History
Malcolm MacVicar | 1899–1904 | First President |
Dr. George Rice Hovey | 1904–1918 | Second President |
Mr. William John Clark | 1919–1941 | Third President |
Dr. John Malcus Ellison* | 1941–1955 | Fourth President |
Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor | 1955–1960 | Fifth President |
Dr. Thomas Howard Henderson | 1960–1970 | Sixth President |
Dr. Allix Bledsoe James | 1970–1979 | Seventh President |
Dr. David Thomas Shannon | 1979–1985 | Eighth President |
Dr. S. Dallas Simmons | 1985–1999 | Ninth President |
Dr. Bernard Wayne Franklin | 1999–2003 | Tenth President |
Dr. Belinda C. Anderson | 2003–2008 | Eleventh President |
Dr. Claude G. Perkins | 2009–present | Twelfth President |
The American Baptist Home Mission Society founded the school in 1865 shortly after Union troops took control of Richmond, Virginia, at the end of the American Civil War. Approximately 4 million former African American slaves, or freedmen, were to become citizens, although many had been deprived of formal education and prevented from becoming literate by Southern state laws. Southern states were in upheaval after the war. Both planters and freedmen were trying to figure out what a free labor market would entail.
Members of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) proposed a "National Theological Institute" to educate freedmen wishing to enter the Baptist ministry. Soon, the proposed mission was expanded to offer courses and programs at college, high school and even preparatory levels, to both men and women. This effort was the beginning of Virginia Union University.
Separate branches of the National Theological Institute were set up in Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia, with classes beginning in 1867. In Washington, the school became known as Wayland Seminary, named in commemoration of Dr. Francis Wayland, former president of Brown University and a leader in the anti-slavery struggle. The first and only president was Dr. George Mellen Prentiss King, who administered Wayland for thirty years (1867–97). Famous students there included Dr. Booker T. Washington and Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.
In Richmond, the efforts were more difficult. Beginning in 1867, Colver Institute, a VUU predecessor school, was housed in a building long known as Lumpkin's Jail, a former "slave jail" owned by Mrs. Mary Ann Lumpkin, the African-American widow of the deceased white owner. In 1899, the Richmond Theological Institute (formerly Colver Institute) joined with Wayland Seminary of Washington, D.C. to form Virginia Union University at Richmond.
In 1932, the women's college Hartshorn Memorial College, established in Richmond, Virginia in 1883, became a part of Virginia Union University. Storer College, an historically black Baptist college in West Virginia (founded in 1867), merged its endowment with Virginia Union in 1964.
Read more about this topic: Virginia Union University
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If you look at the 150 years of modern Chinas history since the Opium Wars, then you cant avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in Chinas modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)