Black Excellence: Ralph Brock
https://www.dougoster.com/doug-oster/ralph-brock-was-pennsylvanias-first-african-american-forester
It was a box of letters discovered in 1966, which reintroduced the world to Ralph Elwood Brock, the first African-American forester in the United States. They date back to the early 1900s. Since then, the stack of letters, ledgers, and notes from Brock had been stored away at the Penn State Monto Alto campus.
They languished in obscurity again until the late 1990s when they were rediscovered by forestry historians, anxious to retell the story of this pioneer who was in the first class of the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy. “He was good with trees, he loved plants, he was a natural,” said Dr. Peter Linehan, associate professor of forestry at the University. Linehan is the latest to carry the torch for Brock.
He spoke about him in 2016 to a group from the DCNR bureau forestry, keeping Brock’s name alive.