Fresh off his successful decades-long campaign to strip African-Americans of basic rights in his home state of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels delivered the commencement speech at Howard University’s 1916 graduation. No doubt without irony, Daniels spoke of “progress made by the colored race.”
Who received his juris doctor degree that day? Glenn S. McBrayer, who passed the North Carolina bar the following spring and hung his attorney shingle in Wilson around 1920. He hit the ground running, hosting the first annual convention of the Negro State Bar Association and getting elected that organization’s corresponding secretary in December 1921. McBrayer practiced in Wilson through 1929.
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The Washington Herald, 8 June 1916.