In the 1800s, the ICY had one of the most accomplished African American faculty of any black school in the United States. Among those pictured here are O. V. Catto; Ebenezer D. Bassett, the first black American diplomat; Professor C.L. Reason, who had previously taught French Language at New York Central College; and Robert Campbell-in the turban-who after visiting the Niger Valley with Martin Delany in the 1850s, permanently moved to Nigeria in 1862.