Oberlin College - History

History

Both the college and the town of Oberlin were founded in 1833 by a pair of Presbyterian ministers, John Jay Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart. The ministers named their project after Jean-Frédéric Oberlin, an Alsatian minister whom they both admired. Oberlin attained prominence because of the influence of its second president, the evangelist Charles Finney, after whom one of the College's chapels and performance spaces is named. Asa Mahan (1800–1889) served as Oberlin's first president from 1835–1850.

Oberlin Collegiate Institute (as it was originally called) was built on 500 acres (2.0 km2) of land specifically donated by the previous owners, Titus Street, founder of Streetsboro, Ohio and Samuel Hughes, who lived in Connecticut. Shipherd and Stewart's vision was for both a religious community and school. For a more detailed history of the founding of the town and the college, see Oberlin, Ohio.

Oberlin has long been associated with progressive causes. Its founders bragged that "Oberlin is peculiar in that which is good." Oberlin was the first college in the United States to regularly admit African-American students (1835) after a casting vote by the Rev. John Keep. Oberlin College's role as an educator of African-American students prior to the Civil War and thereafter is historically significant.

Before the Civil War, higher education for African American students was virtually nonexistent. The few who did receive schooling, such as Fredrick Douglass, often studied in informal and sometimes hostile settings. Some were forced to teach themselves entirely. Some schools for elementary and secondary training existed, such as the Institute for Colored Youth, a school started in the early 1830s by a group of Philadelphia Quakers. A college education was also available to a limited number of students at schools like Oberlin College in Ohio and Berea College in Kentucky.

In 1844, Oberlin College graduated its first black student, George B. Vashon, who became one of the founding professors at Howard University and the first black lawyer admitted to the Bar in New York State. The African Americans of Oberlin and those attending Oberlin College "have experienced intense challenges and immense accomplishments since their joint founding in 1833. Its African American and other citizens of color have used education and activism to make inroads in the college, the town, and beyond. Their efforts have helped Oberlin remain committed to its values of freedom, social justice, and service."

It is also the oldest continuously operating coeducational institution, since having admitted four women in 1837. These four women, who were the first to enter as full students, were Mary Kellogg (Fairchild), Mary Caroline Rudd, Mary Hosford, and Elizabeth Prall. All but Kellogg graduated. Mary Jane Patterson graduated in 1862 to become the first black woman to earn a B.A. degree. The college was listed as a National Historic Landmark on December 21, 1965, for its significance in admitting African-Americans and women. The college had some difficult beginnings, and Keep and William Dawes were sent to England to raise funds for the college in 1839–40.

One historian called Oberlin "the town that started the Civil War" due to its reputation as a hotbed of abolitionism. Oberlin was a key stop along the Underground Railroad. In 1858, both students and faculty were involved in the controversial Oberlin-Wellington Rescue of a fugitive slave, which received national press coverage. Two participants in this raid, Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Anthony Copeland, along with another Oberlin resident, Shields Green, also participated in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry. This heritage was commemorated on campus by the 1977 installation of sculptor Cameron Armstrong's "Underground Railroad Monument" (a railroad track rising from the ground toward the sky) and monuments to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and the Harper's Ferry Raid.

Oberlin's school colors are cardinal red and mikado yellow, often casually referred to as "crimson and gold." Those colors were formally designated for the college by a faculty committee in 1889 and were drawn from the family coat of arms of John Frederick Oberlin. They remain in the official registry of school colors maintained by the American Council on Education.