A History of Reconstruction-Era Education in New Orleans

1869–1935

Based on the Straight University Catalogue, 1899–1900 and The Buildings of Dillard University, Will W. Alexander Library

Introduction

In the spring of 1869, amid the upheaval of Reconstruction, the American Missionary Association (AMA) opened the doors of a new institution in New Orleans, Louisiana. What began as a school for the recently emancipated — offering basic literacy, moral instruction, and the rudiments of a classical education — would grow over three decades into a university with departments of Theology, Law, College, Normal, Grammar, Industrial Arts, and Music. This institution was Straight University, named in honor of its principal benefactor, the late Hon. Seymour Straight of Hudson, Ohio.

The history of Straight University is inseparable from the history of Reconstruction itself. It was born in the brief, embattled window when federal power was deployed to reshape Southern society, and it endured the violence, neglect, and retrenchment that followed the withdrawal of that power. That it survived at all — through fires, financial crises, the collapse of Reconstruction, and decades of legal segregation — is a testament to the faith of its founders, the dedication of its teachers, and the hunger for education among the Black communities of Louisiana and the wider Gulf South.

This history focuses on the era beginning with Reconstruction (1865–1877), tracing the university's origins, its institutional development across the post-Reconstruction decades, and the lives of the men and women who shaped it, until its 1935 merger with New Orleans University to form Dillard University.

Part I: The Reconstruction Context, 1865–1869

The Freedmen's Bureau and the Imperative of Black Education

The Civil War ended in April 1865, and with it came the immediate and urgent question of what freedom would mean in practice for the four million formerly enslaved people of the South. In Louisiana alone, the collapse of the plantation system created a massive population of freedpeople in desperate need of education, legal protection, and economic standing. The Freedmen's Bureau, established by Congress in March 1865, was charged with addressing these needs — and among its most consequential activities was the founding and support of schools.

Louisiana presented particular complexities. New Orleans had long hosted a sizable community of free people of color, many of them educated, Catholic, and French-speaking, whose social position was distinct from the newly freed rural population. The city was also a Union-occupied port since 1862, which meant that some schooling for Black residents had already begun before the war's end, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association and the military government. By 1865, the educational infrastructure for Black Louisianans was already more developed than in most Southern states — but it was fragile, contested, and entirely dependent on Northern philanthropic and political will.

The Freedmen's Bureau established schools throughout Concordia Parish and across Louisiana's parishes, often working in partnership with denominational missionary societies. These schools faced violent opposition: schoolhouses were burned, teachers threatened, and local white communities organized to deny freedpeople the resources to sustain education. The Bureau's records document dozens of such incidents in Louisiana alone. Nevertheless, by 1868, the Bureau had registered more than ten thousand pupils in Louisiana schools, and the demand for qualified Black teachers — who could survive in communities where Northern white teachers faced constant danger — was acute.

The American Missionary Association and Its New Orleans Presence

The American Missionary Association was among the most active of the Northern missionary societies in the post-war South. Founded in 1846 as an explicitly abolitionist organization, the AMA had begun sending teachers into the South even before the Confederate surrender. By 1869, it operated dozens of schools, from elementary freedmen's schools to fledgling colleges, including Atlanta University (1865), Fisk University (1866), Talladega College (1867), and Tougaloo University (1869) in Mississippi.

The AMA's presence in New Orleans predated the founding of Straight University. Its teachers had staffed schools in the city since the early years of Reconstruction, and the organization maintained close ties with local Congregational churches — the denominational home of the AMA. These churches, with their racially mixed or predominantly Black congregations, served as both spiritual community and institutional anchor for the AMA's educational mission in the city.

The founding of Straight University in 1869 must be understood as the culmination of this missionary activity — an effort to move beyond the elementary instruction of freedmen's schools to provide something more ambitious: an institution capable of training teachers, ministers, lawyers, and educated citizens who could sustain and lead the Black community across generations.

Part II: Founding and Early Years, 1869–1877

The Founding of Straight University

Straight University opened in 1869 under the sponsorship of the American Missionary Association. The 1899–1900 Catalogue records the institution's self-understanding of this moment with notable pride and historical consciousness: 'The present year completes the thirty-first since the founding of Straight University by the American Missionary Association, upon which it is still dependent. The first building was erected by the United States Government, on Esplanade Street, upon land purchased by the American Missionary Association.'

This opening passage is dense with significance. The first building was a federal construction on land purchased by a private missionary society — an emblem of the Reconstruction-era partnership between federal power and Northern philanthropy that made Black higher education possible in the South. Esplanade Street, in the Faubourg Tremé neighborhood, placed the university at the heart of New Orleans' Black intellectual and cultural life, in a neighborhood that had long been home to the city's community of free people of color.

The university bore the name of Seymour Straight (1815–1896), a loyal friend and benefactor of the American Missionary Association. When Straight College opened in 1869, Seymour Straight was appointed President of the Board of Trustees, a position he held until his death. He was also a member of the New Orleans City Council — a reminder that the university's founders had civic as well as educational ambitions. Straight Hall, the female dormitory at the later Dillard University campus, would eventually be named in his honor.

The First Students and Early Curriculum

The early catalogue records of Straight University reveal that the institution enrolled students from across Louisiana and the Gulf South from its earliest years. The alumni lists in the 1899–1900 Catalogue show Law Department graduates as early as 1876, College Department graduates beginning with the class of 1876, and Normal Department graduates beginning with the class of 1875. These dates confirm that advanced instruction was underway within the first decade of the institution's founding.

The names of those first graduates are a window into the post-Reconstruction Black professional world. The Law Department's class of 1876 included Louis M. Martinet, M.D. — who would later become the founding publisher of the New Orleans Crusader and the lead organizer behind the legal challenge that became Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Rudolph Lucian Desdunes, class of 1882, was another early graduate who became a prominent writer, journalist, and civil rights activist. Thomas De Saliere Tucker, class of 1882, went on to serve as President of the State Normal School in Tallahassee, Florida. These were not peripheral figures; they were among the most consequential Black Louisianans of the Gilded Age.

The Fire of 1877 and Removal to Canal Street

Reconstruction's end came not with a single event but with a series of blows — the Compromise of 1877, the withdrawal of federal troops, the collapse of Radical Republican governments across the South. For Straight University, the symbolic rupture came in the same year: 'Upon the destruction of this building by fire in 1877,' the Catalogue records, 'the school was removed to the present more central location on Canal Street.'

The fire of 1877 was not merely an accident of institutional history. Fire was a frequent instrument of racial terror in Reconstruction Louisiana. Whether this fire was deliberately set is not recorded in the institutional sources; what is recorded is that the university survived it, relocated, and continued. The new Canal Street location, in 1878, saw the dedication of a new building. There, over the following decade and a half, the two fine dormitories — Stone Hall and Whitin Hall — were erected.

The timing of the relocation — in the very year of Reconstruction's political collapse — meant that Straight University would need to find a way to operate without the federal support that had made its founding possible. That it did so, and that it continued to grow through the 1880s and 1890s, is a remarkable institutional achievement.

Part III: Growth and Consolidation, 1877–1900

The Second Fire and the New Central Building

The university's trials by fire were not over. The Catalogue records a second conflagration: 'the second occurring the night of November 30, 1891, and, each time, profiting by her misfortunes, she has risen out of the ashes to larger purposes and increased means of usefulness.' The building destroyed in 1891 was used 'wholly to school and college purposes and stood apart from the dormitories.' In response, the American Missionary Association erected a new central building, described in the Catalogue with evident pride.

The new building was three stories high, 'of a pleasing style of architecture,' and contained on its first floor the Chapel (seating approximately five hundred), a sewing room, four school rooms, and offices for the President and Treasurer. The second floor held the College and Normal rooms, three recitation rooms, three additional rooms, the music room, the library, and the chemical laboratory, as well as rooms for the theological department. The third floor housed dormitories and a reading room for theological students. This was, by any measure, a substantial academic plant for an institution serving a Black population in the Jim Crow South.

Stone Hall and Whitin Hall

The two dormitories — Stone Hall for women and Whitin Hall for men — were more than residential facilities; they were expressions of the university's paternalistic vision of Christian character formation. The Catalogue describes Stone Hall as 'the ground upon which it stands, a fine monument to the moderate generosity of Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, of Malden, Mass.' It served as 'a dormitory for the girls, and the home of the President and most of the teachers.' The building also contained the kitchen and 'the cool and spacious dining room.'

The management of Stone Hall was, in the language of the Catalogue, 'an impressive object lesson to the students of what constitutes the ideal Christian family.' An experienced matron supervised housekeeping, and a preceptress taught the girls 'to care for their rooms and their health' and 'trains them in the manners of a refined Christian home.' This domestic education was inseparable, in the AMA's vision, from intellectual and moral formation.

Whitin Hall, the men's dormitory, was 'a memorial of the generosity of the late Seymour Straight, and the late John C. Whitin, of Mass.' It too was under the charge of an accomplished matron — a reminder that supervision and moral oversight were features of both dormitories, not merely the women's.

The Board of Trustees in 1899

The Board of Trustees listed in the 1899–1900 Catalogue reflects the coalition of Northern Congregationalist clergy, philanthropists, and New Orleans civic figures that sustained the university. Among the trustees were Rev. John G. Davenport, D.D. (Waterbury, Conn.); Rev. A. F. Beard, D.D. and Rev. A. J. Behrends, D.D. (New York); and Rev. G. J. Ryder, D.D. (New York) — all Congregationalist ministers with AMA connections. The New Orleans-based trustees included Charles S. Rice, G. Russell, M.D., Oscar Atwood (who also served as President), and Thomas J. Woodward, who served as President of the Board.

This mixed board — Northern clergy and Southern civic leaders, all white in 1899 — was characteristic of AMA-affiliated institutions of the period. The appointment of local white New Orleanians to the board was a pragmatic strategy for navigating the hostility of the post-Reconstruction South; it signaled that the institution had the patronage of at least some members of the white establishment, even as it served an exclusively Black student body.

The Faculty and Administration in 1899–1900

The faculty listed in the 1899–1900 Catalogue reveals a mixed picture of Northern white leadership and increasingly prominent Black instructors. Oscar Atwood, A.M., served as President — a position he would hold for many years. Rev. Geo. W. Henderson, D.D. served as Professor of Theology and University Pastor. Albert A. Knowlton, A.B. taught Latin and History; Emily W. Nichols taught Science and Methods and also served as Librarian; Harriet S. Barber, A.B. taught Higher Mathematics.

Yet the faculty lists also include a significant cohort of recent Black graduates now serving as instructors in the Preparatory and lower departments: Henderson H. Dunn, John F. Guillaume, Charles H. McGruder, Lawrence Blanchet, Frank E. Christophe, Magnolia M. Coignet, Harry I. Hall, and many others — graduates of Straight's own Normal and College departments now returning to teach the next generation. This circulation of graduates back into the institution as teachers was a hallmark of successful normal schools, and it reflects the degree to which Straight had, by 1900, begun to generate its own intellectual community.

The Theological Department faculty deserves particular attention. In addition to President Atwood, it included Rev. Geo. W. Henderson, D.D. for Systematic Theology and Exegesis, and another clergyman (partially illegible in the OCR) for Church History and Old Testament Exegesis. The theological students in 1899–1900 included Stephen Anderson, George D. McGruder, and John H. Stroud at the senior level; Henderson H. Dunn and Charles H. McGruder at the junior level; and several beginners including Mary Christophe, Isaac Carter, Nellie E. Donato, and Emma Toddy — a reminder that women were not excluded from theological instruction at Straight.

Part IV: The Academic Program, 1899–1900

A University of Many Departments

By the turn of the twentieth century, Straight University had developed a remarkably comprehensive educational program for an institution of its size. The 1899–1900 Catalogue lists the following major departments: the Law Department, the Theological Department, the College Department, the Normal Department, the Grammar Department, the Daniel Hand Preparatory School, the Department of Music, and the Industrial Department. Total attendance across all departments was listed at 281 students, drawn from Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, and Nicaragua.

This breadth was partly a practical necessity. Because public education for Black children in Louisiana was woefully underfunded and often inaccessible, Straight University had to provide what the public system would not — basic grammar school instruction for younger students and preparatory work for those not yet ready for collegiate study. The university thus served simultaneously as elementary school, high school, normal school, college, professional school, and seminary. This was characteristic of the major Black educational institutions of the era, from Tuskegee to Fisk to Howard.

The Law Department

The Law Department holds particular historical distinction. Graduating its first class in 1876 — just seven years after the university's founding — it produced an extraordinary cohort of Black legal professionals in an era when Black lawyers were extraordinarily rare. The complete alumni list in the 1899–1900 Catalogue shows graduates across twelve classes from 1876 to 1886, with New Orleans addresses predominating but graduates also working in Vicksburg (Mississippi), Canton, Morgan City, and Washington, D.C.

The most nationally significant alumnus was Louis M. Martinet, class of 1876. Martinet studied medicine as well as law, and he became the founding editor and publisher of the New Orleans Crusader, the Black newspaper that organized the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law — the legal campaign that produced the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. Martinet's training at Straight University placed him at the center of one of the defining civil rights struggles of the nineteenth century. That the law school which trained him was founded during Reconstruction, and that he graduated in the year of Reconstruction's political collapse, gives his career a particular poignancy.

Rudolph Lucian Desdunes, class of 1882, was another law alumnus of lasting significance. A writer and civil rights activist, Desdunes was deeply involved in the Citizens' Committee alongside Martinet, and his 1911 book Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire (Our People and Our History) remains an indispensable source for the history of Louisiana's free Black community.

The College Department

The College Department offered a classical liberal arts education with courses in Latin, Greek, History, Mathematics, Science, and English Literature. By 1899, it had graduated students across two dozen classes, with graduates working as teachers, ministers, lawyers, physicians, and educators across Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and beyond.

Alfred Lawless, College class of 1895, is among the most notable alumni. Born in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Lawless earned both his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Divinity degrees from Straight College. He later founded Beecher Memorial Congregational Church in New Orleans (1904) and fought tirelessly for Black educational opportunities, ultimately creating the Seventh Ward Educational League. The University Chapel at Dillard University bears his name. His son, Theodore K. Lawless (1892–1971), would go on to become a nationally renowned dermatologist and recipient of the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1954.

The Normal Department, designed to train teachers for the state's Black schools, was perhaps Straight's most directly consequential program in terms of community impact. Its graduates fanned out across Louisiana — to New Orleans, Thibodaux, New Iberia, Baton Rouge, St. Martinsville, and smaller communities — serving as the primary educators for Black children in an era when the public system could not or would not serve them. Among the Normal graduates was Fannie C. Williams (1882–1980), who came to New Orleans as a young woman to attend Straight College, later earning advanced degrees from Michigan State Normal College and the University of Michigan. She served as principal of Valena C. Jones Elementary School for thirty-three years, pioneered nursery school and kindergarten education for Black children in New Orleans, and served as a trustee of Straight College and then of Dillard University. Williams Hall at Dillard University is named in her honor.

The Industrial Department

The Industrial Department at Straight University reflected the era's contested debates about the purpose of Black education. The 1899–1900 Catalogue lists three industrial tracks: Wood-Working, Sewing, and Printing, with Mechanical Drawing as an additional specialty. Students were enrolled in the industrial program across all grade levels, from the fifth year of grammar school through the eighth year, and the department was overseen by Emerson C. Rose (Superintendent of Manual Training), James D. Gordon (Printing), and Ila S. Mellen (Sewing and Dressmaking).

The university's own printing press — described in the Catalogue as a department that produces 'all the job work required by the institution' and accepts work from 'outside parties' — was a source of both practical training and institutional income. The press published the Catalogue itself, a fact acknowledged in the imprint: 'Straight University Press, 1900.' Students learned composition and press work; the 'printer simply makes up and locks up the form,' suggesting a high level of student autonomy in the shop.

It is worth noting that Straight University's industrial program existed alongside, not instead of, its classical and professional programs. Unlike Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute, which emphasized industrial education at the expense of classical learning and became the preferred model of white philanthropists who wished to limit Black educational ambitions, Straight maintained a full academic curriculum. The institution's motto and ethos aligned more closely with W.E.B. Du Bois's vision of the 'Talented Tenth' — a classically educated leadership class — while pragmatically offering vocational training for students whose immediate circumstances demanded practical skills.

The Theological Department

The Theological Department occupied a central place in Straight University's mission. As an AMA institution, Straight was explicitly Protestant and Congregationalist in orientation, and the training of Black ministers for Congregational churches in Louisiana and the South was among its primary purposes. The Catalogue describes a full three-year course in Systematic Theology, Historical Theology, Biblical Geography and Archaeology, Exegetical Theology, Church History, and Old Testament Exegesis. For graduates of the classical department, Hebrew was available as an elective; a parallel track existed for those whose education had been confined to English studies.

The theological program had produced graduates serving Congregational churches across Louisiana — in Abbeville, New Orleans, Lake Charles, and Corpus Christi, Texas. The most prominent alumnus of the theological stream was Rev. A. E. P. Albert, D.D., class of 1881, who served as Vice-President of Gilbert Academy in Baldwin, Louisiana — one of the AMA's other educational institutions in the state.

The Daniel Hand Preparatory School

The Daniel Hand Preparatory School, funded by a philanthropic bequest from Daniel Hand of Connecticut, served as the university's primary school, providing basic instruction for students not yet ready for the grammar or higher departments. It was staffed by Lorena A. Lyon as principal, with several assistants, and it addressed what the Catalogue openly acknowledged as 'one of the great hindrances to our work' — 'the lack of preparatory schools by which the pupils can be fitted for the higher grades.' Students coming from rural Louisiana, the Catalogue notes, 'are usually compelled to begin in the lower grades.'

The Daniel Hand School was thus not an add-on to Straight University's mission but integral to it. In the absence of an adequate public school system for Black children in Louisiana, the university had to build the educational pipeline from the bottom up.

The Library and the Sciences

The 1899–1900 Catalogue contains brief but illuminating descriptions of the library and science facilities. The library, 'although small, contains most of the standard works of history and literature, as well as a large number of ready reference books. Nearly two thousand volumes are catalogued according to the Dewey system, besides which there are numerous theological works and books of Greek, Latin, French and German literature.' The library was managed by Emily W. Nichols, who also taught Science and Methods — a reminder that faculty in small institutions wore many hats.

The Science Department had seen 'great improvement within the last five years by the addition from time to time of much needed apparatus.' A 'well-furnished chemical laboratory' served the classes in general and analytical chemistry, and physics classes had 'all the necessary apparatus for experimental work.' A museum contained 'a fair collection of geological specimens' used across multiple departments. The science faculty expressed a progressive educational philosophy: 'believing that the only true method of teaching the physical sciences is by laboratory experimentation, we are gradually training the science classes to intelligent and independent laboratory work.'

Part V: The Student Body and Its Communities

Geographic Origins

The address lists in the 1899–1900 Catalogue offer a remarkable snapshot of the student body's geographic range. While the majority of students were from New Orleans itself — many listing addresses on streets such as St. Ann, Bienville, Burgundy, Conti, and Customhouse — the boarding student population drew from across Louisiana and beyond. Thibodaux, New Iberia, Abbeville, St. Martinsville, Houma, Napoleonville, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Lake Providence, and Shreveport all sent students. Out-of-state students came from Vicksburg, Bay St. Louis, Ocean Springs, and Biloxi in Mississippi; from Bryan, Houston, Austin, Corpus Christi, and Texarkana in Texas; and from as far as Bluefields, Nicaragua, and Matamoras, Mexico.

This geographic range was not incidental. Straight University was filling an educational vacuum that extended far beyond New Orleans. The absence of comparable institutions for Black students across the lower South — or the inaccessibility of those that existed — meant that families across the region sent their children to Canal Street for the education that might otherwise be unavailable to them.

Gender and Education

One of the most striking features of the student rosters is the near-parity of women students across most departments. In the Normal Department — the primary teacher-training program — women appear to have outnumbered men, reflecting both the gendered occupational structure of the era (teaching was one of the few professional paths widely open to Black women) and the AMA's explicit commitment to women's education. The College Department, the Grammar Department, and the Industrial Department (through the Sewing program) all enrolled substantial numbers of women.

The Sewing Department alone enrolled well over a hundred students across eight grade levels, suggesting that domestic science education was a major component of the institution's work for women students. Whether this reflected a limiting of women's aspirations or a pragmatic recognition of what skills would serve them in the economy of Jim Crow Louisiana is a question the Catalogue cannot answer; the alumni records, however, show women graduates working as teachers, editors, and professionals across the South.

Night School

The 1899–1900 Catalogue lists a Night School operated by John H. Whaley, with sixteen students including Edward Ashford, J. F. Celestan, Etna Ida Clark, and others. The night school served working adults who could not attend daytime classes — laborers, domestic workers, and tradespeople for whom literacy and basic education were earnest aspirations fitted into the margins of exhausting work lives. This was, in many ways, the most poignant educational provision in the Catalogue: evidence that the hunger for learning extended beyond the formal student body into the broader Black working community of New Orleans.

Part VI: Notable Alumni and Faculty, 1869–1935

Louis M. Martinet and the Fight Against Plessy

No alumnus of Straight University left a larger mark on American history than Louis M. Martinet. A physician and lawyer who earned his degree from the Law Department in 1876, Martinet founded the New Orleans Crusader in 1889, the Black newspaper that became the voice of Louisiana's Civil Rights movement in the Gilded Age. He organized the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law, orchestrating Homer Plessy's deliberate arrest on June 7, 1892, in the first-class car of the East Louisiana Railroad. The Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding racial segregation under the doctrine of 'separate but equal,' would stand as the law of the land until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Martinet's career — shaped in the classrooms of Straight University during Reconstruction — was thus woven into the fabric of American constitutional law.

Alexander Priestly Camphor

Bishop Alexander Priestly Camphor (1865–1919) was born in Soniat, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, and attended both Leland University and New Orleans University before pursuing his theological training at Gammon Theological Seminary. From 1889 to 1893 he served as Professor of Mathematics at New Orleans University. In 1897 he went to Liberia, where he served as President of the College of West Africa in Monrovia until 1907, and simultaneously held the position of United States Vice Consul for Liberia. His career embodied the international dimensions of the Black missionary and educational movement that Straight University served. Camphor Hall, the male dormitory at Dillard University, is named in his honor.

Alfred Lawless and the Legacy of Straight's Graduates

Alfred Lawless (1872–1933), a graduate of both the College and Theological departments of Straight, exemplifies the institution's role in producing community leaders across generations. After founding Beecher Memorial Congregational Church in 1904, Lawless worked ceaselessly for educational access. When he requested the use of a single room in the Miro Street School for summer classes in 1911, the school board refused — yet he persisted, creating the Seventh Ward Educational League. His son Theodore K. Lawless became one of the nation's most distinguished physicians. The Lawless Chapel at Dillard University honors both father and son.

Joseph Crane Hartzell and the Freedmen's Aid Society

Joseph Crane Hartzell (1842–1928), a Methodist Episcopal missionary bishop, played a crucial role in New Orleans during the Reconstruction era. Succeeding John Philip Newman as pastor of the Ames Church in New Orleans, Hartzell became presiding elder of the New Orleans district in 1873. During his residence in New Orleans, 'he established several schools and a hospital for blacks.' From 1883 to 1896 he was associated with the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society, one of the parallel organizations to the AMA operating in the post-war South. Though not directly affiliated with Straight University, Hartzell's work in New Orleans shaped the educational ecology in which Straight operated. Hartzell Hall, the junior and senior female dormitory at Dillard University, is named in his honor.

Part VII: Straight University and Its Peer Institutions

New Orleans University

New Orleans University, founded in 1869 by the Methodist Episcopal Freedmen's Aid Society, was Straight University's closest peer in New Orleans — a Black institution of comparable mission, founded in the same year, and operating with similar denominational sponsorship. Where Straight was Congregationalist and AMA-affiliated, New Orleans University was Methodist. The two institutions shared the same city, the same student constituency, and many of the same struggles, and their eventual merger in 1935 to form Dillard University reflected both the logic of institutional survival and the shared vision of their founders.

Alexander Priestly Camphor attended New Orleans University from 1880 to 1882 before pursuing his theological training elsewhere, and he later served as a professor of mathematics there — illustrating the movement of scholars and ministers between the two institutions. The histories of Straight and New Orleans University are, in significant ways, a single history, divided by denominational affiliation but united by purpose.

Tougaloo University

The 1899–1900 Catalogue includes in its Normal Department alumni list Fred S. Hitchcock, class of 1883, listed as a teacher at Tougaloo University in Tougaloo, Mississippi — another AMA institution, founded in 1869. This small entry opens a window onto the interconnected network of AMA schools across the South: Straight-trained graduates moving to staff sister institutions, carrying the curriculum and mission of the AMA's educational project from New Orleans to Mississippi and beyond.

Rust College and the Network of Methodist Schools

W. J. Nickerson, Normal class of 1883, is listed as a Music Teacher at Southern University in New Orleans — another Black institution, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church South. George W. Wells, College class of 1879, served as Professor at Rust University in Holly Springs, Mississippi. These movements of graduates between institutions underscore the degree to which Straight University was not an isolated institution but a node in a regional network of Black educational institutions spanning denominational lines.

Part VIII: From Straight University to Dillard, 1900–1935

The Twilight of the AMA Era

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Straight University continued to operate under the sponsorship of the American Missionary Association, but the institution faced growing financial strain. The AMA's resources, always stretched across dozens of institutions, were insufficient to support the kind of physical and curricular expansion that a growing student body required. The 1899–1900 Catalogue's candid acknowledgment that 'the charges for board and tuition do not cover one-half of the actual cost of running the institution' was a warning sign that foreshadowed the financial pressures of the next three decades.

The early twentieth century also brought significant changes in the philanthropic landscape of Black education. Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932), the Sears, Roebuck magnate and the era's most consequential philanthropist of Black education, made the 'salvation of blacks through education' the outstanding feature of his philanthropy. His Rosenwald Fund, operating through Will W. Alexander's Commission on Interracial Cooperation, reshaped the funding of Black educational institutions across the South. Edgar Bloom Stern (1886–1959), a New Orleans financier married to Edith Rosenwald, served as president of the Board of Trustees for Dillard University and Flint-Goodridge Hospital, and in 1956 he and his wife made gifts totaling more than $210,000 to Dillard, Harvard, and Tulane Universities.

The Merger of 1935 and the Founding of Dillard University

In 1930, negotiations began between the American Missionary Association, the Methodist Episcopal Freedmen's Aid Society, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund to merge Straight University and New Orleans University into a single, better-funded institution. The merger, completed in 1935, created Dillard University — named in honor of James Hardy Dillard (1856–1940), a Tulane University dean and educational reformer who had devoted his career to building bridges between racial groups and to the advancement of Black education.

The first president of the new Dillard University was Dr. William Stuart Nelson (1895–1977), who was elected on March 17, 1936, and assumed office July 15, 1936. Nelson was the first Black president of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, before his appointment at Dillard. A man of deep commitment to nonviolence, he was a friend of Mahatma Gandhi and of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and walked with both men in protest marches. He also wrote the words to 'Fair Dillard,' the university's alma mater. While president, he served from 1936 until 1940, when he resigned to return to Howard University.

Will W. Alexander (1884–1956), who had been one of the chief planners of the new university, served as acting president from 1931 to 1936 — during the transitional period before Dillard's formal inauguration. Alexander's pastoral experience had turned him toward the problems of race and poverty; in 1919 he had founded the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, which he directed for twenty-five years. The university's library bears his name.

Albert W. Dent (1904–1984), who served as Dillard's president from 1940 to 1969, oversaw a period of dramatic growth. Under his leadership, Dillard's physical plant expanded substantially with the addition of the Will W. Alexander Library, the Lawless Chapel, and faculty housing; the endowment grew to $3,347,000; and in 1944, Dillard became a charter member of the United Negro College Fund. In 1958, the university was admitted to membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Conclusion: The Meaning of Straight University

Straight University's history is, in the deepest sense, the history of what was possible during Reconstruction and what became necessary — and more difficult — after its end. Founded in 1869 at the high-water mark of federal commitment to Black citizenship and Black education, sustained through the long decades of Jim Crow by the dedication of its teachers, students, and Northern donors, and finally merged into Dillard University in 1935, Straight represents a particular episode in the long history of Black Americans' struggle for educational access.

The institution's self-characterization in the 1899–1900 Catalogue deserves to be taken seriously as historical testimony: 'The history of the University is a record of steady growth and expanding influence. It was the pioneer school in this section of the South, in offering the recently emancipated race the opportunity for an education leavened with the spirit of the Gospel — an opportunity of which, from the very first, they availed themselves with grateful appreciation.'

But the Catalogue also gestures, with careful understatement, toward the larger meaning of what Straight was doing: 'Thus her history is, in some respects, the intellectual history of the colored people in this part of the South, since they received the gift of freedom, the successive additions of the Normal, Collegiate and Theological departments making and measuring the moral and intellectual advancement of the race.'

This is the claim that Straight University made for itself — and that the historical record, from Louis Martinet to Alfred Lawless to Fannie C. Williams, substantially justifies. In the teeth of legal segregation, political disenfranchisement, and economic exploitation, Straight University trained lawyers, ministers, teachers, physicians, musicians, and engaged citizens who shaped the Black South for generations. The names in its alumni lists are not merely historical curiosities; they are the names of people who built communities, challenged injustice, and kept alive the possibility of a more equal America during the long night that followed Reconstruction.

The university that Seymour Straight helped to found during Reconstruction did not survive into the twenty-first century under its own name. But the institution it became — Dillard University, still serving New Orleans and still committed to the education of Black students — is its living continuation. The history of Straight University is, ultimately, a history of resilience: of an institution and a people who refused to accept that the end of Reconstruction meant the end of their educational aspirations.

A Note on Sources

This history draws on two primary sources: the Straight University Catalogue for 1899–1900, published by the Straight University Press, and the institutional biographies compiled by the Will W. Alexander Library of Dillard University in The Buildings of Dillard University and the Biographies of Those Men and Women Whose Energies and Abilities Have Been a Significant Factor at Dillard. These sources have been supplemented by contextual knowledge of the Freedmen's Bureau era, the American Missionary Association's educational network, and the post-Reconstruction history of Black Louisiana.

The 1899–1900 Catalogue is a particularly rich document: it contains not only faculty lists and enrollment figures but complete alumni rosters across all departments from the university's earliest graduating classes, brief descriptions of facilities and programs, a statement of the university's history from its own perspective, and detailed student address lists that allow some reconstruction of the institution's geographic reach and social character. Its OCR transcription — made from photographic scans of the original document — occasionally produces errors or illegible passages, particularly in columns of names and addresses; where the text is uncertain, this history has relied on the clearest available reading.