[Footnote 1: Baird, A Collection, etc., p. 819.]
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the United States Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 382.]
An equally successful plan of workers in the West resulted in the founding of the first higher institution to be controlled by Negroes. Having for some years believed that the colored people needed a college for the preparation of teachers and preachers, the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in session in 1855 appointed Rev. John F. Wright as general agent to execute this design. Addressing themselves immediately to this task Rev. Mr. Wright and his associates solicited from philanthropic persons by 1856 the amount of $13,000. The agents then made the purchase payment on the beautiful site of Tawawa Springs, long known as the healthy summer resort near Xenia, Ohio.[1] That same year the institution was incorporated as Wilberforce University. From 1856 to 1862 the school had a fair student body, consisting of the mulatto children of southern slaveholders.[2] When these were kept away, however, by the operations of the Civil War, the institution declined so rapidly that it had to be closed for a season. Thereafter the trustees appealed again to the African Methodist Episcopal Church which in 1856 had declined the invitation to coöperate with the founders. The colored Methodists had adhered to their decision to operate Union Seminary, a manual labor school, which they had started near Columbus, Ohio.[3] The proposition was accepted, however, in 1862. For the amount of the debt of $10,000 which the institution had incurred while passing through the crisis, Rev. Daniel A. Payne and his associates secured the transfer of the property to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. These new directors hoped to develop a first-class university, offering courses in law, medicine, literature, and theology. The debt being speedily removed the school showed evidences of new vigor, but was checked in its progress by an incendiary, who burned the main building while the teachers and pupils were attending an emancipation celebration at Xenia, April 14, 1865. With the amount of insurance received and donations from friends, the trustees were able to construct a more commodious building which still marks the site of these early labors.[4]
[Footnote 1: The Non-Slaveholder, vol. ii., p. 113.]
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, pp. 372-373.]
[Footnote 3: History of Greene County, Ohio, chapter on Wilberforce; and Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 373.]
[Footnote 4: The Non-Slaveholder, vol. ii., p. 113.]
A brighter day for the higher education of the colored people at home, however, had begun to dawn during the forties. The abolitionists were then aggressively demanding consideration for the Negroes. Men "condescended" to reason together about slavery and the treatment of the colored people. The northern people ceased to think that they had nothing to do with these problems. When these questions were openly discussed in the schools of the North, students and teachers gradually became converted to the doctrine of equality in education. This revolution was instituted by President C.B. Storrs, of Western Reserve College, then at Hudson, Ohio. His doctrine in regard to the training of the mind "was that men are able to be made only by putting youth under the responsibilities of men." He, therefore, encouraged the free discussion of all important subjects, among which was the appeal of the Negroes for enlightenment. This policy gave rise to a spirit of inquiry which permeated the whole school. The victory, however, was not easy. After a long struggle the mind of the college was carried by irresistible argument in favor of fair play for colored youth. This institution had two colored students as early as 1834.[1]
[Footnote 1: First Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, p. 42.]
Northern institutions of learning were then reaching the third stage in their participation in the solution of the Negro problem. At first they had to be converted even to allow a free discussion of the question; next the students on being convinced that slavery was a sin, sought to elevate the blacks thus degraded; and finally these workers, who had been accustomed to instructing the neighboring colored people, reached the conclusion that they should be admitted to their schools on equal footing with the whites. Geneva College, then at Northfield, Ohio, now at Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, was being moved in this manner.[1]