Lever’s Legacy

Lever’s Legacy

Benjamin Franklin Lever would have been a contemporary of Silas Hunt. And like Hunt, Lever is recognized for his pioneering spirit by becoming the first black graduate student in residence. Here’s an excerpt from The History of Bumpers College, written by Gary Zellar and Nancy Wyatt.

“...[Bumpers] College also made a major contribution to equal education in the South after it admitted Benjamin F. Lever as the first African American graduate student in residence at the U of A in the fall of 1950. Lever was a graduate of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and took up graduate work in agronomy, studying germination rates of selected grain sorghums under A.B. Burdick. Unlike the situation that prevailed when other African American graduate students took classes in the Law School or in the College of Education previous to Lever, the College of Agriculture made no ‘special arrangements’ to segregate Lever inside the agriculture classes or laboratories while he attended to his work. He said that his fellow agriculture students showed a good attitude toward him and that the racial atmosphere was much better than he had expected. Lever received his M.S. degree in agronomy at the June 1951 commencement ceremony with full honors.”

Benjamin Franklin Lever Minority Graduate Student Fellowships were established in Lever’s honor to attract students from under-represented minority groups into graduate degree programs at the University of Arkansas.