Richard R. Wright
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| Richard Robert Wright Sr. | |
| President Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth | |
|---|---|
| Term | 1891 – 1921 |
| Successor | Cyrus G. Wiley |
| Born | May 16, 1855[1] Dalton, Georgia[1] |
| Died | 1947 |
| Alma mater | Atlanta University[1] The Wharton School[1] |
| Profession | American military officer, educator, banker |
| Spouse | Lydia Elizabeth (Howard) Wright |
Richard Robert Wright, Sr. was an American military officer, educator, politician, civil rights advocate and banking entrepreneur. Among his many accomplishments, he founded a high school, a college and a bank. He also founded the National Freedom Day Association.[1]
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Wright was born May 16, 1855, as a slave in a log cabin six miles from Dalton, Georgia.[1][2]
[edit] Education
After emancipation, Wright’s mother took him 200 miles from Dalton to attend the Box Car School in Atlanta, Georgia, an abandoned railway car schoolhouse where former slaves were educated.[3] While visiting the school, retired Union Civil War soldier General Oliver Otis Howard asked what message he should take to the North. Wright reportedly told him to pass a potent message: "Sir, tell them we are rising." That exchange inspired a once-famous poem by John Greenleaf Whittier.[3][4]
Wright went on to attend the Storrs School in Atlanta, Georgia, and was valedictorian at Atlanta University's first commencement ceremony in 1876.[2]
[edit] Military career
Wright was a major in the Spanish-American War and in 1896 President William McKinley appointed him as a paymaster of the United States Volunteers in the U. S. Army. He was the first African-American to serve as Army Paymaster.[5][4]
[edit] President Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth
From 1891 to 1921, Wright served as president of the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth in Savannah, Georgia.[2]
During the 1890s, Wright traveled to various locations including Tuskegee Institute, Hampton Institute, Girard College of Philadelphia, and the Hirsch School in New York, to document current trends in higher education. He used these visits to developed a curriculum at Georgia State College based on the seven ancient liberal arts, the "Talented Tenth" philosophy of W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington’s vocationalism and self-reliance concepts, and the educational model of the New England colleges (he was a graduate of Atlanta University under the instruction of Dartmouth College and Yale University graduates).[2]
At the time, Wright was viewed as one of the leading figures of black higher education in America, conferring with some of the great educational leaders of the time.[2] Visitors and lecturers to campus during his tenure as president included Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington Carver, Walter Barnard Hill, Lucy Craft Laney, Mary Church Terrell, Booker T. Washington and Monroe Nathan Work.[2] U.S. presidents William McKinley and William Howard Taft also visited the campus and spoke to students in Peter W. Meldrim Hall.[2]
By the end of Wright's tenure as president, the college’s enrollment had increased from the original eight students to more than 400. Additionally, he expanded the curriculum to include a normal division, courses in agriculture and mechanical arts, and four year high school subjects.[2]
[edit] Banker
Moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1921, he decided to open a bank. At age 67 he enrolled in the Wharton School to prepare for this venture.[4] He eventually entered the business world, creating and leading Philadelphia's Citizens and Southern Bank and Trust Company at 1849 South Street in 1921. At the time it was the only African-American-owned bank in the North.[4]
Under his leadership the bank withstood the Great Depression and had assets of $5.5 million when it was sold in 1957, more than a decade after Wright’s death.[4]
[edit] Personal life
Wright was married to Lydia Elizabeth (Howard) Wright and was the father of nine children.
[edit] Legacy
[edit] Family legacy
In June 1898, Richard R. Wright Jr. received the first baccalaureate degree awarded by Georgia State Industrial College. He went on to become the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He later became president of Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio and a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.[2]
Dr. Ruth Wright Hayre, daughter of Richard Jr., would joined her father as a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, making them the first African-American father and daughter to do so. Dr. Ruth Wright Hayre became the first full-time African-American teacher in the Philadelphia public-school system. She served as a senior high-school principal and as the first female president of the Philadelphia Board of Education. At age 80, she established the "Tell Them We Are Rising" program, promising to pay college tuition for 116 sixth-graders in two poor North Philadelphia schools if they completed high school. Her story was chronicled in her book Tell Them We Are Rising: A Memoir of Faith in Education, published in 1997, the year before she died.[3]
[edit] National Freedom Association and National Freedom Day
Wright invited national and local leaders to meet in Philadelphia to formulate plans to set aside February 1st each year to memorialize the signing of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by President Abraham Lincoln on February 1, 1865 freeing all U.S. slaves.[1] One year after his death in 1947, a bill passed both houses of the U.S. Congress, making February 1st National Freedom Day. The holiday proclamation was signed into law on June 30, 1948 by President Harry Truman.[4][6]
[edit] Suggested Reading
- Patton, June O. (1996) "'And the Truth Shall Make You Free': Richard Robert Wright, Sr., Black Intellectual and Iconoclast, 1877-1897" . The Journal of Negro History. Vol. 81.
- Elmore, Charles J. (1996) Richard R. Wright, Sr., at GSIC, 1891-1921: A Protean Force for the Social Uplift and Higher Education of Black Americans. Savannah, Georgia: Privately Printed.
- Hall, Clyde W. (1991) One Hundred Years of Educating at Savannah State College, 1890-1990 . East Peoria, Ill.: Versa Press.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f g Pennsylvania: Life and Times of Major Richard Robert Wright, Sr. and the National Freedom Day Association. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
- ^ a b c African American Firsts Highlight Rich Legacy. Retrieved on 2008-08-30.
- ^ a b c d e f Wharton Alumni Magazine: 125 Influential People and Ideas: Richard Robert Wright Sr.. Retrieved on 2008-08-30.
- ^ Documenting the American South. Retrieved on 2008-08-30.
- ^ National Freedom Day: A Local Legacy. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
| Academic offices | ||
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| New title Established school
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President of Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth 1891 — 1921 |
Succeeded by Cyrus G. Wiley |
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