WASHINGTON, Feb. 27, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
Profile America — Friday, February 27th. On this date in 1872, America's third female law student was graduated. But this third was a first. Charlotte Ray was a freeborn African-American, and the first black woman to graduate law school. With her degree from historically black Howard University, she shortly began her law practice in Washington, D.C., and was the first woman accredited to argue a case before the Supreme Court. When Charlotte Ray graduated, only some 8,500 college and professional degrees were awarded in the U.S. Today, among the 24 million African-Americans over 25 years old, some 6.8 million have bachelor's degrees, and some 3.7 million more hold advanced degrees, including almost 400,000 doctorates. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov.
Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 4637
Charlotte Ray biography: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/ray-charlotte-e-1850-1911
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1976, p. 386
Black population and educational attainment:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2013/Table%201-04.xlsx
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).
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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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