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Oberlin College

2 articles on Oberlin College

  • Oberlin Collegeimage available

    Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

    Word Count: 782      Includes:  Bibliography

    Founded in 1833 to educate prospective ministers for missionary work in the Mississippi River valley, Oberlin College (until 1850 the Oberlin Collegiate Institute) in Oberlin, Ohio, was the first institution of higher education in the United States to admit African American students as a matter of regular policy. It also pioneered coeducation as the nation's first college to award bachelor of arts degrees to women.

    The highly controversial decision to admit students of color was made in early 1835. After hearing that several students at Cincinnati's Lane Theological Seminary had withdrawn in protest of that institution's attempt to silence their agitation on behalf of immediate abolitionism and racial equality, John JayShipherd, Oberlin's principal founder, invited the so-called Lane rebels to attend Oberlin. The rebels ...
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  • Oberlin College

    Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition

    Word Count: 1373      Includes:  Bibliography

    Founded in 1833 in Oberlin, Ohio, on the principle of educating Americans regardless of race, gender, or class, Oberlin College was one of the few institutions of higher learning that extended educational opportunities to black women. African American women faced discrimination on two fronts. Not only were they forced to battle sexist assumptions, but also racist ones. Traditionally, women were thought incapable of withstanding the rigors of competing academically with men. Blacks were considered inherently mentally inferior. Many whites thought the education of blacks, especially women, was folly at best and dangerous at worst.

    Backed financially by abolitionists, Oberlin became an outpost in the nineteenth century for African Americans wishing to pursue a higher education. White students committed to abolition pressured the ...
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