ABSTRACT

This chapter offers a revised context for the Washington-Du Bois debate, one that addresses black higher education within both black and white conceptions of higher education in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It compares the institutions in four areas: institutional control, fees, student life, and curriculum. State University, located in Louisville, was established by the General Association of Colored Baptists in 1879 in response to the need for educated ministers and teachers. Like many black colleges of this era, State produced relatively few college graduates. Institutional control at State University during 1910-1911 was firmly in the grasp of the General Association of Colored Baptists of Kentucky, as it had been since the school opened its doors in 1879. All personnel who played any part in the control of this college were black. Historians have tended to characterize the curricula of black colleges prior to the 1920s and 1930s as focusing on either industrial education or the liberal arts.