Classical Studies at Wilberforce University
People of African descent have had their hands in the doings of the classical world for centuries. In Europe the pattern of evidence moves from Homer and Herodotus to Africa’s own Terence, Fronto and Augustine, and on to Juan Latino, Anthony William Amo and Jacobus Eliza Capitein. Across the Atlantic Francis Williams, Phillis Wheatley, John Chavis and Alexander Crummell became famous during the 18th and 19th centuries for learning Greek and Latin and using it in their work.(1) But these were exceptional cases, and it was not until the end of the Civil War that the study of Greek and Latin became a mainstay of African-American education in general. With the end of slavery and legal interdictions prohibiting the education of slaves, new universities such as Lincoln, Fisk, Atlanta, Clark and Howard opened and from the start they incorporated the classically based liberal arts curriculum into their programs.(2)
Such was the case at Wilberforce University. Located 70 miles from Cincinnati, the site of this year’s spring meeting of CAMWS, Wilberforce is the oldest private liberal arts university in the country continuously run for and by black people. Founded in 1856 under the auspices of the Methodist Church, Wilberforce and its younger affiliate, Payne Theological Seminary, began with a commitment rooted in principals of its current sponsor, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, to bringing the highest levels of culture and learning to their students.(3) Until the third part of the 20th century, this included thorough programs in Greek and Latin as well as Hebrew and New Testament Greek. Wilberforce University, called the “Mecca of black education,” attracted some of the ablest black scholars in the country. Among its faculty were Sarah Jane Woodson Early (1825-1907), Latin teacher and the first black woman to hold a position on a college faculty, William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926), the first professional classicist of African descent and his wife Sarah C. B. Scarborough who helped his work on Racine and Euripides, W.E.B. Du Bois. (1868-1963), who headed the department of ancient languages from 1894 to 1896 and Charles Leander Hill (1906-1956) who published studies of the Latin of Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). This panel will examine the activities of these men and women at Wilberforce University and their work in Greek and Latin.
1 See Michele Valerie Ronnick, “Black Classicism,” forthcoming in Encyclopedia Africana, eds Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., Oxford University Press.
2 For an overview of black education during this period see James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill, 1994). See also Clarence A. Bacote, History of Atlanta University 1865-1965 (Atlanta, 1969) and Rayford W. Logan, Howard University: The First Hundred Years 1867-1967 (New York, 1969).
3 See Frederick McGinnis, A History and Interpretation of Wilberforce University (Wilberforce, 1942) passim.
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