Livingstone College - Livingstonian Yearbook (Salisbury, NC)

Page 11 text:

William Johnson Trent Julia Belle Duncan A.B., A.M. President Registrar-Treasurer John H. Satterwhite Hood Seminary Professor of Religion and Christian Theology A. B. — Benedict College B. D. — Oberlin Grad. School of Theol. S.T.M. — Oberlin Grad. School of Theol. Frederick D. Drew Liberal Arts Professor of Chemistry and Physics B.S. — Mass. Inst, of Tech. A.M. — Harvard University 19 42

Page 13 text:

LIVINGSTONE’S SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY When the Fathers met at Concord, North Carolina, in 1879, for the purpose of founding a seminary where young Negroes might be trained for the ministry, not one of the group was a college graduate. What we see at Salisbury within the gates of Livingstone College is the result of the conviction of those unlettered men who sought a better way of life for generations then unborn. Legend has it that Bishop Hood was led to select this site for the school because he saw it in a dream. The white people of this community offered a thousand dollars to pur- chase the necessary land if the embryonic institution would open its doors here. On the first Wednesday in October of 1882 classes began with three teachers, three pupils, and a matron. That was sixty years ago. At one time a thousand students walked beneath the sacred maples and oaks seeking the light of knowledge in the many levels of training that Livingstone offered. Those were the days when a student could receive grammar school, high school, normal and classical training before final graduation. The first boys’ dormitory still stands a few blocks from the campus — a marker to the dis- tance travelled by the various Administrations and to the depths from which we have risen. Once this building was a slave market, but after 1882 it housed free black boys. In 1886, from a pit on the campus, students took clay and made the bricks which form the walls of Dodge Hall, the main dwelling place for men here today. Self-help and student-initiative were here even in ’82, and that was 60 long years ago. The first President was Joseph Charles Price, one of America’s greatest orators. He shook conservative old England for the pounds that financed the early days of L. C. His golden voice inspired the young men and women who sat at his feet to speak. Livingstone grew famous as a place where oratory was the order of the day. The Hood Literary Society, and Atkinson Literary Society thrived on the burning desire of Negro youth to speak well. Other men have stood in the path Price trod. Sixty years have brought us to 1942, and President William Johnson Trent, Sr., is at the helm. Fifty years ago he was a student here and played in the first Livingstone-Biddle (Smith) football game. Today he leads us in the development of individual initiative and the pursuit of academic knowledge. The Ell Cee salutes him and his work in this year of- the Sixtieth Anniversary of Livingstone’s formal openin g. 19