Despite Powerful Black Alumni, Tennessee HBCU Faces Financial Trouble
MEMPHIS, Tenn.
Willie Herenton didn’t have much choice in 1958 when he was deciding where to go to college.
The region’s main public university, Memphis State University, refused to admit Black students, so the man who would later be Memphis’ first Black mayor chose the only local school open to him — LeMoyne-Owen College.
“I could not have gone to school if not for LeMoyne,” Herenton says.
The college has played a unique role in Memphis’ history and has graduated an illustrious list of alumni, but that may not be enough to keep it in business. Like other historically Black schools in the Southeast, LeMoyne-Owen is struggling with a mountain of debt and fighting to keep its accreditation.
The school traces its beginnings to the 1860s and efforts to educate former slaves. It was a primary source of Black teachers when public schools were racially segregated. The college’s graduates helped build a Black middle class in what’s now a predominantly Black city, and they took part in the political power shift that put Herenton in office in 1991.