History
Liberty Hall Academy became a college when it granted its first bachelor of arts degree in 1785, making it the ninth oldest institution of higher education in the country. George Washington gave the school its first significant endowment in 1796, $20,000, at the time the largest gift ever given to an educational institution in the United States, and Washington's gift continues to provide nearly $1.87 a year toward every student's tuition. Trustees changed the name of the school to Washington Academy, and later Washington College, to honor him. Among many alumni who have followed in Washington's footsteps by donating generously, Rupert Johnson, Jr., a 1962 graduate who is vice chairman of the $600-billion Franklin Templeton investment management firm, gave $100 million to Washington and Lee in June 2007, establishing a merit-based financial aid and curriculum enrichment program.
Liberty Hall is said to have admitted its first African-American student when John Chavis, a free black, enrolled in 1795. Chavis accomplished much in his life including fighting in the American Revolution, studying at both Liberty Hall and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister, and opening a school that instructed white and poor black students in North Carolina. He is believed to be the first black student to enroll in higher education in the United States, although he did not receive a degree. Washington and Lee enrolled its next African-American student in 1966 in the law school.
The campus took its current architectural form in the 1820s when a local merchant, "Jockey" John Robinson, an uneducated Irish immigrant, donated funds to build a central building. For the dedication celebration in 1824, Robinson supplied a huge barrel of whiskey, which he intended for the dignitaries in attendance. But according to a contemporary history, the rabble broke through the barriers and created pandemonium, which ended only when college officials demolished the whiskey barrel with an ax. A justice of the Virginia State Supreme Court, Christian Compton ('50 undergraduate, '53 law), re-created the episode in 1976 for the dedication of the new law school by having several barrels of Scotch imported (without the unfortunate dénouement).
Read more about this topic: Washington And Lee University
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)