1 Fletcher, Robert Samuel A History of Oberlin College (Oberlin: Oberlin College, 1943), 170.Google Scholar

2 A number of scholars have demonstrated Oberlin's importance in the education of blacks. James McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 162–3; Jones, Jacqueline Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Southern Blacks, 1865–1873 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 104; McGinnis, Frederick The Education of Negroes in Ohio (Blanchester, Ohio: Curless Printing Co., 1962), 78–81; Bond, Horace Mann The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1934); Woodson, Carter G. A Century of Negro Migration (New York: Russell and Russell, 1918).Google Scholar

3 In 1835 in Washington D.C., “lower class whites” destroyed black schoolrooms. In 1846 the black community of Boston was split apart over the issue of integrated schools. The public schools were segregated and unequal. Although blacks paid taxes, little funding went to black schools. White philanthropists and abolitionists helped to establish private schools for blacks in some communities, but these did not provide access for the majority of black children. In Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and New York suits were filed to desegregate the schools during the 1840s. See David Tyack, The One Best System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 111–113; Kaestle, Carl Pillars of the Republic (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 48–51.Google Scholar

4 Litwack, Leon North Of Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 139. Black colleges were founded primarily in the South after the Civil War by northern missionary societies. For example, The American Missionary Association founded Fisk University, Talladega College and Tugaloo College. The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church established colleges administrated by blacks, such as Morris Brown College in Atlanta. The AME was also responsible for the founding of Wilberforce College, in Ohio, after the Civil War. See James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 238–240.Google Scholar

5 This opinion can be found in the pro-slavery argument of the antebellum period. According to William Jenkins in, The Pro-slavery Thought in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), there was a moral, philosophical and ethnological justification of slavery in the antebellum period. One argument advanced the notion that the brains of black people were smaller, thus making it impossible for them to learn very much beyond menial labor. See also George M. Frederickson, The Arrogance of Race (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), Part I.Google Scholar

6 Lawson, Ellen “Observations on an Antebellum Interracial ‘Utopia,'“ The (Oberlin College) Observer (March 4, 1982): 4.Google Scholar

7 Phillips, Wilbur Oberlin Colony, The Story of a Century (Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin Printing Company, 1933), 18.Google Scholar

8 McGinnis, The Education of Negroes in Ohio, 78–9Google Scholar

9 Fairchild, James Oberlin, The Colony and the College, 1833–1883 (Oberlin, Ohio: E.J. Goodrich, 1883), 55.Google Scholar

10 Blodgett, Geoffrey “Myth and Reality in Oberlin History,“ Oberlin Alumni Magazine 68 (May/June 1972): 6.Google Scholar

11 Cowles, Henry Catalogue and Record of Colored Students, Office of the Secretary, Oberlin College, Oberlin College Archives and W.S. Ament, “Who Shall Receive an Education at Oberlin?” Oberlin Alumni Magazine 19 (December 1922): 8. Oberlin had a number of different programs, including a preparatory school. This was not uncommon for colleges of the period.Google Scholar

12 Cowles, Catalogue and Record of Colored Students, Office of the Secretary, Oberlin College, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

13 Hartson, Louis D. “The Occupation of Oberlin's Colored Alumni,“ Oberlin Alumni Magazine 28 (July 1992): 302.Google Scholar

14 Hickok, Charles The Negro in Ohio (Cleveland: Williams Publishing and Electric Company, 1896), 81.Google Scholar

15 Lawson, “Observations on an Antebellum Interracial ‘Utopia,'“ 4.Google Scholar

16 See Shumway, E.L. Oberliniana (Cleveland: Home Publishing Company, 1883); Brandt, Nat The Town That Started the Civil War (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1990); McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy, 155; Hine, Darlene Clark Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 897–899; Litwack, North of Slavery, 139–141.Google Scholar

17 Fletcher, History of Oberlin College, 236–7Google Scholar

18 Bigglestone, William “Oberlin College and the Negro Student, 1865–1940,“ Journal of Negro History 56 (July 1971): 198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Nieman, Donald “Introduction,“ in African Americans and Education in the South, ed. Nieman, Donald (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), ix; Gillette, William Retreat From Reconstruction, 1869–1879 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 366.Google Scholar

20 Kluger, Richard Simple Justice (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 81.Google Scholar

21 Woodward, C. Vann The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford Press, 1974), 70.Google Scholar

22 Between 1882 and 1901 there were 3,130 lynchings in the United States. Monroe N. Work, ed., Annual Negro Yearbook, 1931–32 (Tuskegee, Alabama: Tuskegee Institute Press, 1931), 293; Shapiro, Herbert White Violence and Black Response (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 103; Litwack, Leon Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1979), 308.Google Scholar

23 McPherson, Abolitionist Legacy, 3 (n 1). In his introduction, McPherson challenged the work of August Meier and Elliott Rudwick's From Plantation to Ghetto (1970) and C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1974) as well as other works that advanced the notion that abolitionists abandoned the cause of blacks.Google Scholar

24 Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love, 33 and McPherson, Abolitionist Legacy, 162.Google Scholar

25 Paris, Peter J. The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 6.Google Scholar

26 Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 471.Google Scholar

27 Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, p. 135.Google Scholar

28 Photographic collections show blacks and whites worshipping together in church. Various collections, Oberlin College Archives and W. Deane Wolfe, “Echoes of Greatness: Remembering John Mercer Langston,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine 80 (Winter 1984), 14–15.Google Scholar

29 “Political, Social and Church Notes,” (Cleveland) Gazette (25 June, 1892): 3.Google Scholar

30 Hostadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 277–288; Veysey, Laurence The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), introduction; Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University (New York: Knopf, 1962), chapter 12.Google Scholar

31 See Bruce Leslie, William Gentlemen and Scholars: College and Community in “the Age of the University, 1865–1917 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 1–3; and Peterson, George The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, Mass: Amherst College Press, 1964), 3–4.Google Scholar

32 Rudolph, in The American College and University, argued that the emergence of the university system forced small colleges to face questions they had previously been able to ignore concerning their futures, 261–264.Google Scholar

33 Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present as quoted in James Maclachlan, “The American College in the Nineteenth Century: Towards a Reappraisal,” Teachers College Record 80 (December 1978): 296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 For example, Asa Mahan, the first president of Oberlin was also one of the first members of the Oberlin Anti-Slavery society as was Charles Finney, the head of the theology department and the minister of the church. James Fairchild hid the fugitive slave of the Wellington Rescue in his barn while still a professor of philosophy and math. He later became president of the college.Google Scholar

35 Barnard, John From Evangelicalism to Progressivism at Oberlin College, 1866–1917 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969), 81–93.Google Scholar

36 Reuben, Julie The Making of the Modern University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 4.Google Scholar

37 Shipherd, John one of the founders of Oberlin, wrote a letter to the community that cast Oberlin in the role of savior and blacks in the role of sinners. He skillfully translated the question of admission of black students to one of Christian faith and goodness. The text of the letter is in McGinnis, The Education of Negroes in Ohio, 79.Google Scholar

38 Bigglestone, “Oberlin College and the Negro Student,“ 200.Google Scholar

39 Reported in editions of Oberlin News, Oberlin Review and in the incoming presidential correspondence for James Fairchild, Fairchild Papers, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

40 Oberlin News, (22 December, 1882): 5. Some alumni letters from other areas in the country indicate that the story must have been reported in papers other than the Oberlin News. Google Scholar

41 Oberlin Review 10 (3 February, 1883): 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Ibid.Google Scholar

43 Oberlin Review 10 (3 March, 1883): 136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Ibid.Google Scholar

45 Oberlin Review (3 March, 1883), p. 137.Google Scholar

46 Ibid.Google Scholar

47 Ibid.Google Scholar

48 Fairchild, Oberlin: The Colony and the College, 112.Google Scholar

49 Oberlin Review (3 March 1883): 137.Google Scholar

50 Ibid.Google Scholar

51 Blodgett, Geoffrey “John Mercer Langston and the Case of Edmonia Lewis: Oberlin, 1862,“ Journal of Negro History 53 (July 1971): 201 and Alfred Vance Churchill, “Midwestern: The Colored People,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 24 (Summer 1952): 166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 “How Oberlin Has Changed,” (Cleveland) Gazette (28 March, 1891): 3.Google Scholar

53 Ibid.Google Scholar

54 Cowles, “Catalogue and Record of Colored Students.“ and Ament, “Who Shall Receive and Education at Oberlin?” 8.Google Scholar

55 Barnard, From Evangelicalism to Progressivism, 78–9.Google Scholar

56 Metcalf, Irving W. to Oberlin Alumni Magazine (April 1910): 254.Google Scholar

57 Weisenberger, Frances “William Sanders Scarborough Early Years at Wilberforce, Ohio,“ Northwest Ohio Quarterly 71 (October 1962): 212.Google Scholar

58 Potts, David Wesley an University, 1831–1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 41.Google Scholar

59 “Our Washington Letter,” (Cleveland) Gazette (13 October, 1883): 3.Google Scholar

60 Leslie, Gentlemen and Scholars, 105.Google Scholar

61 “Literary Society for Colored Students,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine 6 (March 1910): 224.Google Scholar

62 Lord, L.E. “Literary Societies for Colored Students,“ Oberlin Alumni Magazine 6 (April 1910): 250.Google Scholar

63 Ibid.Google Scholar

64 Warner, Lucien T. to Oberlin Alumni Magazine (April 1910): 253.Google Scholar

65 Howe, C.M. to Oberlin Alumni Magazine 6 (April 1910): 251–2.Google Scholar

66 Metcalf, to Oberlin Alumni Magazine (April 1910): 254.Google Scholar

67 Howe, to Oberlin Alumni Magazine, 251–2.Google Scholar

68 Ibid.Google Scholar

69 See DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1907) and Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1901).Google Scholar

70 “Declares Negroes Will be Welcomed,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (September 20, 1910): 1.Google Scholar

71 Kluger, Simple Justice, 81.Google Scholar

72 For example, the Oberlin Review reported in 1905 that black athletes were ridiculed by their teammates. In 1908, an Oberlin alumna wrote to President King asking him to not allow the Glee Club to sing at the YMCA in Columbus because, “…colored young men were not or would not be received as members.” Clara Burnett Hardy to Henry Churchill King, 9 November, 1908. King Papers, incoming correspondence, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

73 Bigglestone, “Oberlin College and the Negro Student,“ 208; Florence M. Fitch to “Dear Ones at Home,” 9 February, 1909. Fitch Papers, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

74 Terrell, Mary Church A Colored Woman in a White World (New York: Arno Press, 1940), 40; Bigglestone, “Oberlin College and the Negro Student,” 207.Google Scholar

75 Fitch to “Dear Ones at Home,” 25 November, 1906. Fitch Papers, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

76 Bigglestone, “Oberlin College and the Negro Student,“ 208 Google Scholar

77 Fitch, Florence M. to “Dear Ones at Home” 20 November, 1904. Fitch Papers, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

78 Fitch, 25 November, 1906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Fitch, 9 February, 1909.Google Scholar

80 Mary Church Terrell to Henry Churchill King, January 26, 1914. King Papers, incoming correspondence. Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

81 Henry Churchill King to Mary Church Terrell, February 4, 1914. HC King Correspondence, Outgoing, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

82 Warner, Oberlin Alumni Magazine (April 1910): 253.Google Scholar

83 Terrell to King, January 26, 1914. King Papers, incoming correspondence, Oberlin College Archives.Google Scholar

84 Fullerton, Kemper “College or Cause?“ Oberlin Alumni Magazine 22 (April 1926): 9.Google Scholar