Inman E. Page

Inman Edward Page was born a slave in Warrenton, Virginia, on December 29, 1853, to Horace and Elizabeth Page. His obituary had the name of the slave owner as Fanshot. In late 1877, Horace Page made a compensation claim to the Federal government for losses during the American Civil War (1861-1865). In this report, his father reported his master as a man named Alexander Craig, who died in 1859, and thereafter his wife, Mrs. Craig, and the executor of their estate, William H. Gaines. As a slave, Horace hired himself out and was running a livery stable in Washington, D.C., before the start of the war and had business in Warrenton and in Fauquier County. He had a number of horses and other supplies taken by the Union Army during the war and provided some manual labor. He was able to buy his freedom with money from his business. He did not finish paying until after the Emancipation Proclamation, but decided to pay the full agreed amount because the deal for his freedom was made before the war began. Horace and his family moved to Washington, D. C., in 1862 and Inman attended the school of George F. T. Cook, brother of John F. Cook Jr. He also took hired work to support his family and later attended night school taught by George Boyer Vashon. He then took work at Howard University, grading the campus grounds, in order to pay for his schooling there. He was promoted to janitor at the school, and when Oliver O. Howard was working to close the Freedmen's Bureau, of which Howard had been a part, Page was hired as one of Howard's clerks. In this way, he was a student at Howard until 1873. Family In Providence in the winter of 1877– 1878 he married Zelia R. Ball, who had graduated in 1875 from Wilberforce University. ==Career==

Lincoln Institute In 1878, Page moved to Jefferson City, Missouri, and took a position as teacher at the Lincoln Institute. For his first two years at the Lincoln Institute, he was the only black regular teacher, but in 1880, the board of trustees decided to change strategies and have the school taught by black teachers and installed Page as school president. Page quickly began to grow the school, increasing enrollment from 97 to 153 in his first year, reducing student expenses, and securing appropriations from the state legislature to build two dormitories, one for men and one for women, and an increase in biennial state appropriations. Among the students Page influenced at Lincoln were physicians William J. Thompkins and J. Edward Perry and bishop William Tecumseh Vernon. However, Page did not avoid controversy. In 1903, Page was tried for incompetency and mismanagement but was completely exonerated. In 1916, Page, a lifelong Republican, was removed from presidency by Democratic state politicians. but he resigned in August 1923 and returned to Douglass High School. He remained with the Oklahoma City Public Schools for the rest of his life. He retired In June 1935 with the honorary title of "principal emeritus". ==Death and legacy==

Page died of old age on December 21, 1935, at the home of his daughter Zelia in Oklahoma City. There has been an Inman E. Page Library at Lincoln University. ==References==