Founded in 1845, Baldwin-Wallace was among the first colleges to admit students without regard to race or gender. Through the years, its African American alumni have made substantial contributions to society.
In honor of Black History Month, we are delighted to share with you the stories of a few of our outstanding graduates.
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At Baldwin-Wallace College in the 1880s, David W. Byrd tutored pupils in Latin to pay for his education. He later studied literature and medicine at Harvard, before receiving his M.D. at Meharry Medical College in Nashville Tennessee. After teaching medical chemistry at Meharry, he moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where he established the first public clinic to address the ravages of venereal disease in the black community. To his patients, David Byrd was a kind man who treated all people regardless of their ability to pay. To his colleagues, he was a revered peer who they elected president of the National Medical Association. To the people of Virginia, David Byrd was a champion of public health and higher education as keys to the future for the black community.
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Hazel Mountain Walker had no intention of practicing law. She set out to prove a point… that black women could become lawyers. To reach her goal, she came to Baldwin-Wallace College. When she received her degree and passed the Ohio bar examination in 1919, she was one of the first black women admitted to the practice of law in the state. But her heart was in teaching. She taught for 49 years in the Cleveland Public Schools. When Hazel Mountain Walker became principal of Rutherford B. Hayes Elementary School in 1936, she was the first black person to break this barrier. The thousands of students whose lives she touched are her legacy.
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The daughter of sharecroppers, Jane Edna Hunter was a live-in servant in her youth. She would spend the rest of her life improving conditions for other African-American women. In 1911, she founded the Phillis Wheatley Association, a Cleveland settlement house to shelter and support poor, single women who migrated north for work. This organization provided the model for similar organizations nationwide. First trained as a nurse, Jane Edna Hunter continued her education at Baldwin-Wallace College and passed the Ohio bar examination in 1925. You can learn more about her at the Jane Edna Hunter Museum, located at the Phillis Wheatley Center on Cedar Avenue.
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His teammates called him “Bones” because of his spindly size at 5ft. 10 and 152 pounds, but General George S. Patton would call him the “best damn athlete I’ve ever seen.” When he failed to make the 1948 Olympics in his specialty, he qualified in the 100-meter dash and brought home the gold medal. After earning four Olympic gold medals, Harrison Dillard was named the nation’s top amateur athlete and became a charter member of the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.
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While at Baldwin-Wallace College in the 1950s, James M. Lawson found a core of people who helped crystallize his belief in nonviolence. That belief would lead him briefly to prison and ultimately, to his role as one of the architects of the American Civil Rights movement. “Where there is no vision, a people perish. Where there is vision, people flourish,” he noted during a commencement speech at his alma mater. James Lawson was a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and served as an organizer and a troubleshooter for Martin Luther King, Jr. Called “the teacher of the movement,” he never lost sight of his belief in nonviolence… a belief that burns strong in his ministry today.
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