 |
| Oberlin women grads of 1855 included Ann Hazel, center. |
On December 3, 1833 Oberlin College in Ohio became the first institution in the United States to become co-educational. The College and the town of the same name
were founded by John
J. Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart
two idealistic Presbyterian missionaries
to the still virtual frontier of northern Ohio.
They found the locals crude, uneducated, and in sin suffering from a
lack of good moral guidance. They
resolved to found a Christian community
and a school to educate more missionaries to benighted pioneers.
Legend had it that they started
out on horse back from Elyria, Ohio and found their ideal location just eight miles
south when they stopped eat and pray in the dense forest. They discovered the land belonged to a Connecticut investor. Undeterred, Shipherd headed east, found the
owner and convinced him to donate 500 acres to start the school. Both founders rounded up further supporters
from family and friends in the east, and purchased 5,000 more acres as a town
site. The first settlers arrived at
Oberlin, named for an Alsatian missionary the founders admired in the spring
of 1833, the school was chartered September and classes started on December 3 29 men and 15 women students began classes in the Oberlin Collegiate Institute. Students were charged no tuition, but
expected to donate their labor at literally hacking a college out of the
wilderness and supporting it with the income of farms and orchards.
A year after the school started, Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati banned abolition agitation among students and
faculty. A large percentage of the
faculty and many students led by Trustee
Asa Mahan, and Professor John Morgan
left the school in protest. Fledgling
Oberlin invited them to come there.
Mahan agreed on three conditions:
that Oberlin accept students regardless of color, respect students’
freedom of speech, and Trustees not “interfere with the internal regulation of
the school.” The founders readily
agreed. In 1836 a new theological
school at Oberlin opened and Mahan became President of the college and went on
to be the driving force behind the school for the next 15 years.
True to its word, Oberlin was admitting Black students on an absolutely equal
basis as whites from 1834. By the turn
of the 20th Century more than one
third of all Black college graduates from predominately white colleges came
from Oberlin.
Although there had been women on campus from the
beginning, it was 1837 when the first four women entered the degree program and
three of the four—Mary Caroline
Rudd, Mary Hosford, and Elizabeth Prall graduated with their
class in 1841.
Oberlin became an
abolitionist hot bed. Both the college
and homes in the town served as stations on the Underground Railroad. In 1858 37 students and faculty were indicted
when they rescued a runaway slave arrested in Oberlin from Federal Marshals in the town of Wellington by force. The
case created a national furor. Only two
of those indicted actually went to trial, but publicity about the case strengthen
the abolitionist cause in the state and spurred the new state Republican Party to take a strong
stance against the Fugitive Slave
Act. Two Oberlin College
participants in that action—Lewis
Sheridan Leary and John Anthony
Copeland—and town resident Shields
Green Fredrick Douglas, joined John Brown in his raid on the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal.
William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, and other
firebrands of the movement all spoke at the college—and recruited faculty and
students for the movement. Little wonder
that historians have called Oberlin, “The college that started the Civil
War.” The school is still proud of this
past and on the campus are monuments to the Underground Railroad, the
Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, and John Browns raid.
The campus was
equally hospitable to the emerging movement for Women’s Suffrage. Pioneers
of the movement like Susan B. Anthony,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet
Beecher Stowe spoke there and important regional meeting of various Women’s
suffrage societies were held at the school or in the town. Suffrage leader Lucy Stone was among the early Oberlin
co-eds. 1847 graduate Antoinette Brown Blackwell spoke at the first national Women’s Rights convention in 1850 which was
organized by Stone. She became a leader
of the movement and one of the first women ordained to the ministry in the
United States. Other Oberlin graduates
have continued to provide leadership for the women’s movement to this day.
In recognition of the college’s unique place
in Black and Women’s history it was added to the National Registry of
Historic Sites.
In 1850 the State Legislature granted a new
charter to the school officially changing the name to Oberlin College. The College’s famous Music School
opened in 1867.
Oberlin has continued to be a bastion of
liberal education and a cradle for student activism to this day. There are currently about 2,850 students
pursuing a degree at the school. They
maintain the tradition of activism and inclusion. It is near the top of lists of schools for
campus activism, openness to Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, and Transgender
students, and is the “friendliest campus” to vegetarian and vegan students.
It is now one of the most prestigious private
four year liberal arts colleges in the country.
More of its graduates go on to earn Ph.D. than those of any other
American college or university. At a
time when similar institutions—like equally famous Antioch College in Yellow
Springs have been forced to close and many more are in danger, Oberlin has
continued to thrive.
