Philanthropy
In 1882 he donated $1,000,000 to a board of ten trustees, incorporated in New York state, for the uplifting of the lately emancipated population of the Southern states, and their posterity, by conferring on them the benefits of Christian education. Among the original trustees of the Slater Fund were Rutherford B Hayes, Morrison R Waite, William E Dodge, Phillips Brooks, Daniel Coit Gilman, Morris Ketchum Jesup and the donor's son, William A Slater; and among members chosen later were Melville W Fuller, William E Dodge, Jr, Henry Codman Potter, Cleveland H Dodge and Seth Low. In 1909 by careful investment the fund had increased, in spite of expenditures, to more than $1,500,000.
The fund has been of great value in aiding industrial schools in the South, its largest beneficiaries being the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of Hampton, Virginia, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Tuskegee, Alabama, Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, Claflin University in Orangeburg, SC, and Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee. At Winston-Salem, NC, is the Slater State Normal and Industrial School, founded in 1892 and named after the founder of the fund (now part of Winston-Salem State University). Other state normal schools for African Americans received assistance from the fund, as have some Southern urban school boards.
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
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