe,often in the company of his brother James.In 1908 he returned to the campus infirmary,where he died.He was,buried on the grounds of the university in the Jesuit cemetery.