[ HBCU_Presidents ] Daniel Payne: 1st Black College President in the US
Posted on 11. Aug, 2009 by Leshell Hatley in HBCU Presidents, Scholarly Celebrations
Daniel Alexander Payne
Daniel Alexander Payne was a United States clergyman, educator, college administrator and author. He became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and was a major shaper of it in the 19th century. He was one of the founders of Wilberforce University. In 1863 he became its first president, and the first African-American president of a college in the United States.
Daniel Payne was born free in Charleston, South Carolina on February 24, 1811, of African, European and Native American descent. His parents London and Martha Payne were part of the “Brown Elite” of free blacks, but both died before he reached maturity. While his great aunt assumed Daniel’s care, the Minor’s Moralist Society assisted Payne’s early education. Payne was raised in the Methodist Church like his parents. He also studied at home, teaching himself mathematics, physical science, and classical languages. In 1829 at the age of 18, he opened his first school.
After the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, like other southern states, South Carolina passed legislation restricting the rights of people of color and slaves. They enacted a law on April 1, 1835, which made teaching literacy to free people of color and slaves illegal and subject to fines and imprisonment. With the passage of this law, Payne had to close his school.
In May 1835, Payne sailed from Charleston to Philadelphia in search of further education. Declining the Methodists’ offer, which was contingent on his going on a mission to Liberia, Payne studied at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. He did not complete ordination, having to drop out of school because of problems with eyesight.
Together with Rev. Lewis Woodson and two other African Americans representing the AME Church, and 18 white representatives of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Payne served on the founding board of directors of Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856. Among the trustees who supported the abolitionist cause and African-American education was Salmon P. Chase, then governor of Ohio, who served as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court under President Abraham Lincoln. The denominations jointly sponsored Wilberforce in 1856 to provide collegiate education to African Americans. It was the first historically black college in which African Americans were part of the founding.
Wilberforce was located in an area which had been a popular summer resort of white southern planters, often accompanied by their mistresses of color and multiracial children. In one of the paradoxical results of slavery, by 1860 many of the college’s 200 students were mixed-race offspring of wealthy southern planters, who paid for their children’s education in Ohio as they could not get it in the South. The men were examples of white fathers who did not abandon their mixed-race children, but passed on important social capital to them in the form of education and inheritances.
When the Civil War reduced both church support and the number of paying students, the college had to close temporarily because of financial difficulties. In 1863 Payne persuaded the AME Church to buy the debt and take over the college outright. They had to reinvest in it two years later, when a southern sympathizer damaged buildings by fire. Payne helped organize fundraising and rebuilding, including a $10,000 donation from founding board member Salmon P. Chase. Payne was selected as president, the first African-American college president in the United States. He led the college until 1877.
Payne traveled twice to Europe, where he consulted with other Methodist clergy and studied their education programs.
Daniel A. Payne and his wife.
In April 1865 Payne returned to the South for the first time in 30 years. Knowing how to build an organization, Bishop Payne took nine missionaries and worked with others in Charleston, South Carolina to establish the AME denomination. He organized missionaries, committees and teachers to bring the AME church to freedmen. A year later, the church had grown by 50,000 congregants. By the end of Reconstruction, AME congregations existed from Florida to Texas, and more than a quarter million new adherents had been brought into the church. While it had a northern center, it was heavily influenced by this growth in the South and incorporation of many who had different practices and tradition. Worship and music styles in the South reflected its people’s own culture.
Payne died on November 2, 1893, having served the AME Church for more than 50 years. The Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio is named in his honor.
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