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!