After Vivian Osborne graduated from high school in 1914, she applied to study anthropology at U.C. Berkeley. A gifted student, she had earned outstanding grades at both Berkeley High and, prior to that, Houston High School. But it wasn’t enough.
At the time, U.C. Berkeley refused to admit any student who had been schooled even partially in Southern states unless that student also passed four additional entrance exams.
Osborne completed only two—she was excused from the last couple because her results on the first two were so good. So exceptional, in fact, that her example prompted Berkeley to permanently scrap its discriminatory policies against students from the South.
That was just the first time that Vivian would transform U.C. Berkeley for the better. Not only was Vivian the first Black woman to ever major in anthropology at the university, she was also one of the first two women to earn a master’s degree there.
Vivian’s master’s thesis, titled Types and Distribution of Negro Folklore in America, successfully argued that many American children’s classics were, in fact, stories that originated in Africa.