Tuskegee University

Summary

Tuskegee University is a private, historically black university located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. The campus has been designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark.

Academics

Tuskegee University offers 34 bachelor's degree programs, 12 master's degree programs, a 5-year accredited professional degree program in architecture, 2 doctoral degree programs, and the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Masters and doctoral degrees include engineering.

Tuskegee University is the only historically black college or university to offer the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.); its School of Veterinary Medicine was founded in 1944. The school is fully accredited by the Council on Education of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).

The university has several engineering programs:

Tuskegee University began offering certificates in architecture under the Division of Mechanical Industries in 1893. The 4-year curriculum in architecture leading to the Bachelor of Science degree was initiated in 1957 and the professional 6-year program in 1965. The Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture offers two professional programs: Architecture, and Construction Science and Management. The 5-year Bachelor of Architecture program is fully accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). Graduates of the program are qualified to become registered architects.

National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care is the nation's first bioethics center devoted to engaging the sciences, humanities, law and religious faiths in the exploration of the core moral issues which underlie research and medical treatment of African Americans and other underserved people. The official launching of the Center took place two years after President Bill Clinton's apology to the nation, the survivors of the Syphilis Study, Tuskegee University, and Tuskegee/Macon County, Alabama for the U.S. Public Health Service medical experiment (1932–1972), where 399 poor—and mostly illiterate—African American sharecroppers became part of a study on the treatment and natural history of syphilis.[5]

History

The school was founded on July 4, 1881 as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers. It was part of the expansion of institutions of higher education for blacks in the South following the American Civil War, many founded by the northern American Missionary Association. A teachers school was the dream of Lewis Adams, a former slave, and George W. Campbell, a former slaveholder, who shared a commitment to education of blacks. Despite lacking formal education, Adams could read, write and speak several languages. He was an experienced tinsmith, harness-maker and shoemaker and Prince Hall Freemason, an acknowledged leader of the African-American community in Macon County, Alabama.

Adams and Campbell had secured $2,000 from the State of Alabama for teachers' salaries but nothing for land, buildings, or equipment. Adams, Thomas Dyer, and M.B. Swanson formed Tuskegee's first board of commissioners. They wrote to the Hampton Institute, a historically black college in Virginia, asking the school for a recommendation for their new school. Samuel C. Armstrong, the Hampton Principal and a former Union general, recommended the 25 year-old Booker T. Washington, an alumnus and teacher at Hampton.

The young principal began classes for his new school in a run-down church and shanty. The following year in 1882, Washington bought a plantation, and over the years, the new campus buildings were constructed there, usually by students as part of their work-study.

Based on his experience at the Hampton Institute, Washington intended to train students in skills, morals and religious life. Washington urged the teachers he trained "to return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people."[citation needed]

Gradually he developed a rural extension program, to take progressive ideas and training to those who could not come to the campus. Tuskegee alumni founded smaller schools and colleges throughout the South, and continued to stress teacher training.

A freed man, Washington sought a formal education and worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) and attended college at Wayland Seminary in Richmond, Virginia (now Virginia Union University). He returned to Hampton as a teacher. Hired at Tuskegee, the new normal school (for the training of teachers) opened on July 4, 1881 in space borrowed from a church. The following year, Washington bought the grounds of a former plantation and over decades built the institute there. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

The school expressed Washington's dedication to the pursuit of self-reliance. In addition to training teachers, he also taught the practical skills needed for his students to succeed at farming or other trades typical of the rural South, where most of them came from. He wanted his students to see labor as practical, but also as beautiful and dignified. As part of their work-study programs, students constructed most of the new buildings. Many students earned all or part of their expenses through the construction, agricultural, and domestic work associated with the campus, as they reared livestock and raised crops, as well as producing other goods.

The continuing expansion of black education took place against a background of increased violence against blacks in the South after white Democrats regained power in state governments and imposed white supremacy in society. They instituted legal racial segregation and a variety of Jim Crow laws, after disfranchising most blacks by constitutional amendments and electoral rules from 1890–1964. Against this background, Washington's vision, as expressed in his "Atlanta Compromise" speech, became controversial and was challenged by new leaders, such as W.E.B. DuBois, who argued that blacks should have opportunities for study in classical academic programs, as well as vocational institutes. He envisioned the rise of the "Talented Tenth" to lead African Americans.

Washington gradually attracted notable scholars to Tuskegee, including the botanist George Washington Carver, one of the university's most renowned professors.

Growth of the Institute 1881–1900

Perceived as a spokesman for black "industrial" education, Washington developed a network of wealthy American philanthropists who donated to the school, such as Andrew Carnegie, Collis P. Huntington, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Huttleston Rogers, George Eastman, and Elizabeth Milbank Anderson. An early champion of the concept of matching funds, Henry Rogers was a major anonymous contributor to Tuskegee and dozens of other black schools for more than 15 years.

1900–1915

Washington developed a major relationship with Julius Rosenwald, a self-made man who rose to the top of Sears, Roebuck and Company in Chicago, Illinois. He had long been concerned about the lack of educational resources for blacks, especially in the South. After meeting with Washington, Rosenwald agreed to serve on Tuskegee's Board of Directors. He also worked with Washington to stimulate funding to train teachers' schools such as Tuskegee and Hampton institutes.

Beginning with a pilot program in 1912, Rosenwald created model rural schools and stimulated construction of new schools across the South. Tuskegee architects developed the model plans, and some students helped build the schools. Rosenwald created a fund but required communities to raise matching funds, to encourage local collaboration between blacks and whites. Rosenwald and Washington stimulated the construction and operation of more than 5,000 small community schools and supporting resources for the education of blacks throughout the rural the South into the 1930s.

Despite his travels and widespread work, Washington continued as principal of Tuskegee. Concerned about the educator's health, Rosenwald encouraged him to slow his pace. In 1915, Washington died at the age of 59, as a result of congestive heart failure. At his death, Tuskegee's endowment exceeded US$1.5 million. He was buried on the campus near the chapel.

As still stands today, the Tuskegee Institute still upholds its standard roots of acceptance.

Presidents of the Institute

The years after World War I challenged the basis of the Tuskegee Institute. Teaching was still seen as a critical calling, but southern society was changing rapidly. Attracted by the growth of industrial jobs in the North, including the rapid expansion of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and suffering job losses because of the boll weevil and increasing mechanization of agriculture, hundreds of thousands of rural blacks moved from the South to Northern and Midwestern industrial cities in the Great Migration. A total of 1.5 million moved during this period. In the South, industrialization was occurring in cities such as Birmingham, Alabama and other booming areas. The programs at Tuskegee, based on an agricultural economy, had to change. During and after World War II, migration to the North continued, with California added as a destination because of its defense industries. A total of 5 million blacks moved out of the South from 1940–1970.

In 1941, in an effort to train black aviators, the U.S. Army Air Corps established a training program at Tuskegee Institute, using Moton Field, about 4 miles (6.4 km) away from the campus center. The graduates became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. The Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Moton Field was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. Both the Army and Air Force have R.O.T.C. programs on campus today.

Numerous presidents have visited Tuskegee, including Franklin D. Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt was also interested in the Institute and its aeronautical school. In 1941 she visited Tuskegee Army Air Field and worked to have African Americans get the chance as pilots in the military. She corresponded with F.D. Patterson, the third president of the Tuskegee Institute, and frequently lent her support to programs.[8]

The notable architect Paul Rudolph was commissioned in 1958 to produce a new campus master plan. In 1960 he was awarded, along with the partnership of John A. Welch and Louis Fry, the commission for a new chapel, perhaps the most significant modern building constructed in Alabama.

The postwar decades were a time of continued expansion for Tuskegee, which added new programs and departments, adding graduate programs in several fields to reflect the rise of professional studies. For example, its School of Veterinary Medicine was added in 1944. Mechanical Engineering was added in 1953, and a four-year program in Architecture in 1957, with a six-year program in 1965. In 1985, Tuskegee Institute achieved university status and was renamed Tuskegee University.

The campus of Tuskegee Institute was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965, for the significance of its programs, role in black higher education, and status in United States history.[7] As the landmark designation did not define a limited area, the district is believed to have included the entire Tuskegee University campus at the time.[9]

Points of "special historic interest," noted in the landmark description include:[9]

The campus is also designated the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site. This is distinct from the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Moton Field.

The Kellogg Conference Center & Hotel is in Tuskegee, Alabama. The Kellogg Conference Center offers state-of-the-art multimedia meeting rooms, as well as a 300-seat auditorium and a ballroom that accommodates up to 350 guests. The Kellogg Conference Center is the only such center on a historically black campus, of a total of 11 worldwide. Other Kellogg Conference Centers in the United States are located at: Michigan State University, Gallaudet University and the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona).

Student activities

More than 100 groups, including Greek letter fraternities and sororities, are active on Tuskegee University's campus.

Tuskegee's students can also participate in dozens of civic organizations, student media groups, service groups, state clubs and honor societies representing virtually every academic discipline.

Students also have the option of developing their own campus organizations with the approval of the Dean of Students.

The baseball program has won thirteen SIAC championships and has produced several professional players, including big-leaguers Leon Wagner, Ken Howell, Alan Mills and Roy Lee Jackson.

The prominence of Tuskegee University football is longstanding as well. Among its records include: 27 SIAC championships; eight national HBCU championships; 70 winning seasons out of 113; 16 undefeated seasons; eight appearances in the Pioneer Bowl (championship match up between the SIAC and CIAA champs) in the bowl's 10 years of existence; 12 other postseason games not including the Pioneer Bowl; 23 NFL pro draft picks; about 40 free agents in the NFL, CFL and Arena football league; first HBCU to win 600 career games.

The Sheridan Broadcasting Network, the national polling agency that ranks black college football programs, recently named Tuskegee the No. 1 football team in the nation. In addition to winning the university's 600th career victory and a national championship, the Golden Tigers of Tuskegee also won their second consecutive SIAC championship, the sixth in the last decade.

With these achievements Tuskegee continues the tradition of being the Winningest Black College Football program in the Nation, being the #2 all time in Wins and Win Percentage in NCAA Division II Football along with being a Top 40 Football program tradition in the South averaging 10.2 wins a season dominating the SIAC Conference with their latest Conference title coming in 2007.

Tuskegee was also the first black college to have a football stadium, Cleve Abbott Memorial Stadium.