Originally published in:
The Herald-Sun
Friday, October 22, 1993
For all that N.C. Central University is today, the creation of the university in 1910 reflects one man's iron-willed determination to educate blacks.
In building the school, Dr. James E. Shepard received plenty of help from Durham's black and white leaders. But his tenacity and ingenuity were the threads that held together the fledgling school until, in 1925, it became the nation's first state-supported black liberal-arts college.
Today, NCCU has 5,700 students and an annual budget for academics of around $40 million.
As one of three black institutions founded in Durham from 1898-1910 - the others were Mechanics & Farmers Bank and N.C. Mutual Life Insurance Co. - NCCU is a cornerstone of Durham's black community.
Shepard (1875-1947), like the other black leaders of Durham's entrepreneurial class, came from relatively privileged circumstances. He graduated from Shaw University with a degree in pharmacy and followed his father, Augustus Shepard, into the ministry.
In 1905, after various jobs with the federal government Shepard was appointed superintendent of the International Sunday School Board. In that position, he traveled throughout the South and became aware of the need to educate black ministers.
By 1909, he was soliciting money for a school that would educate ministers, Sunday school teachers and missionaries based on a model he found in Northfield, Mass. The idea was breathtaking for its time.
Fusion politics had thrown Republicans and Progressives together and created among Democrats a backlash of racist political rhetoric that frequently exploded into violence. In such a climate, the education of blacks was not a high priority.
Surprisingly, however, North Carolina had six black colleges, all founded before the turn of century. Nationally at the turn of the century, there were 26 black state colleges or universities and 21 private black schools.
Scarce as money was, possible sites abounded for Shepard's school: Columbia, S.C.; Greensboro; Winston-Salem; and Hillsborough. But Durham got the nod after the local Merchants Association persuaded Brodie Duke, a son of Washington Duke, to sell 20 acres on Fayetteville Street and donate half the $4,300 sale price to the school.
As the first four buildings rose in 1910 at a cost of $20,000, the scope of the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua had broadened to include courses in agriculture, horticulture and animal sciences, in addition to languages, Bible and medicine. With two dormitories, a dining room and an auditorium, Shepard's venture began in July 1910.
The first six-week session had fewer than 100 students, who paid $10 each and handed over $3.50 for room and board. The courses were high-school level reading, writing and arithmetic.
Later, two years of grammar school were added to patch the holes in the students' preparation. Taking a page from Booker T. Washington, the male and female students also learned a trade.
At the beginning of each school year, Shepard gave an inspiring speech in which he proclaimed that the Eagle - the school's mascot - is no barnyard fowl. Although his colorful message was usually intended to inspire the football team, it was clear to all that excellence was expected of everyone.
In 1925, North Carolina brought the school into the state system with Shepard as president. The school would still suffer from inadequate funding, but did not endure the desperate, hand-to-mouth existence of its first 13 years.
While raising money to start the school, Shepard knocked on the doors of U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, as well as industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
Once NCCU opened, Shepard was not universally regarded as a savior. After one of the innumerable money-raising trips, he jumped train at the east Durham station to avoid creditors waiting for him at Union Station downtown.
Putting food on the table for the students was a daily struggle for Shepard's wife, Annie Day, who also served as the college cook. One evening the dinner bell rang as usual. But no food appeared on the table until a package arrived from a local missionary society.
Shepard's conviction and persuasion were so strong that professors sometimes returned half their $50 monthly paychecks to the college. At one point all the school's property was auctioned off, along with Shepard's private property, household furnishings and library.
Brodie Duke's sale of land was not the only helping hand extended by Durham's white community. At one point, the congregation of a white church donated the salary for one professor.
Shepard died in 1947. But the spirit that brought the school to fruition was fierce to the end, as is reflected in a letter to the faculty dated Jan. 29, 1946.
In the typed letter, Shepard informed the faculty that its work "is not entirely satisfactory." He reprimanded teachers who worked only three hours a day teaching and did not use their time outside the classroom to prepare lectures and stay abreast of scholarship in their field.
Light faculty attendance at chapel and less than full participation in "moral" and "spiritual" activities on campus troubled Shepard, as did teachers who dismissed class without his approval.
"What real worth is such a teacher to this institution?" he asked. Not much, was his answer - and in the letter's closing paragraph he invited uncooperative teachers to resign. "For NCCU, James Edward Shepard is a symbol of all those who trod the stony way under the chast'ning rod, a representative of all who followed a path watered with tears," said Alex Rivera, a former student of Shepard's.
"In this institution, he built a monument to faith and courage, not only to his own faith, but to the faith of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and even more remote ancestors. His name deserves greater honor than we have yet given."