Guest contributor: Nancy Locklin-Sofer
Maryville College in Eastern Tennessee has a long and proud tradition of racial inclusion. Our founder, Isaac Anderson, called on us to “do good on the largest possible scale.” In 1819, he welcomed a formerly enslaved man, George Erskine, as a pupil. Anderson and many of his presidential successors believed that worthy (male) candidates of all races should be educated, especially at the college’s seminary where they would learn to preach to their own communities. But in keeping with the wishes of the Presbyterian Synod, antebellum college leaders were careful to avoid condemning slavery so they could remain “above politics.” Then, after the Civil War, Rev. Thomas J. Lamar had to rely on funding from northern donors (such as William Thaw Sr.) to rebuild the college. The Northerners expected the college to remain racially integrated as a condition of their largesse. This would prove to be a source of contention on campus and in the wider community.
One unusual voice in the debate belonged to Rev. Peter Mason Bartlett, president from 1869 to 1887. In a series of letters to Thaw, Bartlett questioned the validity of the college’s continuing commitment to integration. Thaw saw racism at the root of Bartlett’s concern, but Bartlett offered a more complex argument. He was troubled because, while Black men were enrolled by the college, they were not treated the same as white or even international students. They could not live or eat on campus, and they were restricted to the back row in chapel. Bartlett wondered if Black students would be better served at a Black college. In fact, as he explained to the Knoxville Sentinel on October 6, 1900, the students themselves had petitioned to resolve the issue once and for all: pay for the Black students to get an education elsewhere or admit them to full status at Maryville.
Internal documents from the Maryville College archives reveal that the Board of Trustees, the administration, the faculty, and students continually debated the integration of the college between 1880 and 1901 (when the state of Tennessee forcibly segregated all schools and colleges). On one side stood those who supported integration, either because it was the right thing to do or because the college had no other choice if it wanted to keep its donors. On the other side were those who objected to racial mixing at any level and feared the consequences of integration.
Perhaps because he took the issue to the public, Bartlett fell out with the Board and faculty at the college. (He wasn’t even buried in the campus cemetery when he died, unlike nearly all of the other college’s presidents.) The entire debate was sufficiently embarrassing that college presidents since Rev. Samuel Tyndale Wilson in 1930 have agreed to keep all the documents pertaining to the integration debate a secret, locked in a box in the president’s office.
When Dr. Bryan Coker became president of Maryville in 2020, institutions across the nation were openly grappling with their pasts. He asked the historians on the faculty (including me) and the college archivist to read every item in the box. What did we need to reckon with? To be honest, I was relieved that all we were hiding was doubt, fear, and complacency. As we strive to do better, it made sense to open the box and release its secrets.
Nancy Locklin-Sofer is a professor of history at Maryville College. Her academical specialty is pre-modern Europe, especially France, but her research and teaching stretch from ancient Rome to early-modern witch hunts, the Enlightenment, and unsolved local murders from the 1920s. The views expressed here are her own, not necessarily those of Maryville College or the Council of Independent Colleges.
