Historical Black Alumni of
Dartmouth College

(1821–1874 )
Dartmouth College A.B. 1852
Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs
Class of 1852
Clergyman, Abolitionist, and Reconstruction Politician
Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs of Philadelphia concluded a brilliant academic career as Dartmouth's 1852 commencement speaker. Gibbs studied at Princeton Theological Seminary before assuming his first pastorate at the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church in Troy, NY, a center of abolitionist thought and action. After the Civil War, he went South to serve in the uplift of the formerly enslaved. A leader in Republican political affairs, he was appointed as Florida's Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Education. A life of achievement ended prematurely at age 52 under suspicious circumstances. A news editor wrote that Gibbs was "the best-informed colored man of the state. Negroes have lost one of their noblest representatives and our public school system one of its most intelligent advocates."