History
Earlham was founded in 1847 as a boarding high school for the religious education of Quaker adolescents. In 1859, Earlham became Earlham College, upon the addition of collegiate academics. At this time, Earlham was the second Quaker college in the United States (Haverford College was first), and the second to be coeducational (Oberlin College was first). Though the college initially only admitted students who belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, Earlham began admitting non-Quakers in 1865. The college was named for Earlham Hall, home of the Gurneys, an important English Quaker family.
Over time, as Quakerism in America became more progressive, Earlham's practices changed with them, though the college has remained faithful to its Quaker roots. In 1942 Earlham enrolled several dozen Japanese-American students to prevent their internment during World War II, a decision that was very controversial in Richmond. 1960 marked the establishment of the Earlham School of Religion as the only Friends seminary in the world.
Read more about this topic: Earlham College
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)