Happy Founders' Day!

Paul Quinn College Founder's Day is Saturday, April 4th, celebrating 137 years of existence. It is time to think about what 137 years means, and it is time for some bragging: Paul Quinn College is in sixth place!

Bragging about coming in sixth? In this list, it is a point of pride:

Southwestern University, 1840
Baylor University, 1845
Austin College, 1849
St. Mary's University, 1852
Mary Hardin-Baylor University, 1866 (obtained separate charter from Baylor)
Paul Quinn College, 1872

Paul Quinn College is the sixth-oldest institution of higher education in the state of Texas. It was also the first college or university established in the aftermath of the Civil War (Mary Hardin-Baylor University was already in existence as part of Baylor University).

137 years of existence means that Paul Quinn College has a longer history than any of the state's fine public universities--Texas A&M was established in 1876; the University of Texas in 1883.

Paul Quinn College has a longer history than any of its neighbor institutions of higher learning in the Dallas-Fort Worth area--Texas Christian University was established in 1873; the University of North Texas in 1890; the University of Texas at Arlington in 1895; Dallas Baptist University in 1898; Texas Woman's University in 1901; Southern Methodist University in 1911.

Paul Quinn College is the oldest historically Black college or university west of the Mississippi--older than Wiley College (1873), Prairie View A&M (1876), Huston-Tillotson (1877), Texas College (1894), Jarvis Christian College (1912), Texas Southern University (1947), or Southwestern Christian College (1948), our esteemed sister institutions in the state of Texas.

But more importantly, 137 years of history means that Paul Quinn College began less than seven years after the abolition of slavery in Texas, only two years after the state was readmitted to the Union, during a turbulent and violent period when the gains achieved with Emancipation were already visibly slipping away. It was not an auspicious time to start a school, but need does not wait upon convenience, and neither do leaders. A group of African Methodist Episcopal clergymen established the school in a building in Austin on April 4, 1872; ten years later the school, newly chartered as "Paul Quinn College", moved into a building in Waco that was built by a "ten-cents-a-brick" campaign held throughout the A.M.E. churches in Texas.

Most colleges are founded by the vision of a small group of individuals, and Paul Quinn College certainly has individuals to thank--men such as the Bishops William Paul Quinn, J.M. Brown, and R.H. Cain. But when we think of the founders of Paul Quinn College, we should remember also those unknown churchgoers, former slaves, who saved their hard-earned pennies to place brick upon brick in faith that their "labor was not in vain," and that education would be the road to a brighter future. We owe it to them, above all, to keep that faith.

Happy Founders' Day!

Paul Quinn When... Dr. Solomon Porter Hood, U.S. Minister to Liberia

Did you know a Quinnite was once the U.S. minister to Liberia? Dr. Solomon Porter Hood, who would serve as the Academic Dean of Paul Quinn College during the early 1930s, was appointed to this post by President Warren Harding on October 26, 1921.

Hood was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1856, but lived most of his life in the area of Trenton, New Jersey. An 1876 graduate of Lincoln University, he divided his career between ministry and education, serving as a teacher and administrator in the public schools and pastoring churches.(Padgett,87ff.)

His missionary years in Haiti no doubt gave him a first-hand perspective of the challenges faced by the independent states among the African diaspora. His tenure in Liberia was defined by the controversy surrounding the Firestone Company's interest in developing Liberia's rubber plantations, and Hood may have in fact worked against Firestone's interests through advice he gave to the Liberian government.(Chalk,24) It was perhaps not a coincidence that he left his post in 1926, the same year the Firestone concession was granted.

Though he only served as Dean for a few years, retiring in 1933 at the well-seasoned age of 77, Dr. Hood was a very popular figure at Paul Quinn and in the Waco community generally. He continued to speak out on political subjects, delivering lectures and writing occasionally for the local African American newspaper, the Waco Messenger. His editorial of April 14th, 1933 on the growing shift of African American party loyalty from Republican to Democrat reveals a shrewd political mind and is an interesting window into a historic time in American politics.

Dr. Hood's distinguished career as minister, educator, and political leader strikes a chord with Quinnites today, who likewise look to extend their service to their communities, their nation, and their world.

References:

Image from Centennial Encyclopaedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church ... by Richard R. Wright, originally published 1918, digital copy hosted by University of South Carolina, c2004. Used according to principles of fair use for limited non-profit educational purposes.

Padgett, James A. Ministers to Liberia and their diplomacy. Journal of Negro history 22/1 (January 1937): 50-92.

Chalk, Frank. The anatomy of an investment: Firestone's 1927 loan to Liberia. Canadian journal of African studies 1/1 (March 1967): 12-32.

Paul Quinn When... Old-School Engineering

The September 1892 issue of Hampton University's Southern Workman contained the following letter to editor General S.C. Armstrong, from a Hampton alumnus recently hired to teach at the new Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas:

During the past year I have opened a mechanical department at Paul Quinn College known as the industrial annex, which consists of one large frame building, benches and tools to accomodate fourteen persons. And for next year we are preparing to enlarge by building a brick shop and putting in steam power and wood working machinery. Thus you see, General, and it is true, I am trying to operate my work down here on the same plans I was taught at dear old Hampton. The change in my work is because there are better chances for development in every respect at Paul Quinn, the college being in Waco, a large city, while Prairie View is seven miles from any town.

Our course of instruction covers a period of three years, as at Hampton in the "Huntington Industrial Works." This annex will make it possible for many poor persons to get an education and a trade at Paul Quinn College as at Hampton.

It is a fact, General, that there is not another school in the state that gives such chances for an education through industrial avenues.

As the one in charge of the Industrial Annex of Paul Quinn College, I ask for your assistance in any way you can give it. Now we want to raise this summer and fall about $3000 to pay on the building, additional tools and machinery, which will cost $6000.

Yours sincerely, J.L. Randolph

(Southern Workman, vol. 21, issue September 1892, p. 142)

Today's Paul Quinn student can major in engineering technology or computer science, and take courses that Professor Randolph could hardly have imagined, such as Assembly Language Programming, Operating Systems, Digital Logic Circuits, and Advanced Microprocessors. But much of the foundational coursework--algebra, trigonometry, and calculus--would be familiar to him, as would the aspirations of today's instructors to prepare our students for relevant careers with a solid future.