Former names | Colver Institute (1865–1886) [1] Richmond Theological Institute (1886–1899) Wayland Seminary (1865–1899) Hartshorn Memorial College (1883–1932) |
---|---|
Motto | The Lord Will Provide |
Type | Private historically black university |
Established | 1865 |
Endowment | $29 million |
President | Hakim Lucas |
Students | 1,700 |
Location | , Virginia , United States 37°33′45″N77°27′4″W / 37.56250°N 77.45111°W |
Campus | Urban, 84 acres (34 ha) |
Colors | Maroon and Steel |
Nickname | Panthers |
Sporting affiliations | NCAA Division II – CIAA |
Website | vuu |
Virginia Union University | |
Location | 1500 N. Lombardy St., Richmond, Virginia, United States |
Area | 11 acres (4.5 ha) |
Built | 1899 |
Architect | John H. Coxhead |
Architectural style | Richardsonian Romanesque |
NRHP reference No. | 82004590 [2] |
VLR No. | 127-0354 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | July 26, 1982 |
Designated VLR | June 16, 1981 [3] |
Virginia Union University is a private historically black university in Richmond, Virginia.
The American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) founded the school as Richmond Theological Institute in 1865 shortly after Union troops took control of Richmond, Virginia, at the end of the American Civil War, for African-American freedmen to enter into the ministry. [4] The college had the first academic library at a historically black college or university (HBCU), building the library in 1865 which was the same year the college was established. [5]
Its mission was soon expanded to offer courses and programs at college, high school, and preparatory levels, to both men and women. [6] 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 Francis Wayland, former president of Brown University and a leader in the anti-slavery struggle. The first and only president there was George Mellen Prentiss King, who administered Wayland for thirty years (1867–1897). Famous students there included Booker T. Washington and Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. [6]
Beginning in 1867, Colver Institute was housed in a building long known as Lumpkin's Jail, a former "slave jail" owned by Mary Ann Lumpkin, the African-American widow of the deceased white owner. It became Richmond Theological Institute (formerly Colver) and joined with Wayland Seminary of Washington in 1899 to form Virginia Union University at Richmond. [7]
In 1932, the women's college Hartshorn Memorial College, [8] [9] established in Richmond in 1883, became a part of Virginia Union University. Storer College, a historically black Baptist college in West Virginia founded in 1867, merged its endowment with Virginia Union in 1964. [10]
Name | Term |
---|---|
Malcolm MacVicar | 1899–1904 |
George Rice Hovey | 1904–1918 |
William John Clark | 1919–1941 |
John Malcus Ellison* | 1941–1955 |
Samuel Dewitt Proctor | 1955–1960 |
Thomas Howard Henderson | 1960–1970 |
Allix Bledsoe James | 1970–1979 |
David Thomas Shannon | 1979–1985 |
S. Dallas Simmons | 1985–1999 |
Bernard Wayne Franklin | 1999–2003 |
Belinda C. Anderson | 2003–2008 |
Claude G. Perkins | 2009–2016 |
Joseph F. Johnson | 2016–2017 (acting) |
Hakim J. Lucas | 2017–present |
*first alumnus and African-American to serve as president of the university |
The university is divided into four main schools: [11]
Virginia Union University's Theological training program is called The Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. James Henry Harris, the early American civil rights advocate, was a graduate. The school is a member of the Washington Theological Consortium. [12]
There are over 20 student organizations, including several fraternities and sororities.
Virginia Union competes in the NCAA Division II in the Eastern Division of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The school has varsity teams in men's basketball, football, cross country, golf, tennis and track and field, and in women's basketball, bowling, cross country, tennis and track and field, softball and volleyball. [13]
In 2018, both Virginia Union University's DII Men & Women's Basketball Teams won the CIAA Championship. [14] Virginia Union plays basketball and volleyball in the Barco-Stevens Hall, built as the Belgian Building for the 1939 New York World's Fair. The building, which has stone reliefs depicting the Belgian Congo, was one of thirteen facilities designated as "unique" by NCAA News in 2005. The building was awarded to the university in 1941 and moved to its present location in 1943. The basketball team began using the facility in early 1947. [15]
It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. [16]
Name | Class year | Notability | Reference(s) |
---|---|---|---|
Roger Anderson | NFL player | ||
James Atkins | 2002 | Former NFL player | |
Mamye BaCote | 1961 | Virginia House of Delegates (2004-2016) | |
Darius Bea | attended two years | Negro league outfielder and pitcher | [17] |
Bessye J. Bearden | 1900s | Journalist and social activist; mother of artist Romare Bearden | |
Leslie Garland Bolling | 1924 | Early 20th century wood carver | |
Simeon Booker | 1941 | award-winning journalist and the first African-American reporter for The Washington Post | |
Michael Brim | 1988 | former National Football League player | |
Roslyn M. Brock | 1987 | Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) | |
Homer S. Brown | judge, civil rights leader, and state representative in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | ||
Henry Allen Bullock | 1928 | Historian, winner of the Bancroft Prize | |
Tamarat Makonnen | 1994 | Film director, producer and writer | |
Emmett C. Burns, Jr. | Maryland House of Delegates (1995–2006) | ||
Terry Davis | 1989 | Former NBA player | [18] |
Robert Prentiss Daniel | 1924 | President of Shaw and Virginia State universities for more than 30 years in total | [19] |
Will Downing | attended | R&B Singer | |
AJ English | 1990 | former Professional Basketball Player | [18] |
Walter Fauntroy | 1955 | Civil rights leader, minister, former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, from Washington, D.C.'s At-large district and was a candidate for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination | |
Anderson J. Franklin | Professor of Psychology at the School of Education at Boston College | [20] | |
Samuel Lee Gravely, Jr. | 1948 | first African-American to reach the rank of admiral in the United States Navy | |
Abram Lincoln Harris | 1922 | Economist; chair, Economics Dept. Howard University (1936–1945); professor, University of Chicago | |
Pete Hunter | 2002 | former National Football League player | |
Cornelius Johnson | 1967 | Former NFL player | |
Eugene Kinckle Jones | 1906 | Member of the Black Cabinet under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a founder of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. | |
Dwight Clinton Jones | 1967 | Mayor of Richmond, Virginia (2009–2016) | |
Charles Spurgeon Johnson | 1916 | first black president of Fisk University | |
Lyman T. Johnson | 1930 | integrated the University of Kentucky | |
Leontine T. Kelly | 1960 | a bishop of the United Methodist Church | |
Henry L. Marsh | 1956 | first African-American mayor of Richmond, Virginia and member of the Virginia Senate from the 16th district | |
Benjamin Mays | 1916-1917, transferred to Bates College | President of Morehouse College, mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
Bai T. Moore | Liberian author and poet | ||
Delores McQuinn | 1976 | Virginia House of Delegates (2009-present) | |
Charles Oakley | Professional basketball Player | [18] | |
Chandler Owen | 1913 | Writer, editor and early member of the Socialist Party of America. | |
Wendell H. Phillips | member, Maryland House of Delegates (1979–1987) | ||
Samuel DeWitt Proctor | 1942 | President of VUU and president of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he made close acquaintance with then student body president Jesse Jackson | |
Randall Robinson | Attorney; founder of TransAfrica | ||
James R. Roebuck, Jr. | 1966 | member of Pennsylvania House of Representatives, District 188 | |
Spottswood William Robinson III | 1937 | Prominent civil rights attorney, dean of Howard University Law School, first African American to be appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia | |
Frank S. Royal | 1961 | chairman of VUU's board; director of public companies; former president of the National Medical Association | [21] |
Herbert Scott | 1974 | National Football League player, 2-time All-Pro, 3-time Pro Bowl; Dallas Cowboys | [22] |
Clarence L. Townes Jr. | 1948 | businessperson, politician, and civic activist from Richmond, Virginia | [23] |
Wyatt T Walker | Activist, civil rights motivator, musician, Theologian who gave letter to Martin Luther King from Coretta; close confidant and preacher | ||
Ben Wallace | 1996 | Professional Basketball Player, NBA Defensive Player of the Year, NBA Champion, Member of Basketball Hall of Fame; Detroit Pistons | [18] |
Douglas Wilder | 1951 | first African-American governor of Virginia (1990–1994) and Mayor of Richmond (2005–2009) | |
N. Scott Phillips | 1983 | member, Maryland House of Delegates |
The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level, whose member institutions consist entirely of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
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Shaw University is a private historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded on December 1, 1865, Shaw University is the oldest HBCU to begin offering courses in the Southern United States. The school had its origin in the formation of a theological class of freedmen in the Guion Hotel. The following year it moved to a large wooden building, at the corner of Blount and Cabarrus Streets in Raleigh, where it continued as the Raleigh Institute until 1870. In 1870, the school moved to its current location on the former property of Confederate General Barringer and changed its name to the Shaw Collegiate Institute, in honor of Elijah Shaw. In 1875, the school was officially chartered with the State of North Carolina as Shaw University.
Francis Wayland was an American Baptist minister, educator and economist. He was president of Brown University and pastor of the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, Rhode Island. In Washington, D.C., Wayland Seminary was established in 1867, primarily to educate former slaves, and was named in his honor.
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Wayland Seminary was the Washington, D.C., school of the National Theological Institute. The institute was established beginning in 1865 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS). At first designed primarily for providing education and training for African-American freedmen to enter into the ministry, it expanded its offerings to meet the educational demands of the former enslaved population. Just before the end of the 19th century it was merged with its sister institution, the Richmond Theological Seminary, to form the current Virginia Union University in Richmond.
Henry Boyd Hucles Jr. was an American football, basketball, and baseball coach and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Virginia Union University from 1919 to 1920 and again from 1926 to 1942 and at Prairie View A&M University from 1923 to 1925. Hucles was also the athletic director at Virginia Union from 1926 to 1950. His son, Henry B. Hucles III, became a suffragan bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island.
Richmond Theological Seminary (RTS) was a higher education institution in Richmond, Virginia, serving former slaves after the American Civil War. It had its beginnings in November 1865 when the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) sponsored Joseph Getchell Binney a short-lived class in Richmond, VA for theological training of African-Americans.
Charles Henry Corey (1834-1899), was a Canadian Baptist clergyman.
Lumpkin's Jail, also known as "the Devil's half acre", was a slave breeding farm, as well as a holding facility, or slave jail, located in Richmond, Virginia, just three blocks from the state capitol building. More than five dozen firms traded in enslaved human beings within blocks of Richmond's Wall Street between 14th and 18th Streets between the 1830s and the end of the American Civil War. Its final and most notorious owner, Robert Lumpkin, bought and sold slaves throughout the South for well over twenty years, and Lumpkin's Jail became Richmond's largest slave-holding facility.
James B. Simmons, was a minister and abolitionist during the Antebellum period. He served as a Baptist minister in Providence, Rhode Island; Indianapolis, Indiana; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and New York City.
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Nathaniel Colver was an American Baptist clergyman.
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Hartshorn Memorial College was a private college for African-American women in Richmond, Virginia, active from 1883 until 1932. When it closed, it was merged into Virginia Union University.
Rosa Kinckle Jones was an African American music teacher from the U.S. state of Virginia. She was one of the first 10 women who graduated from the Normal School of Howard University, and she headed Hartshorn Memorial College's music department for 40 years, being one of only two African American faculty members.
Eva Roberta Coles Boone was an African-American teacher and Baptist missionary from Charlottesville, Virginia, who served with her husband Clinton Caldwell Boone in what was then the Congo Free State, now the Congo.
Lometa Ruth Odom was an American women's basketball player and coach. Odom played for Wayland Baptist from 1953 to 1956 during which the team began a streak of 131 consecutive victories. Odom was a member of the U.S. women's national team which won the gold medal in basketball at the 1955 Pan American Games. In 2011 she was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
Rev. George Rice Hovey was an American university president, professor, minister, and author. He served as the President of Wayland Seminary from 1897 to 1899; and as the President of Virginia Union University (VUU) from 1904 to 1918. Hovey taught theology, Hebrew, New Testament Greek, and philosophy. In his late career he worked to create an extension course for Black ministers. He was also known as George Hovey Rice.