Oakwood University
American private Seventh-day Adventist university in Alabama
Oakwood University is a private, historically black Seventh-day Adventist university in Huntsville, Alabama. It is the only HBCU owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Oakwood University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and the Department of Education of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (through the Adventist Accrediting Association) to award associate, baccalaureate, and master's degrees.
Oakwood University owns and operates the Christian radio station WJOU 90.1 FM, formerly WOCG.
History
Early years
Oakwood University has its origins in the post-Civil and post-slavery effort to fund higher education for African-Americans who had been freed in the South. In response to the counsel of SDA Church co-founder Ellen G. White, a committee was appointed by the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to buy property and create a school that offers vocational education and spiritual direction to African-American students. In January 1896, the committee bought for $6,700 the 360-acre (1.5 km2) plantation that had been owned by the enslavers of Dred Scott. That same year, Oakwood University was founded as Oakwood Industrial School in Huntsville, Alabama, under the authority of the General Conference.
Named for the oak trees surrounding it and the white SDA Church leaders' belief that industrial work is fitting for southern African-Americans, students were initially required to work in industrial positions on-campus to pay for their tuition. Their jobs included machine shop and farm work for male students and print shop, laundry and tailor shop work for female students. Classes commenced in November 1896 with 16 students enrolled.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oakwood University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.