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| In the fall of 1968, LeMoyen College and S.A. Owen
Junior College merged to form LeMoyene-Owen
College. LeMoyne College was a hundred-year-old institution formed by the American Missionary Association, an arm of the Congregational Church. Owen was a junior college founded in Memphis in 1954 by the Tennessee Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention. Both colleges brought to the merger a heritage of providing higher education to Negro youth. To trace the history of the merged institution is to recount the the separate threads of history of each college. |
| LeMoyne College had its beginning in 1862, when the
American Missionary Association
sent a Miss Lucinda Humphrey to open an elementary school for " contraband " Negroes and " freedmen " at Camp Shiloh, just below Memphis, Tennessee. In 1863, the school was moved to Memphis and grew to what to what was to be know in 1866 as Lincoln School. In the race riots which followed withdrawal of federal troops in 1866, Lincoln Chapel was destroyed by fire. It was immediately rebuilt and reopened in 1867 with 150 pupils and six teachers. |
| Financial problems arose. It was then that Dr. Francis
Julius LeMoyne, a life member of
the American Missionary Association and a prominent physician of Washington, Pennsylvania, made a gift of $20,000. In his letter which accompanied the gift, Dr. LeMoyne wrote in part: " I would not have the institution confined to any class or color. I would not have it sectarian. . .As to the designation of the institution I care but little. You can exercise your own judgment in that respect." In 1871, the school was named for its benefactor, LeMoyne Normal and Commercial School. Under this title it began its long history of educating Negro teachers. In 1901 the curriculum was broadened to include regular high school, and the institution was to remain the only high school for Negroes in Memphis until 1923. |
| LeMoyne College acquired its present site in 1914 when
Steele Hall was built on Walker
Avenue at McDowell St. (now Hollis Price St.) It became a junior college in 1924 and, finally, was chartered by the State of Tennessee as a four-year, degree granting institution in 1934 when the name changed to LeMoyne College. |
| Owen College was first conceived in 1946 when the Tennessee
Baptist Missionary and
Educational Convention contracted for property on Vance Avenue in Memphisfor the purpose of the building of a Baptist junior college. A board of trustees was organized in 1953, and the school opened in 1954 as S.A. Owen Junior College, named in honor of the Reverend S. A. Owen, a prominent religious and civic leader. Later that year the name was changed to Owen College. The first class was graduated in 1956, and the college was accredited in 1958. |
| In 1967, negotiations to merge Owen College with
LeMoyne College were entered into, and
the merger was accomplished in the fall of 1968. The merged institution brings together two religious traditions---the United Church of Christ and the Baptist Church. LeMoyne-Owen has been afforded a wider base of support and greater academic strength. |