The Oberlin Collegiate Institute (name changed later to Oberlin College in 1850) was founded in 1833. The college's founders wrote voluminously and were featured prominently in the press, especially the
abolitionist newspaper
The Liberator, in which the name Oberlin occurred 352 times by 1865. Original documents and correspondence survive and are readily available. There is a "wealth of primary documents and scholarly works". His disciple
Geoffrey Blodgett (1953) continued Fletcher's work.
Founding Oberlin' was an idea before it was a place." Its immediate background was the
wave of Christian revivals in western New York State, in which
Charles Finney was very much involved. "Oberlin was the offspring of the revivals of 1830, '31, and '32." Oberlin founder
John Jay Shipherd was an admirer of Finney, and visited him in
Rochester, New York, when en route to Ohio for the first time. Finney invited Shipherd to stay with him as an assistant, but Shipherd "felt that he had his own important part to play in bringing on the millennium, God's triumphant reign on Earth. Finney's desires were one thing, but Shipherd believed that the Lord's work for him lay farther west." Shipherd attempted to convince Finney to accompany him west, which he did in 1835. "formerly a missionary among the Cherokees in Mississippi, and at that time residing in Mr. Shipherd's family," who was studying
Divinity with Shipherd. The institute was built on of land donated by Titus Street, founder of
Streetsboro, Ohio, and Samuel Hughes, which Stewart was reading to Shipherd. These original Oberlin students, who had little to do with
Lane other than walking out on it, were carrying on a tradition that began at the
Oneida Institute of Science and Industry, in
Oneida County, New York, near
Utica. Oneida was "a hotbed of anti-slavery activity", "abolitionist to the core, more so than any other American college." Oberlin's anti-slavery activities supplanted those of Oneida, which fell on hard times and closed in 1843. Funding previously provided by the philanthropist brothers
Lewis and Arthur Tappan was transferred to Oberlin. Oberlin became the new "academic powder keg for abolitionism.") He was charged with finding a site for "a great national manual labor institution where training for the Western ministry could be provided for poor but earnest young men who had dedicated their lives to the home missionary cause in the vast valley of the Mississippi." By coincidence, the administrators of new and barely-functioning
Lane Seminary, a manual labor school located just outside Cincinnati, were looking for students. Weld visited Cincinnati in 1832, determined that the school would do, got the approval of the Tappans, and by providing recommendations to them took over as
de facto head of the Seminary, to the point of choosing the president (
Lyman Beecher, after Finney turned it down) and telling the trustees whom to hire. Shortly after their arrival at Lane, the Oneida contingent held a lengthy, well-publicized series of debates, over 18 days during February 1834, on the topic of abolition versus colonization, concluding with the endorsement of the former and rejection of the latter. (Although announced as debate, no one spoke in favor of colonization on any of the evenings.) The trustees and administrators of Lane, fearful of violence like the
Cincinnati riots of 1829, prohibited off-topic discussions, even at meals. The Lane Rebels, including almost all of Lane's theological students, among them the entire Oneida contingent, resigned
en masse in December, and published a pamphlet explaining their decision. A trustee,
Asa Mahan, resigned also, and the trustees fired John Morgan, a faculty member who supported the students. Previous attempts at "racially" integrated schools, the
Noyes Academy and the
Canterbury Female Boarding School, had been met with violence that destroyed both schools. Refugees from both had enrolled at Oneida. No one was calling for racially integrated schools, except at Oneida. :This measure caused the trustees "a great struggle to overcome their prejudices". The Trustees, meeting on February 9 in Shipherd's house, reexamined the question, and it passed after Trustee Chairman
John Keep broke a 3–3 tie vote. The Oberlin Anti-Slavery Society, calling for "immediate emancipation", was founded in June 1835. The names of Shipherd, Mahan, and Finney are first on its founding document, followed by names of the Oneida contingent. Oberlin replaced Oneida as "the hot-bed of Abolitionism", Oberlin sent forth cadres of minister-abolitionists every year: {{blockquote|From this fountain streams of anti-slavery influence began at once to flow. Pamphlets, papers, letters, lecturers and preachers, and school teachers, some five hundred each winter, went forth everywhere preaching the anti-slavery word. It was the influence emanating from this school that saved our country in its great hour of peril. There were thousands of other co-operating influences, but had that which went out from Oberlin been subtracted, there can hardly remain a doubt that freedom would have foundered in the storm. Indeed it is doubtful whether there would have been any storm. The nation probably would have meekly yielded to the dominion of the
slave power, and the Western Hemisphere would have become a den of tyrants and slaves. As it was, we were scarcely saved. The college experienced financial distress, and Rev.
John Keep and
William Dawes were sent to England to raise funds in 1839–40. A nondenominational seminary, Oberlin's Graduate School of Theology (first called the undergraduate Theological Department), was established alongside the college in 1833. In 1965, the board of trustees voted to discontinue graduate instruction in theology at Oberlin, and in September 1966, six faculty members and 22 students merged with the Divinity School of
Vanderbilt University. Oberlin's role as an educator of African-American students prior to the Civil War and thereafter was significant. In 1844, Oberlin Collegiate Institute graduated its first black student,
George Boyer Vashon, who later became one of the founding professors of
Howard University and the first black lawyer admitted to the Bar in New York State. The college's treatment of African Americans was inconsistent. Although intensely anti-slavery, and admitting black students from 1835, the school began segregating its black students by the 1880s with the fading of evangelical idealism. Nonetheless, Oberlin graduates accounted for a significant percentage of African-American college graduates by the end of the 19th century. One such black alumnus was
William Howard Day, who would go on to found Cleveland's first black newspaper,
The Aliened American. The college was listed as a
National Historic Landmark on December 21, 1965, for its significance in admitting African Americans and women. Oberlin is the oldest
coeducational college in the United States, having
admitted four women in 1837 to its two-year "women's program". Replacing him was famed
abolitionist and preacher Charles Grandison Finney, a professor at the college since its founding, who served until 1866. At the same time, the institute was renamed "Oberlin College", and in 1851 received a charter with that name. Under Finney's leadership, Oberlin's faculty and students increased their abolitionist activity. They participated with the townspeople in efforts to assist fugitive slaves on the
Underground Railroad, where Oberlin was a stop, as well as to resist the
Fugitive Slave Act. One historian called Oberlin "the town that started the
Civil War" due to its reputation as a hotbed of
abolitionism. In 1858, both students and faculty were involved in the controversial
Oberlin–Wellington Rescue of a fugitive slave, which received national press coverage. Two participants in this raid,
Lewis Sheridan Leary and
John Anthony Copeland, along with another Oberlin resident,
Shields Green, also participated in
John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry. This heritage was commemorated on campus by the 1977 installation of sculptor Cameron Armstrong's "Underground Railroad Monument", a railroad track rising from the ground toward the sky, and monuments to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and the Harper's Ferry Raid, which followed an 1841 incident in which a group of abolitionists from Oberlin, using saws and axes, freed two captured fugitive slaves from the
Lorain County jail. In 1866,
James Fairchild became Oberlin's third president, and first alumnus to lead it. A total of 30 members of the Oberlin Band worked in Shanxi as missionaries over the next two decades. Ten died of disease, and in 1900, fifteen of the Oberlin missionaries, including wives and children, were killed by Boxers or Chinese government soldiers during the
Boxer Rebellion. The
Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, an independent foundation, was established in their memory. The Association, with offices on campus, sponsors Oberlin graduates to teach in China, India, and Japan. It also hosts scholars and artists from Asia to spend time on the Oberlin campus.
20th century Henry Churchill King became Oberlin's sixth president in 1902. At Oberlin from 1884 onward, he taught in mathematics, philosophy, and theology.
Robert K. Carr served as Oberlin College president from 1960 to 1970, during the tumultuous period of student activism. Under his presidency, the school's physical plant added 15 new buildings. Under his leadership, student involvement in college affairs increased, with students serving on nearly all college committees as voting members (including the board of trustees). Despite these accomplishments, Carr clashed repeatedly with the students over the
Vietnam War, and he left office in 1969. History professor Ellsworth C. Carlson became acting president. but had shown commitment to educational reform as a
Trinity College dean. He was unanimous choice of the selection committee in November 1970. At 33 years old, Fuller became tenth president of the college, one of the youngest college presidents in U.S. history. His Oberlin presidency was a turbulent time at Oberlin and in higher education generally. Fuller called for reforming the curriculum, reducing the role of faculty, and addressed the status of women, expanded programs in the arts, and enlarged the role of students in governance. He tripled the enrollment of minorities. In what was called the
Oberlin Experiment, he hired
Jack Scott as Athletic Director, who recruited and hired the first four African-American athletic coaches at a predominantly white American college or university, including
Tommie Smith, the gold medalist sprinter from the
1968 Summer Olympics in
Mexico City. Fuller was succeeded by the longtime Dean of the Conservatory,
Emil Danenberg, who served as president from 1975 to 1982, and died in office. In 1983, following a nationwide search, Oberlin hired
S. Frederick Starr, an expert on Russian and Eurasian affairs and skilled musician, as its 12th president. Starr's academic and musical accomplishments boded well for his stewardship of both the college and the
Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. as well as Starr's reframing Oberlin as the "Harvard of the Midwest". A particularly vitriolic clash with students on the front lawn of his home in April 1990 succeeding the embattled Starr. Dye was known for her accessibility and inclusiveness. Especially in her early years, she was a regular attendee at football games, concerts, and dorm parties.
Marvin Krislov served as president of the college from 2007 to 2017, moving on to assume the presidency of
Pace University. On May 30, 2017,
Carmen Twillie Ambar was announced as the 15th president of Oberlin College, becoming the first African-American person and second woman to hold the position. Oberlin's first and only hired trade union expert, Chris Howell, argued that the college engaged in "illegal" tactics to attempt to decertify its service workers' July 1999 vote to become members of
United Automobile Workers union. Howell wrote that college workers sought the union's representation in response to the administration's effort to "speed up work" to meet a "mounting budget crisis". In February 2013, the college received significant press concerning its so-called "No Trespass List", a secret list maintained by the college of individuals barred from campus without due process. Student activists and members of the surrounding town joined to form the One Town Campaign, which challenged this policy. On February 13, 2013, a forum at the Oberlin Public Library that attracted over 200 people, including members of the college administration, the Oberlin city council and national press, saw speakers compare the atmosphere of the college to "a gated community". In September 2014, on
Rosh Hashanah, Oberlin Students for Free Palestine placed 2,133 black flags in the main square of the campus as a "call to action" in honor of the 2,133 Palestinians who died in the
2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. In January 2016, hundreds of Oberlin alumni signed a letter to the Oberlin administration stating that this protest was an example of anti-Semitism on the campus. Oberlin SFP responded with their own letter, detailing why protest of Israel does not constitute anti-semitism. They wrote, "Feeling discomfort because one must confront the realities of Operation Protective Edge carried out in the name of the safety of the Jewish people does not amount to anti-Semitism." In early 2016, an Oberlin professor, Joy Karega, suggested Israel was behind
9/11 and blamed it for the
Charlie Hebdo attacks and for
ISIS, prompting a rebuke from faculty and administration. After five-and-a-half months of discussion, the school suspended and then fired her. The following week, the home of a Jewish professor at Oberlin was vandalized and a note that read "Gas Jews Die" was left on his front door. Oberlin came under federal investigation in late 2023 by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights for alleged breach of Title VI, which protects students from discrimination because of their religion.
''Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College'' In 2016, a black Oberlin student was caught shoplifting two bottles of wine from Gibson's Bakery and Market, a downtown Oberlin business. A scuffle ensued between Oberlin students and Gibson's staff, and the students involved pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. Oberlin faculty and students subsequently staged large demonstrations urging a boycott of Gibson's on the grounds that the store was racist, and Gibson's sued alleging libel and other charges. In June 2019, the college was found liable for
libel and
tortious interference in a
lawsuit initiated by the store; the bakery was awarded damages of $44 million by the jury, but a legal cap on damages reduced the award to $31.5 million. In October 2019, the college appealed the case to the
Ohio District Courts of Appeals in Akron, Ohio. On March 31, 2022, the Court of Appeals unanimously dismissed both appeals, Oberlin and Gibson, upholding the jury verdict and Judge Miraldi's decisions. The
Supreme Court of Ohio chose to not accept the appeal and cross-appeal on August 29, 2022. In December 2022, Oberlin College paid Gibson's Bakery $36.59 million, the entire amount due. "We hope that the end of the litigation will begin the healing of our entire community", said the college. ==Academics==