University of Arkansas

on the University of Arkansas campus Early developments The University of Arkansas was founded in 1871 on the site of a hilltop farm that overlooked the Ozark Mountains, giving it the nickname "The Hill". The university was established under the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862. The university's founding also satisfied the provision in the Arkansas Constitution of 1868 that the General Assembly was to "establish and maintain a State University." Bids from state towns and counties determined the university's location. The citizens of Fayetteville and Washington County At Arkansas, the taller tower is the bell tower, and the shorter tower is the clock tower. In addition to the regular chimes of the clock, the university's Alma Mater plays at 5 pm every day. Former state senator and U.S. congressman John N. Tillman served as president of the University of Arkansas from 1905 to 1912. In the Arkansas State Senate he proposed the Separate Coach Law of 1891, a Jim Crow law to segregate African American passengers. The bill became law and was enforced for many decades. The University of Arkansas admitted Silas Herbert Hunt of Texarkana, an African American veteran of World War II to the university's School of Law in 1948. Hunt's enrollment was regarded as the first successful school integration below the Mason–Dixon line of that era. While Hunt was admitted into the university, his attendance was not met without controversy. African American students were permitted to attend the university, under the condition that they enroll as graduate or law students, and be taught in segregated classes. Unfortunately, Silas Hunt was only able to complete one year of education. In April 1949, Hunt was admitted to the VA hospital, where he later died of tuberculosis, aggravated by injuries he had sustained in the war. Roy Wilkins, administrator of the NAACP, wrote in 1950 that Arkansas was the "very first of the Southern states to accept the new trend without fighting a delaying action or attempting to... limit, if not nullify, bare compliance." In the fall of 1948, changes were made to the university's segregation policy, which allowed for the admittance of African American students into regular classes. The first to follow Hunt was a law school student by the name of Jackie L. Shropshire, would later go on to become the university's first black graduate in 1951. 1952 University of Arkansas Medical School graduate Edith Irby Jones, who was also admitted to the University of Arkansas in 1948, would be the first African American to be admitted in any Southern school. Several African American students followed in his footsteps, attending various graduate programs at the university. Arkansas was freely admitting African American students as early as 1957, while many southern states still prohibited black students from attending all white universities. The events in Little Rock at this time did some damage to race relations at the university that would not be fixed for some time. This is suggested to have been done from legal pressures to avoid litigation. This was also due to growing discontent with the separate but equal laws that were in place. In 1969, the university created the Black Studies Advisory Committee to facilitate the creation of a Black Studies program, which began in the fall semester of 1968 with 19 courses offered. In 1968 a group called Black Americans for Democracy or BAD was the first organization at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville specifically founded to raise black awareness and advocate for African American students. Even though African American students had been admitted to the school in previous years they were still the minority, "Fewer than 150 out of the 9,000 students at the Fayetteville campus were African American" (in 1969). Since there were so few black students this organization created a space for community and expression when they were still small in numbers. They started their newspaper because they felt black students were not covered well in the campus wide paper The Arkansas Traveler. The group organized a choir and drama club, developed black fraternities and sororities, as well as closely followed the hiring of black professors and administrators. By the end of the 1970s the black student population at the school had increased by four times its original amount. Then in 1979 BAD changed their name to Students Taking a New Dimension or STAND. In 2019, the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees voted to rename halls B and C of the Northwest Quad in honor of Gordon Morgan and Margaret Clark, respectively. The university has also hosted guest lectures by Aldon D. Morris, Carol Anderson, and Nikole Hannah-Jones related to African and African American studies. Notable people in African and African American history at the university • Gordon Daniel Morgan – an alumnus and one of the first Black professors at the University of Arkansas, and was hired to teach sociology ==Campus==