Ralph Waldo Gifford (Oct. 15, 1867 – Dec. 8, 1925), educator and law professor, was born in West Dedham (now Norwood), Massachusetts, to Elisha Gifford, a clergyman, and his wife Louise Jane Knapp. The youngest of five siblings, he worked as an office boy aged 12, and attended Cambridge Latin School before enrolling at Harvard College. Although he carried the burden of working while in college to cover his expenses, Gifford led a remarkable undergraduate career. In 1892, he graduated magna cum laude with special honors in modern languages and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Just after graduation he married Sarah Lowell Parsons, with whom he had three sons, James, Alexander, and Charles. Gifford spent his first year out of college teaching Greek at a boys’ school in Haverford, Pennsylvania. He then moved to Greensfield, Massachusetts, where he taught French and Latin for two years before becoming the principal of the Howard Seminary at West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. In 1898, Gifford put his teaching career on pause and enrolled at Harvard Law School.. Gifford spent his limited free time tutoring other law students and teaching, first at night in Boston High School and later as an Instructor of French at Harvard College. Despite his many obligations, both personal and professional, Gifford excelled academically and was elected an editor of the Harvard Law Review in recognition of his distinguished scholarship.

In 1900, Gifford joined the staff of the Cuban Summer School at Harvard as an English instructor. He also accompanied the Cubans on their tour of the eastern United States visiting New York, Washington, and Philadelphia. After this experience, Gifford wrote an article for The Harvard Illustrated Magazine, “My Impression of the Cuban Teachers,” that was generally sympathetic to the teachers’ work ethic and commitment to education, even as his language betrayed the prevailing Anglo-American racist stereotypes that Cubans “are nervous and excitable, and have the inclination to instability, which is common to all people of Latin origin.” (18)

Gifford empathized with the women teachers (over half the group) who told them they had suffered under the Spanish colonial education system:

Those who have doubted the value of a solid education for women, would, I think, change their minds if they could see the effect of lack of educational training in these young women. They really had very little power of application, and as one of the American teachers said, almost no memory. This is not the same thing as saying that they were not intelligent; most of them were; indeed, in mere quickness in catching an idea, they were in my opinion, rather superior to our girls of the same age. But the ability to study is, to a large extent, purely a matter of habit and training, and educational training the Cuban woman has never had. (15)

He also believed the Cuban teachers were even more opposed than white Americans in the South to racial integration in the schools, and conveyed the strong support of the teachers for full Cuban independence, a view he shared:

Among the teachers there is practically no desire for annexation. Though the Cubans are grateful to the Americans for freeing them from the Spanish domination, there is not the slightest desire among them to be an integral part of the United States. The many years of warfare for Cuban independence have made the idea of nationality supreme to them. (17)

After graduating Harvard law School in 1901, Gifford was admitted to the New York Bar in 1902 and began practicing in New York City with great success. When the opportunity to accept an academic post at Fordham University Law School arose, Gifford accepted and was appointed a Professor of Law and Pro-Dean at the institution. In 1912, he was appointed Lines Professor of Testamentary Law at Yale Law School and two years later he was appointed to a professorship in law at Columbia Law School. From 1922 until his death three years later, Gifford dedicated himself fully to his students, becoming a beloved and recognized figure in his short time at the Law School. He often lectured at other universities, and throughout his career as a professor of law he taught seventeen different subjects.

Ralph Waldo Gifford died on December 2, 1925 at his home in New York City. He was 59 years old. In an obituary, Gifford’s friend Harlan Fiske Stone, then an Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice and later Chief Justice, remembered him as a “robust, inspiring teacher” who gave freely to his work what seemed to be an “inexhaustible energy.” (Stone).


Further Reading

1. Gifford, Ralph Waldo. “My Impressions of the Cuban Teachers,” Harvard Illustrated Magazine (October 1900): 16–17.

2. Stone, Harlan Fiske. “Ralph Waldo Gifford,” Columbia Law Review June 1926 Vol XXVI: 649-653.