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SAT.. CJCEBSHI 22,1971 TK tAZZUZA WZll 1
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Livingstone p
100 Years Old And Looking Fdrw
.: - By Mat Israel
From The Star of Hon
"I do not care how dark the night, I believe in the coming of the morning. '
i - Dr. Joseph C. Price
SALISBURY - The young black college was
about to perish, but a black preacher wfth an argu
- ment "so exquisite it struck like fire, stirred a
group of white Southern businessmen to donate
$1,000. ,
It wasn't easy 97 years ago for Dr. Joseph C;
Price to capture support for Livingstone College,
especially when most of the other colleges for
blacks were being organized by whites.
Durhamites Attend Workshop
R Air.KiH - Mrs.
tessk Lucky, Mrs. Lillic
Edwards. Mrs. Mary M.
Youiii! and Thomas Davis
of the Durham City
Schools attended a iwo
day workshop conducted
iccenily by North
Carolina Stale Universi
ty's School of Lngina'rini!
for teachers and ad
ministrators of school
systems participating in
i he Southeastern Con
soriiim for Minorotics in
F.n'.!in.cerinfc', Inc.
(SKCML).
"SrCML'stioal is to in
crease the numbers of
u n d e r i e p r e s e n t e d
minorities in the cninncer
ini! profession," accor
din;.' to Ms. Carolyn
CI, ostium of Ailania,
(i.oiL'ia. executive, direc
:or of S1XML.
"Blacks, Mexican
Americans, Puerio Ricans
and American Indians arc
the major target groups,"'
she said. "Through
SECME efforts, students
receive academic enrich
mcni'and motivational ex
periences to help them
prepare for university
level programs, particular
ly in science and engineer
ing." -
Presemaiionv included
information on how to
write proposals for
SECME grants, a discus
sion of SECME. and its
goals and an overview of
the Junior Engineering
Technical Society.
Participants reported
the techniques suggested
will help teachers 10
motivate math and science
students and will help im
prove student at l it titles
that are basic to good per
formance in math and
science.
A FIRST GRADER'S LETTER
TO THE HOSTAGES
(This is a sample totter written by one of the boys in Mrs.
Grady's class.)
Dear Americans,
1 hope you come back home today. I love you. We hope
you get back home today. We love you. Jesus loves you
too. I am Jemon Council. I am in Mrs. Grady's room. I live
in Durham, N.C.
I hope you get home vWe want you to net out of there.
' jran is holding the men, but I want you back home today,
please!! Mrs. Floyd want you back. Mrs. Grady wants you
back today. We all love you.
-Merry Christmas and Happy New Year toou
Price's plea, for help resulted in the
college's getting one building and forty
acres of land on the western edge of .
this textile and farming community,
nestled halfway between Greensboro
and Charlotte.
. Livingstone College, which began its
100th anniversary celebration this
month, survives as a monument to
Price's relentless determination for a
black college to educate the whole man,
"bis hand, his head and his heart."
The small coeducational institution
actually was begun in 1 879 in Concord
under another name (Zion Wesley Insti
tute) by the African Methodist Episco
pal Zion Church. From its meager start,
Livingstone has flourished against the
tides of rising costs, competition from
predominantly white universities and
lean resources.
Through its first eighty years, the
college existed without any state or
federal aid, depending on philanthropy,
alumni and the financial support of the
AMEZ Church. It has, kept its black
identity. I
Livingstone, a 22-building liberal arts
college and the Hopd Theological
Seminary, is anchored by Price's philo
sophy; "I do not care how dark the
night, I believe in thelcoming of the
morning."
The school's buildings are scarred
with age; the blacksfnithing, shoe
making and rigid student regulations
of an earlier era have vanished. College
faculty no longer live just across the
street; required weekly oratorical ses
sions are little more than a silent echo.
There is an inevitable new atmos
phere, but the educational quality
which produced the first, black neuro
surgeon in the country, several cpllege
presidents, and black orators still is
important.
"We're in this business forever,"
asserts Dr. George Shipman, school
president. "If we made it 100 years, we
were doing something right. Desegrega
tion has had its impact. Our biggest
problem is still money. But we have a
special mission.
"Weiput emphasis on motivating,
taking 'students from disadvantaged
backgrounds and inspiring them to
learn- We 'make sure the student
Sieves he is somebody ."
Shipman and the college trustees
this year are promo'ting a five-year $5
million" fund-raising- campaign v. the
construction of new buildings, taculty
Jemon Council
... 1f Gtf&t i4VetopjaMni, studeM financial aid, and
Burton School campus beautification.
Competition from predominantly
white universities has forced the college
to develop an intense 'recruitment
program.
As the dunging, growing Livingstone
embarks on its future, it still clutches
its history .its college family!
-In December 1892, the country's
first black intercollegiate football game
was played on campus between Living
stone and Johnson C. Smith University
at Charlotte, then Biddle University.
-It was one of the few colleges
started in the 1800's by blacks lot
blacks and has. remained under black
administration.
-Livingstone is named in honor of
David Livingstone, a British missionary
to Africa. Price changed the name from
Zion Wesley Institute after he learned
Livingstone's son was buried in the
National Cemetery at Salisbury follow
ing the Civil War.
-And, in August, 1942, Livingstone
captured the attention of Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who spoke there
during a general convention of the
AMEZ Church!
The former first lady was accompa
nied to the college by Mary McLeod
Bet mine, a civil rights leader who served
on what was called the "Black Cabinet"
of the Roosevelt administration.
"Oh, it was a big theme, we had the
wife of the President," remembers Mrs.
Josephine' Price Sherrill, the 86-year-old
daughter of the founder of Livingstone.
"We had so many prominent people. We
had recitals with people from all over -Marian
Anderson, Booker T. Washing
ton, Roland Hayes - all of the leading
entertainers.and musicians of the day."
Mrs. Sherrill, who still lives in the
Price home, a stately house guarding
the gates pf Livingstone, was born a
few months after her father's death, but
knows about him through her mother
and her years as a student at Livingstone
and as head librarian for fifty years.
"He was a great orator and had the
power of persuasion arid influence,"; she
said. "We used to have literary societies
to give students a chance to become
Cflebafev It Jji&Sed he rudiment
6areers in law tnd educatiori.vl ? '
One of Price's students, who attend
ed the college m 1903, described him as
"the strongest, sturdiest oak the race
had. He (Price) waf nearer the people
than (Frederick) Douglass. He was the
Langstone with egotism. He was
(Booker T.) Washington without his
compromises. He was the best that was
in the three,
Mrs Sherrill, who remains active in
college activities, is proud of Living
stone. "It was difficult," she said. "The
presidents had to do a tot of speaking to
try to get funds to keep the college
going. The choir performed around the
country. It has been a struggle but we
have kept going. There will always be a
Livingstone. We'll make it somehow."
The thread of persistence which Mrs.
Sherrill believes wfU sustain Livingstone,
has been characteristic not only of her
father. The college is wealthy with
family personalities and devotion.
There is the Duncan family firmly
tied to Livingstone by education, leader
ship and moral and financial support.
Dr. Samuel E. Duncan Jr., president
from 1958-1968, returned to the college
"to give back ten years of education he
had received there."
"He planned to build eight new
buildings in ten years," explained his
sister, Dr. Elizabeth Duncan Koontz,
assistant superintendent of the State
Department of Public Instruction and
also a Livingstone graduate. "He died
ten years and ten days after accepting
the presidency. He was getting up and
dressing, getting ready to sign for the
last nuilding when he died."
The Duncan parents met and
married at Livingstone; five of the seven
children attended its high school and
college. Miss Julia Bell Duncan serves as
the college's registrar and treasurer for
47 years; John B. Duncan, a Washington
D.C. attorney is a member of the board
of trustees.
The Duncan contribution to Living
stone is described of the college com
munity as "humanitarian leadership."
Mrs. Louise Roundtree, the college
research librarian who lived at the
Duncan home for 22 years, can't recall
days when Julia Bell Duncan wasn't
making a loan to a student who needed
help; or when the family hgme wasn't ,
stuffed with friends and college visitors.
"Julia Duncan was a walking, talking,
:encyclopedia;:Mfes Uymgstone'zMiiiL
and dependable."
f
; i
Dr. Wffliam J. Trent, Jr., whose
father served for 32 yean as president
of Livingstone (1925-1957 fondly re
members Sam Duncan and the brotherly
talks they had just before he died. "He
knew he had a bad heart and the doctor
tried to get him to stop, Trent said.
"He had a way of getting people to do
things they didn't know they were going
to do."
Trent, also a Livingstone graduate,
was the first executive director of the
United Negro College Fund, an instruc
tor at Livingstone and Bennett College
in Greensboro and a member of 4J
Department of the Interior and staff
during the Roosevelt administration.
His father is recognized for receiving
the AME Zion Church contributions to
the school by establishing an annual
Founder's Day rally and relieving the
small college of several hundred thou
sand dollars of debt.
Trent is a staff assistant at Bennett,
working closely with Bennett President
Isaac Miller, also a Livingstone graduate.
As do other alumni, Trent says
there was a special closeness between
students and faculty while he was at
Livingstone. Dr. Koontz sunUarly de
scribed a "strong spirit of brother
hood." No longer is Livingstone College the
farm where students in the 1900's
raised food for the dining hall table; or
the rush to whitewash trees in anticipa
tion of special guests; or the brick yard
that sold thousands of bricks to Salis
bury citizens while students constructed
the school's first buildings.
The old uniforms h?ve faded away to
fashionable clothes and student brief
cases. The religious atmosphere "which
almost compelled a man to turn from
his wicked ways and make a sinner
powerful lonesome," doesn't saturate
college life.. There is religious emphasis,
however, at the theological seminary.
The small, private, church-related
college in 1979 is basking in history and
preparing for a future.
Joseph Price's words, "I do not care
how dark the night, I believe in the
coming of the morning," are reinforced
with each singing of the college song:
O Livingstone, my Livingstone,
When thou art old with age,
Thou, too shaft hold a noble place
"That's" btigfiJ ori'memrys-iA K ;
And in the sky no cloud shalhbe
- . lnsteA, the sun shall beam.,;,
;.iP8peysh
Amid its golden gleam."
...
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Last RUnuto
LETTERS TO THE HOSTAGES - Members of Mrs. Ernestine Grady's first grade class at Burton School have written
a. AAmmm UmUn haM hnfaa in Iran. TImv hava also mda oaDsr candles which the v will keao'in their
I windows t home until the hostages are freed. . ; Pnolos wlwtt
5ft
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