Oberlin Academy

Class of 1892

Oberlin Institute, a private secondary school, was established in 1832 or 1833,[note 1] 27 years before Oberlin High School.[4][5][6] Public high schools were uncommon at the time, and as a result, many colleges found that their incoming students were poorly prepared for their academic studies. This led some colleges to establish their own high schools, organized as preparatory departments of the college.[7]

Oberlin Institute faced opposition from conservative Whites in Ohio who opposed its admittance of African Americans.[8] Nevertheless, in 1850 the school was granted a charter and became Oberlin College.[8] The undergraduate education program continued afterwards as a preparatory school sometimes referred to as "prep".[8]^: index

The Preparatory Department was the only primary education in Oberlin until the community organized a school district and eventually launched public schools.[5] The Preparatory Department had an enrollment of 690 students in 1890.[9]

Sarah Watson, the first African American woman to attend Oberlin, enrolled in the Preparatory Department in 1842.[10] Between 1833 and 1865, at least 140 black women studied at Oberlin, most of them in the Preparatory Department.[3]

In 1887, the school moved into French Hall and part of Society Hall.[11] From 1892 the secondary school was called Oberlin Academy. The school's mission was to prepare students for college.[3]

Classified ad for Oberlin Academy from the Saturday Evening Post, July 29, 1911

Edward Henry Fairchild was the school's principal from 1853 until 1869. An abolitionist, he went on to become president of Berea College, a coeducational and integrated institution in Kentucky.[12] John Fisher Peck also served as the school's principal.[13] His daughter, Emily Peck, tutored Latin and Greek at the preparatory department and was an artist who depicted fellow Oberlin alums in sculpture.[14]

Booker T. Washington, who had close ties to Oberlin College and hired teachers from the school at Tuskegee Institute, sent his son Ernst to Oberlin Academy in 1904 and 1905.[15]

By 1905, the school's enrollment was declining. One of the factors for the decline was that public high schools were becoming widely available by that time.[4] In January 1910, the Oberlin Alumni Magazine published an entry on the school, its significance, and the need for continued support of it.[6] In 1912 a new building opened for the academy and the Oberlin Academy Alumni Association was organized.[16]

The school was removed from campus from 1912 to 1916 and occupied the Johnson mansion (now known as Johnson House)[11] on South Professor Street in Oberlin.[5][17] The Johnson House is now the Hebrew Heritage House, a college residence for Jewish students.[11]

In 1915, the college announced that it would close the Preparatory Academy.[18] In that same year, the academy was listed in A Handbook of the Best Private Schools of the United States and Canada, which stated:[19]

It is a co-educational school with an attendance of over three hundred, largely from the region round about, but in all representing thirty states. For many years during its history the teachers of the Academy were students at the College who thus earned their support. The Academy has however for many years had its own independent faculty and developed a life of its own.

Alumni include:

• Calvin Brainerd Cady, musician, educator, and writer
• Jacob Dolson Cox, Union Army general, politician, and microbiologist
• John Dube, founder of the South African Native National Congress[20]
• Richard Theodore Greener, Harvard College graduate and dean of Howard University School of Law
• James Monroe Gregory
• Luther Gulick (physician)
• Charles Robert Hager
• Forrest M. Hall
• William W. Hannan
• Ellen Hayes
• Robert Maynard Hutchins[21]
• John Mercer Langston, first African American congressman from Virginia[22]
• Edmonia Lewis[23]
• Sinclair Lewis[24]
• George Herbert Mead[25]
• Byron R. Newton, journalist who attended from 1862 to 1864[26]
• Benjamin F. Randolph
• Josiah T. Settle
• Henry H. Straight
• Eloise Bibb Thompson[27]
• Katharine Wright[28]

Teachers included:

• Sarah Cowles Little
• Edgar Fauver
• Fanny Jackson Coppin, the "first black teacher in the preparatory department."[29]

• Descriptive Pamphlet of Oberlin Academy (1912), a special pamphlet issued to publicize the donation of Charles Martin Hall
• Fletcher, Robert Samuel (1943). A history of Oberlin College from its foundation through the civil war. Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College. OL 6453410M.
• Morris, J. Brent (2014). "College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America". Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469618272. JSTOR 10.5149/9781469618289_morris.
• Butchart, Ronald E. (2010). "Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861-1876". Schooling the Freed People: Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861-1876. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469607290. JSTOR 10.5149/9780807899342_butchart.