Patrick Francis Healy (02/27/1830/1834 - 01/10/1910), as he was known, was born into slavery in Macon, Georgia, to the Irish-American plantation owner Michael Healy and his bi-racial slave Mary Eliza. Because of the law of slavery that children took the status of the mother, Patrick and his siblings were legally considered slaves, although their father was free and they were three-quarters or more European in ancestry.
Patrick was the third son of Mary Eliza and Michael Morris Healy, who had joined in a common-law marriage in 1829. After Patrick's father Michael bought his mother Mary Eliza, he fell in love with her and made her his common-law wife. Discriminatory laws in Georgia prohibited the education of slaves and required legislative approval for each act of manumission, so Michael Healy arranged for all his children to leave Georgia and move to the North to obtain their educations and have opportunities in their lives. They were raised as Irish Catholics.
Micheal Healy sent his older sons first to a Quaker school in Flushing, New York. Patrick Healy became ordained as a Jesuit priest, and taught at Holy Cross for a time before traveling abroad for further study. In 1865 Healy received a PH.D from the University of Luvain in Belgium and joined the faculty of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. In 1873 he was named the 29th President of Georgetown University. He was the 1st African-American to head a primarily white university. Healy was buried on the school's campus after his death in 1910.
Patrick was the third son of Mary Eliza and Michael Morris Healy, who had joined in a common-law marriage in 1829. After Patrick's father Michael bought his mother Mary Eliza, he fell in love with her and made her his common-law wife. Discriminatory laws in Georgia prohibited the education of slaves and required legislative approval for each act of manumission, so Michael Healy arranged for all his children to leave Georgia and move to the North to obtain their educations and have opportunities in their lives. They were raised as Irish Catholics.
Micheal Healy sent his older sons first to a Quaker school in Flushing, New York. Patrick Healy became ordained as a Jesuit priest, and taught at Holy Cross for a time before traveling abroad for further study. In 1865 Healy received a PH.D from the University of Luvain in Belgium and joined the faculty of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. In 1873 he was named the 29th President of Georgetown University. He was the 1st African-American to head a primarily white university. Healy was buried on the school's campus after his death in 1910.
Side Note: His brother James Augustine Healy became the country's 1st African-American Catholic bishop.
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