Langston University: A school of our own
A brief story on the development of Langston University, America’s most-western HBCU.
This weekend, Langston University celebrates its 125th anniversary and homecoming. The extravagant weekend has been filled with a parade, football and even a gala featuring its own 13-time Grammy-nominated alumnus and Tulsa, OK native, Charlie Wilson.
The university has come a long way and it remains remarkable that a small HBCU in rural Oklahoma, in a still-existing all-Black town remains operational and producing graduates year after year. We’ve seen the fate of many HBCUs across the country closing their doors over time.
Before Langston University, some of the earliest Black Oklahomans seeking higher education found themselves going elsewhere to obtain their education. I recently found a student roster in the 1880s from Roger Williams University in Nashville, TN showing students from the Oklahoma Territory. This Baptist university established in 1867, was the place my great-great grandfather, William Sulcer, was educated before moving to Oklahoma in 1890. His experience, along with many other Black educators that came to Oklahoma in the 1880s/1890s, informed their vision of a “negro college.” Many of them went HBCUs like Lincoln University, Morris Brown College, Fisk University and several others.
A group of early Black educators formed a group named “Ida M. [sic] Wells Teachers’ Association” in Oklahoma City in 1983. My source on this, and much of this blog post, comes from a dissertation from Evelyn Richardson Strong, who submitted a study on social change through the historical development of the Oklahoma Association of Negro Teachers. She published this dissertation in 1961 after research and a series of interviews from primary sources including 91-year-old Sulcer. The group was named to honor the famed educator, reporter, and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells. It included Black educators in fourteen counties and twenty-six communities of Oklahoma Territory.
As a the Oklahoma Territory began to more aggressively develop as a formalized government, which later led to statehood, the Territorial Legislature began setting up a territory-wide educational system, including funding mechanisms that still exist today: county ad valorem taxes. The Wells Association noticed numerous inequities in the system as they worked to strengthen educational opportunities for Black residents. In 1896, many white territorial educators were obtaining additional education from Territorial Normal School at Edmond (now known as the University of Central Oklahoma) and Norman Territorial University (now known as the University of Oklahoma). The Wells Teachers’ Association’s county normal committee attempted to enroll an educator, Cynthia Ware, into the Territorial Normal School at Edmond, but were referred from the registrar to the president, who then referred them to the Board of Education. She was denied admission.
Yet, this is just one part of a larger story of many forces that worked from 1890 to 1897 to establish an institution of higher education for “negroes” in Oklahoma Territory. The Second Morrill Act of 1890 from the federal government provided cash to states and territories to establish separate higher educational opportunities if race was used an admissions criteria. In the background of all of this was the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case, which set “separate, but equal” accommodations as a precedent. Numerous leaders in Oklahoma including Edward McCabe, negro territorial legislator David J. Wallace, and Territorial Governor William C. Renfrow, who signed the law to establish the university, worked to get the proper accommodations for Black Oklahomans to achieve some forms of equality and opportunity.
(18827.521, Albertype Collection, OHS).
Finally in 1897, the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (CANU) at Langston was established, opening higher educational opportunities for Black Oklahomans and beyond. This great institution educated many notable people including educational pioneers and Civil Rights activists Clara Luper, who was one of the first Black masters’ graduates from the University of Oklahoma, and Civil Rights educator Nancy Randolph Davis, who was the first Black enrollee at Oklahoma State University, and Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, who was the first Black law student at the University of Oklahoma and later its second Black regent. Both Luper and Davis were leaders during the Sit-In Movement in Oklahoma, leading youth of the NAACP Youth Council to desegregate many businesses in the state.
Why Langston? A few communities bid to be the home of the new negro college. There was a Baptist school in Choctaw-area, present-day Spencer, established by leaders like Sulcer that had already existed on a ten acre tract. According to Sulcer, Langston had outbid the other community, offering 40 acres, including one section that had earlier been established as “college heights” by the town’s founder Edward McCabe.
Let us reflect and honor of legacy of Langston University and its graduates. Oklahoma is a better state because the dedication and investment of our forebearers. Now lest we forget their legacy looking ahead and continue to invest and uplift this historic institution that has strengthen the state of Oklahoma and our nation.
I hope you enjoyed reading this piece as much as I enjoyed writing it. When I think about those who came before us, I am incredibly grateful that they had us in mind. Many didn’t get to see or experience the full fruits of their labor but did the necessary work to get it done. We are forever indebted to these individuals and it is our responsibility to uphold these institutions and honor the spirit of their work: equality, equity and justice for all.
May the mighty roar of Langston Lions forever be heard.
