An engineer made history as Georgia Tech’s first Black graduate; 59 years later, he passes the torch to his granddaughter

Nearly 60 years after Atlanta native and engineer Ronald Yancey overcame barriers to become Georgia Institute of Technology’s first Black graduate, he presented his granddaughter with her diploma as she followed in her family’s footsteps.

Deanna Yancey, who is among a few of her relatives to have attended the public research university also known as Georgia Tech, graduated with a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering at Friday’s spring commencement ceremony.

As she walked across the stage at the university’s McCamish Pavilion, she greeted her grandfather with a smile and a hug, and he handed her the hard-earned diploma, an Instagram clip from Georgia Tech shows.

The elder Yancey’s June 1965 achievement was recognized on-campus with a sculpture of him dedicated in 2019, according to Georgia Tech.

The university says it was the first in the Deep South to integrate peacefully and without a court order. Georgia Tech admitted its first Black students in 1961.

Deanna Yancey, who earned an undergraduate engineering degree from Penn State University in 2020, says she didn’t initially tell her family she was applying for an online master’s program at her grandfather’s alma mater, according to a news release from Georgia Tech.

“When I got in, I got to read the acceptance email to my grandfather,” Deanna Yancey said in the release. “He was so happy. He almost started jumping; he was so excited.”

She acknowledged her grandfather as a trailblazer at Georgia Tech.

“It’s a different world to be known for something especially as powerful as a movement as he was able to start,” the new graduate said in a video clip played at Friday’s ceremony.

Ronald Yancey was rejected twice from Georgia Tech in the 1960s, and he and his family were told he “did not fit the Tech model for success,” according to a 2015 news release from the university.

In the meantime, he attended Morehouse, a historically Black college/university. “Morehouse did not have an engineering program, though, so in the spring of 1961, Yancey again applied to Tech,” the release stated.