ifested an eagerness to learn and a
capacity to retain and utilize. He enjoyed better surroundings in
childhood than the average Colored child a generation ago; and always
accustomed to hear the English correctly spoken, he had in himself
all the required conditions to acquire a thorough education. Having
obtained a start in the common schools, he turned to Oberlin College,
Lorain County, Ohio,--at that time an institution toward which the
Colored people of the country were very partial, and whose
anti-slavery professors they loved with wonderful tenderness. For some
of these professors, in the _Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Case_, had
preferred imprisonment in preference to obedience to the unholy
fugitive-slave law. The years of 1862-3 were spent at Oberlin, and Mr.
Greener showed himself an excellent student. His ambition was to excel
in every thing. Not exactly satisfied with the course of studies at
Oberlin, he went to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. This
institution was a feeder for Harvard, and using uniform text-books he
was placed in line and harmony with the course of studies to be
pursued at Cambridge. He entered Harvard College in the autumn of
1865, and graduated with high honors in 1870.[127] He was the first of
his race to enter this famous university, and while there did himself
credit, and honored the race from which he sprang. All his
performances were creditable. He won a second prize for reading aloud
in his freshman year; in his sophomore year he won the first prize for
the Boylston Declamation, notwithstanding members of the junior and
senior classes contested. During his junior year he did not contest,
preferring to tutor two of the competitors who were successful. In his
senior year he won the two highest prizes, viz: the First Bowdoin for
a Dissertation on "The Tenures of Land in Ireland," and the "Boylston
Prize for Oratory."

The entrance, achievements, and graduation of Mr. Greener received the
thoughtful and grateful attention of the press of Europe and America;
while what he did was a stimulating example to the young men of his
race in the United States.

At the time of his graduation there was a great demand for and a
wide-spread need of educated Colored men as teachers. The Institute
for Colored Youth, in Philadelphia, had been but recently deprived of
its principal, Prof. E. D. Bassett, who had been sent as Resident
Minister and Consul-General to the Republic of Hayti. Mr. Greene