Walter Wright, Lincoln University’s Fourth President
Walter Livingston Wright, the first acting president (1924-26) and fourth president of Lincoln University (1936-45) became a professor of mathematics at Lincoln University in 1893, a year after receiving his A.B. at Princeton. This was during the presidency of Lincoln University's first president, Isaac Norton Rendall, who was succeeded by his nephew John Rendall in 1905. During John Rendall's presidency Wright was the treasurer of the faculty.
When John Rendall died in 1924 Wright was the almost unanimous choice for the presidency among the alumni, but he was opposed by several conservative board members on the grounds that he was not an ordained Presbyterian minister. He served as Acting President until William Hallock Johnson, a colleague and friend who had the benefit of ordination, was elected president, and Wright assumed the new position of Vice President (while remaining on the teaching faculty).
After Johnson's retirement in 1936 Wright became president and served in that position until 1945, when Horace Mann Bond (father of Julian Bond) became the first Black president of Lincoln University. Under Wright, Lincoln achieved its status as a ‘state-aided’ higher institution in the 1937-39 biennial appropriation bill. By the time Walter Wright retired in 1945, almost half the faculty members were black, including two black women, who were faculty wives and the only women on the faculty. Horace Mann Bond's book Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania (1976) fills in many more details about Walter Wright's career at Lincoln University. Additional sources include the blogger's personal knowledge, in combination with the 1945 yearbook and/or the 1944-45 catalogue (faculty with degrees from LU and Howard in that era are assumed to have been black).
Additional information is also available online. The Langston Hughes Memorial Library has links on its website to pdf files for the Lincoln University Herald , a university newsletter (1894-1936), with catalogue issues between the years of 1919-1936. These are searchable, year-by-year, and it is possible to enter "Wright" as a search term and find him in both the newsletters and catalogues. The following page has links to the specific issues: http://www.lincoln.edu/library/specialcollections/herald.html
When John Rendall died in 1924 Wright was the almost unanimous choice for the presidency among the alumni, but he was opposed by several conservative board members on the grounds that he was not an ordained Presbyterian minister. He served as Acting President until William Hallock Johnson, a colleague and friend who had the benefit of ordination, was elected president, and Wright assumed the new position of Vice President (while remaining on the teaching faculty).
After Johnson's retirement in 1936 Wright became president and served in that position until 1945, when Horace Mann Bond (father of Julian Bond) became the first Black president of Lincoln University. Under Wright, Lincoln achieved its status as a ‘state-aided’ higher institution in the 1937-39 biennial appropriation bill. By the time Walter Wright retired in 1945, almost half the faculty members were black, including two black women, who were faculty wives and the only women on the faculty. Horace Mann Bond's book Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania (1976) fills in many more details about Walter Wright's career at Lincoln University. Additional sources include the blogger's personal knowledge, in combination with the 1945 yearbook and/or the 1944-45 catalogue (faculty with degrees from LU and Howard in that era are assumed to have been black).
Additional information is also available online. The Langston Hughes Memorial Library has links on its website to pdf files for the Lincoln University Herald , a university newsletter (1894-1936), with catalogue issues between the years of 1919-1936. These are searchable, year-by-year, and it is possible to enter "Wright" as a search term and find him in both the newsletters and catalogues. The following page has links to the specific issues: http://www.lincoln.edu/library/specialcollections/herald.html
posted by Susan Gunn Pevar | 3:25 PM
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