Harvard Medical School admits three African-American students.

Daniel Laing and Isaac Snowden of Boston and Martin Delaney of Pittsburgh become the first African-American students admitted to Harvard Medical School. But their admission only comes with the understanding that they will subsequently practice medicine in Liberia. The three are dismissed in 1851, however, after protests by classmates that convince dean Oliver Wendell Holmes, “[The] intermixing of the white and Black races in their lecture rooms is distasteful to a large portion of the class and injurious to the interests of the school.” African-Americans do not graduate from the school until 1869.*