Prairie View A and M University - Pantherland Yearbook (Prairie View, TX)

Page 11 text:

I Could we do better at the end of seventy-five years than pay homage to this amalgam, this spirit? Can we do less than dedicate our lives to the task of fostering it, nurturing it, stimulating it—that those who walk these grounds, these halls, will know, and be better men because of it?

Page 10 text:

DIAMOND 75th JUBILEE Anniversary In commemoration of this historic time in the existence of Prairie View — the Panther pays further tribute to the great history and progress of the college and the men who were in the making of it. Seventy-five years is a long span in the man or institution. What do the years mean? For man or institution, if they are filled with the honest sweat of service to humanity—with the patient following of that higher law of unflinching fidelity to the dictates of a calling—the years arc a benediction. Prairie View is an institution—a public institution. But an institution is an empty thing without the beating hearts and yearning souls of mortal men. And down the seventy-five years of Prairie View’s existence, men have lived and dreamed here until every blade of grass and every rock, in that wise primordial way in which the primitive earth knows and cares, has joined the choir invisible to bless their memory. For every man whose foot has touched this hallowed soil has found a spirit, and has broadened and deepened it until what started out as an ambitionless meandering stream has become a purposeful river upon whose tide, now turbulent, now tranquil, floats the destiny of countless human hopes and dreams. .. PRAIRIE VIEW, 1878 Appreciation is gratefully expressed to Dr. George R. Woolfolk and to members of the committees for the 75th Anniversary and the History of Prairie View for the historic contributions displayed herein.

Page 12 text:

. . . The first Principal of the new College was L. W. Minor, a native of Mississippi, who was selected by Thomas S. Gathright, the first president at College Station. On March 11, 1878, Professor Minor enrolled eight young men as the first Negro students to be enrolled in a state supported college in Texas. Mr. Minor was a man of fine education and excellent character, and he came up fully to all expectations in his management and qualifications . . . L. W. MINOR 1878—1880