North Carolina Central University - Eagle Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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First Business Education Class at North Carolina College Class of May 23, 1912 THE PAST

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FOREWORD There are three intrinsic stages in the progress of any educational institution: the post, the present, and the future. The past reflects the dreams and works of the earlier adminis- tration, the there and the then, and that which for some strange reason now seems grotesque. The present symbolizes reality, what is here and now, and what seems will forever be. The future represents hopes and ambitions, the way over yonder where our bright star is cast, and the what seems as though it will never be reached. The three are inextricably bound, for the past was at that time the present, the present was then the futuer, and the future is now the present; and what is the present if it is not a time to reflect on the past, to live for now, and to plan for the future? And so it is with North Carolina College at Durham — we hove our past, our present, and our future. Our past begins somewhere around 1910 when our founder. Dr. James E. Shepard, saw his faith and hope that were conceived in a dark past come to reality. It was necessary to clear off land used for a city dump and erect a few wooden buildings to accommodate a hand full of students seeking to moke their futures bright. Basing their motives on religious training, our first alumni and administration girded around the God of their weary years, locked hand in hand, and walked unsfrayingly in their designated path to mold these sloping hills of verdant green on which we now stand at lost. Our present begins somewhere around 1960, fifty years later. Most of us, being the first of the World War II babies and being fresh from the battle fields of the war now be- ing waged to put that salvaged democracy into practice, come here with ideas and motives far removed from those of our ancestors of half a century ago. We, over 2,000 of us, moke use of thirty-six brick structured buildings without the slightest notions of how those few wooden ones appeared. Our motives are not now less religious, but more secular,- we ore not locked hand in hand fighting to throw off a sterotyped image, but seeking indi- viduality. Let it suffice to say that we deem individuality necessary if we are to be cata- pulted into the main-stream of American life. So we now share in a dream undeferred and in a hope that has lived since birth, and we are assured of this each day we rise and go to classes at the ringing of the ancient bell. Our future is, as all ore, a speculative one, there is for North Carolina College at Durham only one certainty — a four million dollar appropriation to this college by the North Carolina State Legislature. Four new buildings — two dormitories, a student union and a cafeteria — are on the planning board. They are our present needs, as we see them, for being the difference between an existing state affairs and a desirable or inevit- able state of affairs. Long range plans ore in the making for the thousands of students who will follow us — students, with new and different ideas, different motivations, and different aspirations, who will someday walk among our ruins, and rise and go to classes at the ringing of the oncient bell. That ' s how it is now. It is apropos to presently reflect on our past and look to the future,- so we drag out the pen, ink, paper, scissors, and other parophanelio necessary for as- sembling a yearbook, and put together a pictorial interpretation of NCC ' s post, present, and future — a lasting memory that in many ways is real and in many others fantasized, yet, one that one day each of us will be able to look back through and say, Oh! Yes, I remember that. I was there.

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FOUNDER AND FIRST PRESIDENT Dr. James E. Shepard 1910-1947 alllU Vm fej SECOND PRESIDENT Dr. Alfonso Elder 1948-1963