Black History, Education
University of Tennessee
The most significant event in the college’s history, however, was not military but political: the passage of the Morrill Act by Congress in 1862 providing for the granting of federally owned lands to states that would establish public agricultural and mechanical colleges.
East Tennessee University was designated in 1869 by the state legislature as the land-grant institution of the state and thereby the recipient of the proceeds of the properties allocated by law to Tennessee. The value of the real estate involved was almost $400,000, providing a boon to the college’s fortunes. (more…)
Black History, Education
Ambrose Caliver
A major contributor to the field of adult education, Dr. Ambrose Caliver devoted much of his professional life to adult literacy. While this area continued to occupy his interest and best efforts, he also took an active role in such matters as displaced persons, human rights, public affairs, aging, and professional development of adult educators.
Born in 1894, Caliver began his career as a high school principal in Tennessee. Before his death in 1962 he served in the following capacities: faculty member at Fisk University; specialist in the education of Negroes, United States Office of Education; organizer of the National Advisory Committee on the Education on Negroes. (more…)
Black History, Education, Slavery
Soon after Union troops had captured and occupied the southern city of Natchez, Mississippi, in the summer of 1863, northern missionaries set about establishing the region’s first schools for freedpeople. But they were surprised to learn that at least one school already existed, and it had been in operation for many years.
Even more astounding, the students at this school were slaves and so was their teacher, Lily Ann Granderson. (Other sources identify her as Milla Granson and Lila Grandison.) Although a small number of slaves learned to read and write in the antebellum South, schools for slaves and slave teachers were extraordinarily uncommon. (more…)
Black History, Education
“In 1865, barely six months after the end of the Civil War and just two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, three men”John Ogden, the Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, and the Reverend Edward P. Smith ”established the Fisk School in Nashville.
The school was named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen’s Bureau, who provided the new institution with facilities in former Union Army barracks near the present site of Nashville’s Union Station. In these facilities Fisk convened its first classes on January 9, 1866. The first students ranged in age from seven to seventy, but shared common experiences of slavery and poverty ” and an extraordinary thirst for learning. (more…)
Black History, Education
Evelyn Boyd Granville
Granville was born in Washington, D.C., on May 1, 1924. Her father, William Boyd, worked as a custodian in their apartment building; he did not stay with the family, however, and Granville was raised by her mother, Julia Walker Boyd, and her mother’s twin sister, Louise Walker, both of whom worked as examiners for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
Granville and her sister Doris, who was a year and a half older, often spent portions of their summers at the farm of a family friend in Linden, Virginia. Evelyn Boyd grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended the segregated Dunbar High School (from which she graduated as valedictorian) maintained high academic standards. Several of its faculty held degrees from top colleges, and they encouraged the students to pursue ambitious goals. (more…)
Black History, Education, Firsts, Other
Alpha Phi Alpha is the first Black, Inter-Collegiate Greek-Lettered fraternity. It was founded on December 4, 1906 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Its founders are known as the “Seven Jewels”. Alpha Phi Alpha developed a model that was used by the many Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs) that soon followed in its footsteps. It employs an icon from Ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza as its symbol, and its aims are “manly deeds, scholarship, and love for all mankind,” and its motto is First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All. Its archives are preserved at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.
Chapters were chartered at Howard University and Virginia Union University in 1907. The fraternity has over 185,000 members and has been open to men of all races since 1940. Currently, there are more than 730 active chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia. (more…)
