Joseph Grant/Photo courtesy of Howard University
South Carolina native Joseph Grant will be graduating with his Ph.D. in Political Science soon. As a member of Howard University’s Class of 2021, he will be joining the likes of changemakers such as Kamala Harris and Chadwick Boseman.
What makes Grant’s achievement so much more noteworthy is that he is 70-year-old.
Grant, who grew up in the segregated south, always had aspirations for his education. One of those aspirations was to attend Howard. “
I always wanted to go to Howard; literally all my life. This is my first HBCU experience,” said Grant. He wanted to study political science and teach.He also wanted the HBCU experience, but at the time, the national push for integration steered Grant and other Black students to colleges and universities that were not under the HBCU umbrella. He did, however, vow that his own children would attend Black institutions of higher learning.
At the age of 65, in 2015, Grant decided to bet on himself and relocated from South Carolina to Washington, D.C. With the help of several Howard faculty members and considerably younger classmates, he persisted. At one point, he experienced a health challenge that delayed his studies by two years but, he bounced back.
Political science was not a leap for this ambitious grandfather. Before he pursued his Ph.D., he was a lobbyist. He had a stark interest in the ways that Black people experienced politics and the political process. A research degree was the obvious next step.
Excelling despite the odds is something the future Dr. Grant is no stranger to, and his professors are willing to attest his boundless ambition. “That Dr. Grant is not a traditional Ph.D. student is a testament to one’s own truth and life of service, our Howard mission embodied within our life stories,” said Department of Political Science Chair Dr. Ravi Perry.
Grant is not the first septuagenarian to achieve a doctoral degree from Howard University. In May 2020, Florence Nwando Onwusi Didigu, a 73-year-old woman, also received her doctoral degree from the school.
Joseph Grant is proof that excellence truly has no expiration date.