Home of Alice Easton Leland
First Black woman to graduate from the University of Cincinnati
In 1897, Alice May Easton became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Cincinnati. Her parents threw her a graduation party with 200 guests. A newspaper reported that the young people danced “until the wee, sma’ hours of the morn.”
Alice Easton was born into a distinguished family. She was the daughter of educator Lewis DePugh Easton. And she was the granddaughter, on her mother's side, of famed photographer Alexander Thomas, of Ball & Thomas.
In 1904, Alice Easton married Dr. Marshall Frederick Leland of New Brighton, Pennsylvania. After a honeymoon in the East, they moved to Georgetown Kentucky, where Dr. Leland practiced medicine, and where their son John Easton Leland was born in 1905. The censuses of 1910 and 1920 locate them still in Georgetown.
In the early 1920's, the family returned to Cincinnati, and they purchased a home, now gone, at 6403 Madison Road in Madisonville. Alice Easton Leland began working as a teacher at Harriet Beecher Stowe School.
Dr. Marshall Frederick Leland died in 1928. After that, Alice Easton Leland moved to Walnut Hills, to this home at 1367 Burdette Avenue.
Alice Easton Leland lived at 1367 Burdette Avenue for the rest her life. She taught at Stowe School until her retirement in 1945. She died in 1962.
In 2019, a new, affordable-housing apartment complex in Walnut Hills was dedicated in her honor: Alice May Easton Place, a 44-unit building on McMillan Street.
Images