Black historian and educator Kelly Miller was born July 19, 1863, in Winnsboro, South Carolina; his mother was a slave and his father was a Confederate soldier.Miller believed that the truest way to freedom from bondage was education. He worked his way through school, graduating from Howard University in 1886 and continuing to study mathematics and physics at Johns Hopkins University. There he earned an A. M. in 1901, and he earned an LL.D. in 1903 from Howard. Miller taught at Howard from 1890 to 1934, and became dean of the College Arts and Sciences in 1936. His nurturing and leadership caused the school to expand dramatically, with developments in the sociology department, a growth in student recruitment, and modernization of their curriculum.
Miller wrote essays and a weekly column for the Black press, where he dealt with the promise and progress of African-Americans 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 thought of as a voice of reason with a mind of exceptional range. Kelly Miller died December 27, 1939.
Reference:
The Mathematics Department of
The State University of New York at Buffalo