A Tale of Two Campuses

Now that autumn has arrived and schools are in session, I can tell you about my own back to school experience.  This one was not at all what I had expected even though I had been given some advance notice.  I found myself on unfamiliar ground which made me think about education in ways I had not entertained for a long time.

On Saturday, 15 September, I visited Tuscaloosa which is some 55 miles/88 km southwest of Birmingham.  I had not been in the city since 1981 so I knew there had been some changes.  I had once lived there when I was studying metallurgy at the University of Alabama and so knew that campus as well as much of Tuscaloosa itself.  My business in the city took me to Stillman College, but before taking care of that I had my brother John drive me to the UA campus.  An old high school and University of Alabama classmate had told me I wouldn’t recognize the place again and to prepare to be surprised.  I had no idea what his words could mean, but the reality went well beyond my expectations.

We found the campus without too much difficulty thanks to the numerous signs pointing the way.  From the moment we arrived, however, I found my head spinning.  I saw some of the familiar landmarks that I knew from my salad days:  the brick tower which housed Denny Chimes, the unofficial campus timepiece; the main library; and the President’s Mansion were all still standing tall.  The oak tree-girt Quadrangle was still in place as well, but more crowded with outbuildings than it had been in my student days.  And as we cruised down one side street, we passed the university’s Natural History Museum, a building that also contained classrooms and had been rumored to be haunted.  It still stood tall and grim, shaded by the omnipresent oak trees that cover so much of Tuscaloosa and which have given the city its “Druid City” nickname.

But it didn’t take me long to get completely turned around.  New buildings were everywhere, claiming much that had been open space before.  They lined narrow lanes and streets, elbowing each other it seemed as they rose cheek-to-jowl into the Alabama sky.  The campus I had known was gone.  In its place was a conurbation that looked more like a city planner’s nightmare than a university.  John and I drove around aimlessly until I was on the verge of asking him to leave when I spotted a familiar building, the Ferguson Center which had been the student center in my time.  I now knew where I was and even though the layout of the surrounding streets had been altered I successfully navigated us to the two dormitories I lived in back in the 1970s.  Paty and Palmer Halls were still there.

Paty Hall:

Palmer Hall:

Somehow both dorms had survived the campus renewal and rebuilding but the quiet no-thoroughfare street they occupied was no more.  Instead, more buildings loomed in the distance and the old oak groves and football field I had known and played on were gone.  The duck pond behind Palmer Hall had evidently been filled in as well and where once there was nothing but trees and grass was now covered with yet more buildings.

The dorms are security-locked now, but a friendly student let me into Paty and I strolled around the ground floor.  My old room was on the third floor but since I had not gained authorized access, I decided not to tempt fate and go looking for it.  Instead, I called my old classmate, who now lives in New Hampshire, and told him where I was.  He laughed uproariously when I told him I no longer recognized the UA campus.

“That’s no surprise, Raymond,” he said.  “Remember, thirty-five years ago, when we were students, there were 12,000 students at Alabama.  Now there are 31,000 and all the new buildings you see are a reflection of that growth.”

Indeed they are although I can’t say that it has all been good.  The collegial atmosphere is gone and what has replaced it isn’t something I liked.  After talking to my friend, John and I drove away from the campus but there was one last sight that made me realize that some things were bigger than ever.  That was Bryant-Denny Stadium, the home field of the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide football team.  A stadium that held less than 60,000 thirty-five years ago now has more than 101,000 seats.  It towers over every other structure on the campus like some concrete version of Godzilla over Tokyo.  As I’ve noted before, college football is king in this state, and here was its mightiest temple, an edifice that on certain autumn Saturdays is the fifth-largest population center in all of Alabama.

We drove away and went in search of Stillman College.  After a long and frustrating hunt we found the campus.  It is on the opposite end of town from mammoth UA and is a school with a completely different history and culture than its more celebrated counterpart.  We parked, I entered the building where I conducted my business and then took a little time to learn more.

Stillman is a HBCU, a “Historic Black College and University.”  There are some 105 of these institutions in the United States and Stillman is one of the oldest.  Most of the HBCUs were founded to educate the freed black slaves after the Civil War.  Stillman’s founder, a white Presbyterian minister, intended the college to be a school that would train and prepare black men to be ministers in the Presbyterian Church.  It was founded in 1876 and has had a most distinguished history.

In the year Stillman was founded, the defeated Confederacy was in the last year of what the victorious Union called “Reconstruction.”  The aim was to rebuild a South that had been wrecked by the carnage of the American Civil War of 1861-1865.  One of the social programs undertaken at the time was to give the freed slaves a basic education, to teach them how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic.  After mastering those skills, it was soon discerned that a college education should be the next step.  At that time, despite emancipation, many freedmen found themselves barred from attending the country’s elite colleges and universities.  Thus the HBCUs came into existence with the purpose of closing that gap.

I got some satisfaction from realizing that both Stillman College and my alma mater, the University of Colorado, were founded in the same year.  And as far as education in the state of Alabama, Stillman carries another distinction.  It was founded and was conducting classes when the University of Alabama was a pile of charred ruins.  That is because on 9 April 1865, the day that Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia and ended the Civil War, a Union army marched into Tuscaloosa and attacked the University of Alabama.  The university was defended by teenage students who were easily routed.  The Yankees then proceeded to burn the university to the ground with only four of its buildings escaping the torch.  That devastation lay like an open wound in Tuscaloosa until 1881 when the university was at last rebuilt.

So while Alabama’s flagship university was still a memory, former slaves were getting a college education.  That fact is a source of great pride at Stillman, and its campus reflects that.  After the stifling urbanscape of the UA campus, the atmosphere of Stillman was a direct and most soothing opposite.  This was my first ever visit here because even as a UA student, I never made the time to see the college.  I thought that UA was light-years ahead of poor cousin Stillman and believed the school had nothing of worth for me.  How wrong I was!

For it was only after talking to a long-time Stillman employee and walking out onto its Quadrangle that I could see that Stillman had retained its original vision and purpose.  Yes, many of the buildings I saw were undoubtedly new and yes, Stillman pursues grants, endowments and gifts as other colleges and universities must and should.  But it was only when I walked outside, under the spreading oak trees and next to the stately buildings that I could feel the history.  It seeped out of the ground and up my legs before finally embracing my heart and mind.

Stillman Quadrangle:

Stillman College:

The employee I spoke to smiled broadly when I told him my Tuscaloosa history.

“Back in your day,” he said, “many black UA students came to Stillman for their social life.  There wasn’t much of one for black students at Alabama in those days as you probably remember.  They came here for dancing, movies, parties and dating.

“Matters are otherwise now.  We don’t get those kinds of visitors anymore.  But Stillman is still here and we’re still educating our people.”

I told him I would like to come back, look around, and maybe talk to staff and faculty to learn more.  He told me that I would be more than welcome and that he hoped I would return soon.

Indeed, I plan to return to both campuses and take a good look.  I want to visit the President’s Mansion and the Gorgas Home on the UA campus because they were two of the buildings that survived the university’s destruction and so have great historical value.  I want to visit the Mineral Industries Building, a foundry built by a rich UA alumnus and where I learned metallurgy and how to cast aluminum, brass and cast iron.  I want to go back to Foster Gym where, in 1963, Governor George Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door” to prevent the registration of two black students at the university.

Stillman College, with its 2,000 students, is now one of the foremost colleges for the study of computer science in America—quite a feather in the cap for a HBCU.  I want to learn how the college intends to move forward while still honoring its history and traditions.  Stillman is not the only HBCU in Alabama, either.  The most famous is Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington.  There are also Alabama State and Alabama A&M which have their own stories to tell.

These visits and the activities associated with them will enrich my life in Alabama.  Here is something that Colorado does not have:  a link to this nation’s past that speaks directly to the life of my ancestors and my family.  I had a cousin who attended Tuskegee Institute.  Another was one of the founding members of the Afro-American Students Association at UA and labored tirelessly to make the years which immediately followed the university’s integration more benevolent than they might otherwise have been.  In Tuscaloosa there exist side-by-side two institutes of higher learning which continue to thrive, albeit in strikingly different ways, and advance human knowledge and understanding.  I am most eager to gain a greater appreciation of both of them.