Oakwood University

Early years

Oakwood University has its origins in the post-Civil and post-slavery effort to fund higher education for African-Americans who had been freed in the South. In response to the counsel of SDA Church co-founder Ellen G. White, a committee was appointed by the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to buy property and create a school that offers vocational education and spiritual direction to African-American students. In January 1896, the committee bought for $6,700 the 360-acre (1.5 km2) plantation that had been owned by the enslavers of Dred Scott. That same year, Oakwood University was founded as Oakwood Industrial School in Huntsville, Alabama, under the authority of the General Conference.

Named for the oak trees surrounding it and the white SDA Church leaders' belief that industrial work is fitting for southern African-Americans, students were initially required to work in industrial positions on-campus to pay for their tuition. Their jobs included machine shop and farm work for male students and print shop, laundry and tailor shop work for female students. Classes commenced in November 1896 with 16 students enrolled. Solon Marquis Jacobs served as the school's first principal beginning in 1896 and, in 1917, James Irving Beardsley was appointed the first president. By that same year, the school offered a theology program as well as a programs for various trades, such as farming, teaching, masonry, and pre-nursing. Prior to 1917, the school was renamed Huntsville Training School and Oakwood Manual Training School before it became Oakwood Junior College.

Social activism

In 1931, after years of student complaints about school conditions—including "heavy work schedules, low wages, the inability to accumulate academic credit due to the workloads" and racial segregation on campus—students went on strike, petitioning for better conditions, liberal arts programs, more African American faculty members and an African American president. In 1932, after student strikers held a series of pep rallies, speeches and worship gatherings and sent a letter to the General Conference petitioning for change, the General Conference recruited more African Americans to Oakwood's faculty, making it predominantly African American. Additionally, the General Conference first invited two of Oakwood's white professors to become president in response to the strikes and petitions. It was only after the professors rejected the invitation that was it extended to James L. Moran, Oakwood's first African American president. Although Moran became president, the General Conference asserted that a white man would manage the school's business affairs and serve as the liaison between the school board and the General Conference, two roles typically held by the president of a higher education institution. It was under the leadership of President Moran that Oakwood attained earned four-year college status and was renamed Oakwood College.

Due to the conservative ideologies of the SDA Church, students' initial involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was restrained. Oakwood's non-participation stance, declared by the General Conference, discouraged faculty involvement in the movement. Despite this, after Oakwood hosted guest speaker Martin Luther King Jr. in 1962—and was the only institution in Huntsville that would host him—some Oakwood students became moderately active in the movement. Because the SDA ideologies discouraged association with those outside of the church, Oakwood students were disconnected from those at neighboring schools. Also, their access to news outlets such as radio and television was restricted and completely banned in dormitories, limiting their awareness of ongoing events related to the civil rights movement.

The Church and the South's expectations for women hindered female students' freedom to choose to participate in civil resistance events, if they desired to do so. However, students were able to stay informed of protests through local black-owned radio station WEUP, and male students had more freedom in choosing whether to participate in sit-ins, prayer-ins and marches, store boycotts and other nonviolent acts of resistance. Their efforts to integrate local white SDA churches were met with hostility by segregationists. For example, white church officials called the police to remove black students from the church grounds and altered their worship service times to coincide with students' class times, preventing them from being able to attend. In spite of the SDA Church's efforts against students' activism, a few male Oakwood students formed activist coalitions with Alabama A&M University students or formed their own small activist groups which attempted to obtain service at establishments throughout Huntsville that would only serve white patrons.

Accreditation and growth

Oakwood began with an initial enrollment of 16 students in 1896, and increased to more than 100 by 1917 and 200 in 1927.

It was initially accredited as a junior college in 1943, and the school's first baccalaureate degrees were awarded in 1945.

Between 1958 and 1963, Oakwood made progress toward full senior college accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and joined the United Negro College Fund in 1964.