Education is the ultimate right of every child regardless of which race, religion or nation he or she belongs to. To promote this ideal and get as many children to get educated, various incentives are given to people who can’t afford it. The early education is free for most people but it is the higher education that costs a lot and often discourages students to receive it. In order to overcome this situation, governments and private sectors in several nations offer incentives called scholarships to encourage higher education among the gifted students eager to explore world of knowledge.

America is the hub of such scholarly endeavors relentlessly motivating students to be part of this incredible journey. However, there was once a time in America when African Americans were banned from receiving formal education and their small but useful inventions were seized by their owners and wrongfully patented to their name. Civil Rights Movement paved way for African Americans to have same rights as white to seek formal education. Despite the softening of laws, African Americans found it hard to make it to a decent college for financial reasons.

The first African American man to earn college degree was Alexander Lucius Twilight. He graduated from Middlebury College in 1823. In 1862, the first black woman to receive Bachelors in Arts from Oberlin College was Mary Jane Patterson. In the following years a few African American scholars were granted fellowship from American educational institutes. In 1876, Edward Alexander Bouchet became the first African-American to earn scholarship that garnered him a doctorate degree from the prestigious Yale College after submitting a dissertation, in physics. He was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society for his outstanding academic performance. Among black women, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander was the first woman who earned a Ph.D from University of Pennsylvania, 1912. Then the same year Georgiana Simpson received a Ph.D in German Philology from University of Chicago. Howard University