Richard Henry Green papers

Richard Henry Green was born in New Haven in 1833, the son of Richard Green, a local bootmaker and one of the founders of St. Luke's Episcopal Church. In 1853, the younger Green was admitted to Yale College, where he was active in campus life, becoming a member of the literary society Brothers in Unity as well as the fraternity Delta Sigma. Green was awarded a bachelor of arts degree in 1857.

Following his graduation from Yale, Green was a teacher in Milford, Connecticut. He subsequently moved to Bennington, Vermont to teach at the Bennington Seminary, and later studied medicine at Dartmouth College, where he received an MD in 1864. In 1863, Green enlisted in the United States Navy and served as an acting assistant surgeon aboard the U.S. Steamer State of Georgia, and the Steamer Seneca during the U.S. Civil War. During his service in the Navy, he married Charlotte Caldwell of Bennington.

After the war, Green and his wife settled in Hoosick, New York, where they had a daughter, Charlotte. He lived and practiced medicine in Hoosick until his death in 1877. In a letter written to Yale's secretary following his death, the elder Green described the cause of his son's death as a "disease of the heart."

Very little is known about how Richard Henry Green identified or presented himself racially, but in official documentation his and his family's racial identification varied. Green grew up in a neighborhood of New Haven known at the time as "Negro Lane," and in the New Haven City Directory, his father was regularly listed as "col'd (colored)." However, the 1850 federal census listed the younger Green as mulatto, as Black in the 1860 census, and in 1870, the census listed him, his wife, and his daughter as white. Though Yale holds no records mentioning Green's racial identity, research conducted into his background following the acquisition of his papers in 2014 indicates that he was the first African American graduate of Yale College, a distinction previously attributed to Edward Bouchet of the Class of 1874.