Wilberforce University

History

Wilberforce was established in 1856 by a joint venture of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, initially to educate mixed-race children of Southern slaveholders who were sent north for education. This origin — an institution partially funded by enslavers to educate their unacknowledged children — reflects the particular complexities of antebellum free Black life in the border-state region.

The Civil War nearly destroyed Wilberforce. The institution closed in 1862 after its primary financial backers — Southern planters who had been sending their mixed-race children to the school — were cut off by the war. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, led by Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, purchased the institution in 1863 for $10,000. Payne's acquisition made Wilberforce the first historically Black college owned and operated by an African American organization — a landmark in the history of Black institutional self-determination.

W.E.B. Du Bois taught at Wilberforce from 1894 to 1896 — his first academic appointment after completing his Harvard PhD. He taught classics and German. He found the institution's atmosphere, dominated by the AME Church's religious conservatism, intellectually constraining and left for the University of Pennsylvania after two years. His brief tenure nonetheless connects Wilberforce to the broader HBCU intellectual tradition.

Wilberforce faced significant financial pressures and enrollment decline through the early twenty-first century, but has staged a marked recovery in the 2020s. Enrollment grew roughly 70 percent between the fall of 2022 and the fall of 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing universities in Ohio, with the institution projecting enrollment of roughly 1,000 students for the 2026–2027 academic year. In October 2024 the Higher Learning Commission removed the institution from its accreditation watch list, restoring it to full accredited standing. Under President Vann R. Newkirk, who took office in 2024, the university has added new degree programs — including civil and environmental engineering and kinesiology — and broken ground on new residential facilities slated to open in 2026 as part of Campaign 170, a multiyear capital initiative. The turnaround is sustained by its denominational relationship with the AME Church and the loyalty of its alumni network.

The First Black-Owned College

When Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church purchased Wilberforce University in 1863 for $10,000, he established the first instance of African Americans owning and operating an institution of higher education in the United States. The purchase was made during the Civil War — when the question of whether Black Americans would emerge from slavery as citizens with full rights was still being settled by force. The AME Church's acquisition of Wilberforce was an act of institutional self-determination: a declaration that Black Americans would not wait for white institutions to educate them but would build and own their own. That declaration has defined the HBCU tradition ever since.

Notable Alumni

A representative selection. Alumni records are verified against institutional and published sources. Unverified entries are flagged explicitly — we do not fabricate records.

Source notes: Frederick A. McGinnis, A History and an Interpretation of Wilberforce University (1941); David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race (1993); Richard Newman, Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (2008); Wilberforce University archives.

Recent Developments

After decades of financial precarity, Wilberforce has entered a period of measurable recovery. Between the fall of 2022 and the fall of 2025 enrollment grew by roughly 65 percent, approaching 1,000 students and ranking Wilberforce among the fastest-growing universities in Ohio.

On October 31, 2024, the Higher Learning Commission removed Wilberforce from its watch list, restoring the institution to unqualified good standing. Under President Vann R. Newkirk Sr., the university has broken ground on new residential facilities slated to open in 2026 and secured HLC approval for several new degree programs. In June 2026 the university outlined a further expansion for the 2026–27 academic year, adding new dormitory and modular housing units as it absorbed the loss of residence-hall space it had leased from neighboring Central State University, part of a multiyear plan to enlarge its campus footprint.