Stillman College Celebrates a Century and a Half of Purpose, Pride, and Promise

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — James Dumas remembers standing outside the Stillman College library in the late 1970s, watching a campus he loved take shape around him. He never left. Four and a half decades later, he still reports to work at that same library, where he served his work-study hours as an undergraduate. His wife is a Stillman graduate. Both of his daughters are Stillman graduates. His daughter Nicole went on to earn a doctorate.

Dr. Yolanda W. PageAll photos courtesy of Stillman College"I didn't leave," he said simply, seated in a room lined with photographs of students who marched through Tuscaloosa's streets during the Civil Rights Movement. "My wife didn't leave. Our daughters didn't leave."

That loyalty — stubborn, abiding, multigenerational — is perhaps the most fitting emblem of what Stillman College has been for 150 years. Founded in 1876 by the Rev. Charles Allen Stillman, a white Presbyterian minister who defied the violent racial order of Reconstruction-era Alabama to establish an institution for Black men aspiring to the ministry, the college has since grown into a four-year liberal arts HBCU serving students from across the country. This year, it marks its sesquicentennial, a milestone that feels, to those gathered on its campus, like both a celebration and a calling.

A Foundation Built on Audacity

To understand what Stillman is today, it helps to understand what the Rev. Stillman was up against in 1876. The Civil War had ended barely a decade earlier. Reconstruction was unraveling under the weight of white supremacist violence. And yet, Stillman raised money, opened a school, and stood by it — even as he faced threats for his association with and advocacy on behalf of Black Alabamians.

"He was not a loved individual because of his mission," said the Rev. Dr. Joseph Scrivner, who has served as Stillman's Dean of Chapel for 13 years. "He was being targeted as someone who loved African Americans. But he just went through that because of a higher mission."

The proximity between the college and the church is no accident. Presbyterians, Scriber explained, have always believed in educated ministers. If African Americans were to have their own congregations after segregation fractured mixed-race worship, they needed trained clergy. That conviction became a school. The school became a college. And the college became, for generation after generation of Black Alabamians and beyond, a portal into a life they might otherwise never have accessed.