The Colorado Agricultural College class of 1896 consisted of five women and 11 men, including Grafton St. Clair Norman, a general agriculture major who was the College’s first African American student and alumnus. His enrollment reflected hope that the College’s land-grant mission of greater opportunity and access to higher education would one day apply to everyone.
Read more about Grafton St. Clair Norman.
That day was still in the distant future when George W. Cooper graduated from the College’s veterinary school in 1918. Cooper maintained a large-animal practice in rural northeastern Colorado for 25 years before becoming one of the first faculty members of a new veterinary school at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Known today as the Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine, the school has educated more than 70 percent of the nation’s African American veterinarians.
