David Robert Lewis (CE’1894), from Greensburg, Indiana, is noted in Purdue’s historical accounts as the University’s first black graduate. He was one of only nine black students who graduated from Indiana colleges between the Civil War and the year 1900. Lewis’s senior thesis, “Highway Road Construction,” included a review of European road building practices.
As a Purdue student, Lewis participated in the Carlyle Society, one of five literary organizations on campus that held presentations for the public. The Carlyle Society, along with the Irving and Philalethean Literary Societies, contributed significantly to the founding of both the Purdue and the Exponent student newspapers.
Lewis went on to become an educator and businessman. In a letter to a colleague, Lewis wrote of what he wanted for his students.
“To make each one think, to make him self-reliant, to feel the responsibility of his own effort is a constant aim and endeavor,” Lewis wrote.
Since Lewis’s graduation, the Lyles School of Civil Engineering has been home to thousands of people of color as students, faculty, and staff. The school honors Lewis’s legacy as a Purdue pioneer and endeavors every day to honor his memory, his courage, and the significance of his accomplishments.
Read a full biography on David Robert Lewis.
Or was George W. Lacey Purdue’s first black graduate?
George W. Lacey is noted in some places as having graduated from Purdue in pharmacy in 1890. He is not found in the Debrisyearbook, but he is mentioned elsewhere as having been Purdue’s first black graduate. His name is found in the 1890 Druggists’ Circular and Chemical Gazette with the listing of those who graduated from the Purdue School of Pharmacy that year. Fred Whitford, author of The Grand Old Man of Purdue University and Indiana Agriculture: A Biography of William Carroll Latta, also makes mention of Lacey as being the first black Purdue graduate.
One problem in identifying the first black graduate of Purdue, is that although the University began offering courses in 1874, the first records that include images of students are in the Debris yearbook, which did not exist until 1889. Therefore, the possibility exists that neither Lacey nor Lewis were the first black graduate. It is possible that a student who graduated prior to publication of the yearbook may have been black, but thus far there is no record in the University Archives that confirms this. Official university records did not include race or ethnicity prior to 1974.