It was unanimous.

The Harrisburg Board of Control, or school board, elected William Howard Day president in October 1891.

It was a historic moment in Harrisburg and beyond: Day was the city’s first Black school board president, a rarity anywhere in those days.

Day was more than qualified: master’s degree from Oberlin College, tutoring freedom seekers in Canada in the 1840s and 1850s who had escaped slavery in the United States, superintendent of Black schools in Maryland and Delaware in the Freedmen’s Bureau from 1867 to 1871, not to mention currently serving his fourth term on the school board. He had even served as interim president for about three months in 1890.

And the symbolism of a Black man’s elevation to president was not lost on the school board.

“(Day) is … a shining exam

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