Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Charles Brooks

Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Charles Brooks

Correspondence

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894 (author)

Massachusetts Colonization Society

Laing, Daniel, Jr.

This letter from Holmes’ tenure as dean of Harvard Medical School relates to the education of two African-American students, Daniel Laing, Jr., and Isaac H. Snowden. Here, at Brooks’ appeal, Holmes waives the lecture fees for Laing (“his habits of study good & his talents most promising”). Snowden’s fees were assumed by the Colonization Society.

Laing, Snowden and a third student, Martin Robison Delany, enrolled during the winter term in 1850 but were forced to withdraw following a protest by some of the Medical School students. Both Laing and Snowden went on to pursue medical studies at Dartmouth.

Letter from Dean Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) granting admission to African-American student Daniel Laing, Jr.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

1850 November 04

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Papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1838-ca.1900 (inclusive). Letters from Holmes. B MS c9.1

text

1 manuscript letter (1 page)

English

text

DigID0002153

From the collections of the Boston Medical Library