Kelly Miller
On this date, we mark the birth of Kelly Miller in 1863. He was a Black historian and educator.
He was born in Winnsboro, S.C., to a mother who was a slave and his father a Confederate soldier. Miller believed that the most authentic way to freedom from bondage was education. He worked through school, graduating from Howard University in 1886 and continuing to study mathematics and physics at Johns Hopkins University.
There he earned an M. A. in 1901 and an LL.D. in 1903. Miller taught at Howard from 1890 to 1934 and became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1936. Under his direction, nurturing, and led the school to expand dramatically, with developments in the sociology department, growth in student recruitment, and curriculum modernization.
Miller wrote essays and a weekly column for the Black Press, where he dealt with the promise and progress of Blacks since Emancipation and proposed ideas for global racial equality. Additionally, he wrote several books, including "Race Adjustment" (1903), "Out of the House of Bondage" (1917), and "History of the World War and the Important Part Taken by the Negroes" (1919). Kelly Miller was considered a voice of reason with a mind of exceptional range. Kelly Miller died on December 27, 1939.
The Mathematics Department of
The State University of New York at Buffalo.
Mathematics Building
Buffalo, NY 14260
