In the late 1880s, the City of Cincinnati set aside the southern end of Burnet Woods as a new home for the University of Cincinnati. The university found itself in court, because the heirs of Charles McMicken filed suit to block the move.

The heirs were not particularly devoted to keeping the university on the old McMicken estate. Their interest lay in proving that the city and the university had violated the terms of McMicken’s bequest (in which case, the property would revert to the heirs).

The will specified that a university for white boys and girls be located on the estate. Consequently, the heirs wanted to know if any “colored” students had been admitted to McMicken’s university. Called to the stand was Cornelius Comegys, chairman of the university board and longtime champion of the university.

“Do you know whether any colored pupils have ever been admitted to the university?” asked the attorney for the McMicken heirs.

“Yes,” Comegys replied. “A very distinguished one graduated about five years ago.”

Comegys must have referenced Henry Malachi Griffin, who graduated in 1886. At the time of his graduation, the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune specifically identified Griffin as “colored.” The New York Freeman went further, and specified that Griffin was the first “colored” student to graduate from the university.

Griffin had a long road to his UC graduation, and a distinguished career afterward.

For the past decade, several people have conducted an extensive search for a photograph of UC’s first African American graduate. Now, a group photo of the 1904 graduating class of Long Island Hospital has been located. This discovery was made by Paulette Penzvalto, who earned her artist diploma from CCM in 2012 and is currently based in New York. Paulette diligently spooled archival microfilm until she found this image in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. Although individuals in the photo are not identified, there is a good possibility that Henry Malachi Griffin is among the men pictured. If so, it represents the only known photo of UC’s first African American graduate.

Henry Malachi Griffin appears as an 11 year old (recorded as “Charles Henry”) in the 1870 census for Gloucester County, in the Delaware Valley of western New Jersey. His father is Peter Griffin, born 1835 in Maryland. This suggests Henry’s father may have been a slave, but he was a New Jersey resident by 1854, when he married Maria White. Henry is the fourth child and eldest son in a family of eight children. The Griffins were farmers, and most of the family remained farmers well into the 1900s.

Henry had other plans. In 1882, he was in Cincinnati, enrolled as a freshman at the University of Cincinnati. Although he registered as Henry Malachi Griffin, the city directory for that year shows him as “Harry,” the name he used in the 1880 census. He roomed with Susie and Thomas W. Johnson, both teachers, on Barr Street. It appears that Henry may have worked as a coachman while studying toward his degree.

Records suggest that Griffin was a popular student. He was elected class orator, served as speaker of the Mock Congress (a sort of debating society). He was even listed among the members of the Pie Biters, a joking name for those students who ate lunch from street vendors outside the university building.

On June 17, 1886, the University of Cincinnati celebrated Commencement at the Odeon. Among the graduates, the Commercial Tribune noted “Henry M. Griffin (colored)” presenting the abstract of his thesis on Plautus as he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The university’s annual report for that year clarifies that the document preserved today in the University Libraries is the actual thesis, titled “Aeschylus as a poet and religious teacher” by Henry Malachi Griffin.

The New York Freeman (June 26, 1886) celebrated the “especially noteworthy” graduation of Harry M. Griffin,

“for the reason that the will of the late Charles McMicken, who gave the money to found and maintain the University, forbade the admission of colored students. But times change and the trustees have quietly ignored this proviso and freely admitted colored students; although Mr. Griffin is the first to receive a diploma.”

Griffin traveled west from Cincinnati and found a position teaching in the colored schools of Madison, Indiana. During his time in Madison, Griffin traveled to Chicago to marry Cora Lee Watson, an Ohio native. Griffin was elected principal of Madison’s Broadway High School and also taught seventh grade. Despite the title, the principal’s pay was apparently low. In August 1892, the Madison Weekly Herald reported his departure:

“Mr. H. M. Griffin has tendered his resignation to the School Board as Principal of the Broadway High School. He has been elected to a high position in the schools of Kansas City at a largely advanced salary. He will not leave here until the board secures a successor to fill his place. He has given much satisfaction to the school board and our citizens generally. He is very much of a gentleman.”

In fact, Griffin departed for Sedalia, Missouri, near Kansas City. The local newspaper there reported that he was assigned to classroom 3 (of 4) at the Lincoln School. Although there is every indication the school suffered inequality at a time when “separate but equal” was the rule, the Lincoln School had a good reputation. The Sedalia newspaper touted its success:

“That the colored child is capable of high mental training is no longer doubted by intelligent observers, and Lincoln School is a standing answer to all who assert the contrary. “

A few years later, the UC bulletin listed Griffin among the alumni as a teacher in the Warrensburg Schools, about 28 miles closer to Kansas City than Sedalia. Warrensburg’s very first school, constructed by donations from African American citizens assisted by the Freedman’s Bureau, was the Howard School. Originally organized in 1867, a new building opened in 1889. Two years of high school studies were added in the 1890s, and Griffin appears in the next UC bulletin as the principal of the high school program.

Throughout the 1890s, Griffin is listed in the UC alumni rolls as principal of Kansas City’s Lincoln High School. He was actually vice principal under the formidable G.N. Grisham.

As principal of the school, Grisham had a platform for promoting racial equality and he used it eloquently. Although his efforts to create an African American political party were short-lived, he eloquently opposed the gradualism of leaders such as Booker T. Washington, who argued that American society for the educated black man. To a national 1897 audience at the American Negro Academy in Washington, DC, Grisham announced a strong case for black scholars.

Although a February 1898 item in the Colored Citizen notes that H.M. Griffin had accepted a position in New York City, he is still listed among the faculty at Lincoln High School in May of that year. The 1900 census finds Cora and Henry M. Griffin living in Queens, New York. The couple, married nine years by this time, had no children. They are identified as “cousins,” of William Derrick, Bishop of the New York African Methodist Episcopal Church, and lived at his house.

Henry’s occupation is listed as a clerk in the Post Office, but he was already at work on the next stage of his career. The 1905 Medical Directory of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut reveals that H.M. Griffin had graduated from Long Island College Hospital in 1904 and was practicing medicine at 18 West 135th Street in Harlem. His telephone number was 2393R. Griffin would have been 43 to 45 years old at graduation.

For the next 20 years, H.M. Griffin is revealed as an active member of the National Medical Association, the African American version of the American Medical Association. He was active in efforts to save the McDonough Memorial Hospital for African American patients in New York.

He was an early adopter of the automobile. Griffin owned a DeTamble, manufactured in Anderson Indiana. The New York Age reported in 1910:

“Dr. H. M. Griffin, who has his office on 135th street, is the first one of our doctors to use an automobile. Dr. Griffin explains that he does not like the idea of those Southern physicians getting ahead of New York, and therefore he recently purchased a small runabout in which to make his professional calls. The doctor learned to run that car in a week but he is taking little chances. He explains that he is well insured, and there are a score of undertakers in the immediate vicinity and a hospital on the next corner.”

The 1910 census lists Henry M. Griffin, a “physician with own practice” married to Virginia native Alice C. Griffin. According to the census, they were married in 1904. It is not certain what happened to the previous Mrs. Griffin, but it is likely that she had died.

When Booker T. Washington visited New York in 1912, the New York Age records H.M. Griffin among the platform party, along with Bishop Derrick. A year later, Washington was contacted by a representative of the Urban League who was investigating segregation in New York Hospitals. Washington suggested she contact Griffin and another doctor and described both of them as “high class men.”

Around that time the Journal of National Medical Association reports Doctor H.M. Griffin relocating to 109 West 132nd Street, where the University of Cincinnati alumni directories for 1920 and 1926 find him as well. He remained active with the National Medical Association and presented papers on medical topics, at least one on obstetric practice.

In 1930, Griffin had moved to New Jersey, living on Lake Street in Englewood. He was somewhere between 68 and 70, but still practicing medicine.

Henry Malachi Griffin died January 27, 1931 and is buried in Bergen’s Brookside Cemetery. His gravestone lists his birth date as Oct. 21, 1858, and records that his wife followed him in death in 1938. The stone also notes that Griffin “served God and Man.”