Wilberforce University
Wilberforce University is a private university in Wilberforce, Ohio, United States. It is one of three historically black universities established before the American Civil War. Founded in 1856 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, it is named after English statesman and abolitionist William Wilberforce. In 1863, it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which had ties to the school since its inception. WU remains affiliated with the AME.
Beginning in 1887, WU operated as a partially state-funded and partially private institution. Concerns over the separation of church and state led WU's theology department to separate and establish the independent Payne Theological Seminary. The state-funded division of the school separated from WU in 1947 and became what is today known as Central State University.
The university currently offers twenty-five academic programs of undergraduate and graduate study. Since 1966, the school has emphasized cooperative education in which students do internships in their field of study in addition to their coursework. The school is a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and its athletic teams, the Bulldogs, compete in the HBCU Athletic Conference.
History
19th century
Background
At the time Ohio became a state in 1802, it did so as a free state with the slave states of Kentucky and Virginia along its southern border. Ohio became a major thoroughfare for the Underground Railroad during the 19th century with an estimated 40,000 slaves escaping from the American South along Ohio routes. Additionally migratory patterns of free people of color in conjunction with the arrival of escaped slaves led to a significant growing black population across the state, but especially in Hamilton County, Ohio and those counties adjacent to it in Southwestern Ohio which had the largest and fastest growing black populations in Ohio in that era.The need to educate the Ohio black community became a pressing issue of concern to community leaders, politicians, and religious groups. The Ohio Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church adopted education resolutions in 1833, and in the years following required their ministers to preach sermons on the need for education. The Ohio General Assembly formally mandated the establishment of public schools for Ohio's black population in 1854. Cincinnati High School opened that same year as the first public school for black students in Ohio. The Ohio Conference of the AME Church founded Union Seminary in West Jefferson, Ohio in 1847, but the school failed to thrive and closed in 1863.
In the years leading up to the American Civil War there was a growing movement to establish schools of higher learning for black people in the Northern United States as part of the abolitionist movement to end slavery. This was in stark contrast to the Southern United States where it was illegal for blacks to obtain an education.
The first of these schools were Cheyney University of Pennsylvania and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. The interest in founding a similar school in Ohio was partly generated by a series of race riots in Southern Ohio that occurred in 1826, 1836, and 1841. The Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church believed that the establishment of a university for blacks in Southwestern Ohio could do much to solve racial problems in the region, and were also wanting to provide opportunities to improve the lives of the approximately 50,000 black methodists living in the area overseen by the Cincinnati Conference.
Founding
Wilberforce University was the third historically black college founded in the United States, and the last HBC established prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Some sources describe Wilberforce University as the oldest or first HBC because it was the first HBC to graduate students with an accredited bachelor's degree in 1857; an achievement not reached by another HBC until 1868 when Lincoln University awarded its first bachelor's diplomas.Wilberforce University was officially incorporated in accordance with the laws of Greene County, Ohio on August 30, 1856. It was earlier established by a ratification of first the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on October 31, 1855 and later a vote of the MEC's national general assembly in May 22, 1856. The process of bringing this initiative to vote was done after a committee was founded on September 28, 1853 by the MEC to study founding a black college in consultation with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The school was established as a coeducation school of higher education for African-American students with its original name stylized as Wilberforce University. The use of the word university in the title was debated during the process of the school's founding, but ultimately it was decided that it should be used as an important aspirational gesture for what the founders hoped the school would become. They called this act a "pledge of victorious faith".
WU was named after the British abolitionist and statesman William Wilberforce; a name suggested by Uriah Heath at MEC's Cincinnati Conference which was officially adopted on August 26, 1856. Prior to this, the working title of the school during its development period was Ohio African University; a name adopted on May 22, 1856 that was permanently abandoned after the vote in August 1856. The MEC purchased 52 acres of land for $15,000 in what was then known as Tawawa Springs for the purposes of establishing the college. The word "Tawawa" came from the language of the Shawnee people, and translates into English as "bath of gold" in reference to the shining minerals found in the rocks in the streams on the property. It was described at that time as land 3 1/2 miles northeast of Xenia, Ohio.
The Tawawa Springs property already had buildings when in was purchased; including nine cottages available for student housing. The buildings had originally been built on the property for use as a pleasure resort. Because of its location, the Tawawa Springs attracted a summer crowd of people from both Cincinnati and the South, particularly after completion of the Little Miami Railroad in 1846. Some people in this area of abolitionist sentiment were shocked when wealthy white Southern planters patronized the resort with their entourages of enslaved African-American mistresses and mixed-race "natural" children. The former resort's hotel, an edifice which contained 200 rooms, was transformed into classroom space. The MEC spent $50,000.00 improving these buildings to make them usable for the new school.
Pre-Civil War years: 1856-1860
Wilberforce University's first board was deliberately selected to represent more Christian faith backgrounds than just the MEC, with board members making up representation from a variety of Christian denominations. One of the school's original board members was abolitionist Salmon P. Chase who was then the 23rd governor of Ohio and later became Chief Justice of the United States. It was also a multi-racial board. Some of the other original 24 members of the board of trustees included Daniel A. Payne, Lewis Woodson, Ishmael Keith, and Alfred Anderson, all of the AME Church.On September 16, 1856 the Reverend F. Merrick was elected president of Wilberforce University by the WU's board. Merrick, however, turned the position down, and the board was forced to look elsewhere. M. P. Gaddis Jr. served as principal of the school during its first year, and the school opened in October 1856 with a dedication ceremony presided over by Edward Thompson, then president of Ohio Wesleyan University. In February 1857 it was announced that Rev. John F. Wright was appointed the first president of Wilberforce University. However, minutes of WU board meetings indicate that there was an on-going active search committee for a WU president at the time Wright served in that post. Wright was the presiding elder of the East Cincinnati District and had spent two years lobbying the MEC Cincinnati Conference for the creation the school prior to the 1856 ratification. He had led the original 1854 committee and was the one responsible for negotiating the collaborative process with the AME Church with meetings that began in August 1855. He, along with M. French and A. Lowery, were responsible for negotiating the purchase of Tawawa Springs; a process which went through difficult deliberations with several rejected offers made in 1855 and 1856 before a successful one was made on May 22, 1856.
Wright served as the WU's president during its first academic year. His tenure as interim president was short, with Richard S. Rust of the MEC's New Hampshire Conference elected to the post of president on June 30, 1858. The new school faced pushback from the white community in Xenia with several Ohio newspapers running an identical article in 1858 which complained about the way life in Xenia had altered dramatically due to the influx of so many black individuals into what had been a predominantly white community. A formal petition was sent to the MEC Cincinnati Conference in 1858 requesting that the school be moved. This petition was crafted by the members of the MEC who lived in Xenia.
In its early years, WU had two programs of study, one was a college preparatory program which provided a high school education, and the other was a collegiate level education whose primary purpose was to train teachers. The student population of WU consisted of two types of students. One type, were students who were born to free people of color who hailed mainly from the free states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and California. The other were multiracial children from the American South who were born on plantations to enslaved black women and were fathered by white slave holders. These white men wanted their enslaved mixed-race children to receive an education, and sent their children north to WU to obtain one. The fathers paid for the educations that were denied their children in the South. The university awarded its first diplomas in 1857, and by 1860 the private university had more than 200 students.
WU's faculty was predominantly white when it opened, and that continued to be the case until the late 1870s when a shift towards a predominantly black faculty occurred. It did however, embrace both men and women on the faculty since its inception with Gaddis and his wife splitting the teaching work load between them in the school's first year. They were succeeded by Mary J. Allen, and James K. Parker and his wife Maggie Baker. Most of the teaching staff in the early years of WU were graduates of Oberlin College or other northern schools which supported abolition. In 1859 Sarah Jane Woodson began to teach at Wilberforce. She was the first black American to teach at a historically black college or university. She was a 1856 graduate of Oberlin College. She was the youngest sister of one of the original trustees, Lewis Woodson. After leaving the staff at the time of the school's temporary closure in 1862, she returned to Wilberforce in 1866 in a position of greater responsibility.