The White Problem by Jon Tuttle

The White Problem dramatizes the remarkable life of Richard Greener, the first African-American to graduate from Harvard and one of the leading black intellectuals of the post-Reconstruction era. Facing a future rich with promise, he instead became a pawn in the battle for the hearts and minds of black Americans, was rejected by his wife and children, and died senile and utterly alone. Much of the text -- and the title -- is taken directly from his essays, speeches, and personal papers, and also incorporates the voices of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois and others.