Freedom Facts and Firsts. Jessie Carney Smith
principal and president. It opened on May 1, 1875, as the Huntsville Normal School with two teachers, 61 students, and an annual state appropriation of $1,000. During the early years the college received support from the Slater and Peabody Funds and private contributors. After successfully introducing industrial education in 1878, the legislature increased its state appropriation to $4,000 per year and changed the name to the State Normal and Industrial School at Huntsville. After the 1890 Morrill Act of the U.S. Congress, the school began receiving Federal support and changed its name again, this time to the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, in 1891.
The additional support helped the college to grow. The campus moved to Normal, Alabama, and its name was changed to the State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute for Negroes in 1919. After the graduation of the class of 1920, the college was designated a junior college; it resumed awarding bachelor’s degrees in 1941 after authorization from the state board of education, and it became the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1948. Its present name was adopted in 1969. The university now serves over 6,000 students in undergraduate and graduate degree programs, including offering Ph.D.s.
During the Civil Rights Movement, A&M’s students participated in local sit-ins. This happened when white supremacists accelerated efforts to stamp out dissent activities in publicly supported institutions. Governor John Patterson complained that the school’s president had allowed members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to enter the campus to solicit support. He claimed that one-third of the students who were arrested for sit-ins in Huntsville were A&M students. The governor responded by threatening the school’s financial support. In an emergency session, the state’s board of education ordered the president to take a year’s leave of absence, followed by his retirement the next year.
Fletcher F. Moon
Alabama State University (est. 1867)
Originally the Lincoln School of Marion, the university was established by nine founders and original trustees who were former slaves: Joey P. Pinch, Thomas Speed, Nicholas Dale, James Childs, Thomas Lee, John Freeman, Nathan Levert, David Harris, and Alexander H. Curtis. The institution opened on November 13, 1867, with 113 students. In 1868 the name changed to Lincoln Normal School, and the school’s title was transferred in 1873 after the Alabama State Legislature authorized funding for the first state normal school for blacks. George M. Card was selected as the first president, and the school’s status as a public institution began in 1874. In 1878 William Paterson became the second president and oversaw the university’s relocation from Marion to Montgomery, the state capital, in 1887. It grew from a junior college into a four-year degree institution (1928), and underwent several additional name changes: State Teachers College (1929), Alabama State College for Negroes (1948), Alabama State College (1954), and Alabama State University (1969). During the 1950s and 1960s people affiliated with the institution became notable figures in the Civil Rights Movement, including alumnus Ralph Abernathy and faculty member Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. Presently, the university serves over 5,000 students in 47 undergraduate and graduate programs of study, including doctoral programs in physical therapy, microbiology, and forensic sciences.
Hiram R. Revels was a senator who became Alcorn State University’s first president (Fisk University).
Fletcher F. Moon
Alcorn State University (est. 1871)
The present-day Alcorn State University in Mississippi began on the site of Oakland College, a school for whites established by the Presbyterian Church. This school was closed at the beginning of the Civil War to allow its students to fight for the Confederacy. After the war, the property was sold to the state and renamed Alcorn University in 1871 to honor Mississippi Governor James L. Alcorn. Hiram R. Revels, the first African American senator, resigned from Congress to become the school’s first president. There were eight faculty members and 179 students at the time. Early financial support included $50,000 cash for 10 consecutive years from the state legislature and $113,400 for agricultural and mechanical programs, making the school a land-grant college from its earliest days. The name of the institution was changed to Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1878, as the state emphasized industrial training as the primary role for the institution. Originally intended for black men only, the college began admitting women in 1895. In 1974 university status was granted and the name was changed to Alcorn State University. During the 1960s many Alcorn students and alumni made great sacrifices to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. Conservative president J.D. Boyd dismissed over 700 students in April 1964 after a non-violent demonstration; former student Charles Moore was murdered during Freedom Summer of the same year, while Alcorn alumni Ernestine Denham Talbert, C.J. Duckworth, Professor N. R. Burger, and Ariel Burns were educators as well as key activists. In February 1968 Alcorn students Percell Rials and James Bishop were expelled by Boyd for supporting the congressional campaign of Charles Evers; subsequent protests led to beatings and shootings of other students when the Mississippi Highway Patrol was called to the campus. Two months later the campus erupted again after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the school closed for the remainder of the spring semester.
Fletcher F. Moon
American Baptist College (est. 1924)
American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, formally opened its doors for the training of Christian workers as the American Baptist Theological Seminary on September 14, 1924. The curriculum contained both degree programs for high school graduates and nondegree programs for training those who had no high school degree. In 1937 the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. agreed to share in the operations of the college. In 1971 it became a four-year graduate Bible college under the name American Baptist College. In 1996 the Southern Baptist Convention withdrew its involvement and turned over the assets to the board of trustees of American Baptist College. The college is not well endowed, but it enrolls passionately committed students who want to make an impact on humanity. This is evidenced in its graduates who participated in the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville: the Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., a divinity student at Vanderbilt University, organized nonviolence workshops where college students were trained; to these workshops were sent young, brilliant, idealistic students from the college by the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith Sr., a popular professor at the seminary and an activist in the Nashville community. Among the leaders of the non-violent sit-in movement in Nashville was the Reverend Bernard Lafayette, former president of American Baptist College.
Helen R. Houston
Atlanta University (est. 1865)
The American Missionary Association, with support from the Freedmen’s Bureau, founded Atlanta University. It became the first graduate institution serving African Americans. The school began granting bachelor’s degrees by the late 1870s and supplied black teachers and librarians to public schools throughout the southern United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was a member of the Atlanta University faculty during the early years of the twentieth century. During his tenure, he helped to found the NAACP, as well as Phylon, a scholarly journal on race and culture, and agitated for civil rights after the Atlanta race riot of 1906. In 1929 Atlanta University offered its first programs of graduate study, expanding these to include library science (1941), education (1944), business administration (1946), and social work (1947). Whitney Young Jr. continued civil rights activism during his tenure as dean of the social work program. The institution also cooperated with Morehouse College and Spelman College within the Atlanta University System. In subsequent years Clark College, Morris Brown College, and the Interdenominational Theological Center joined to create the Atlanta University Center (AUC) in 1957. Students from AUC were active in March 1960 sit-ins to desegregate downtown Atlanta establishments. On July 1, 1988, Atlanta University merged with Clark College and became known as Clark Atlanta University.