page_title: Furman University
section_title: Growth and expansion (20th century)
hierarchical_section_title: Furman University / History / Growth and expansion (20th century)
caption_attribution_description: English: Furman University
context_page_description: Furman University is a private liberal arts university in Greenville, South Carolina. Founded in 1826 and named for the clergyman Richard Furman, Furman University is the oldest private institution of higher learning in South Carolina. It became a secular university in 1992, while keeping Christo et Doctrinae as its motto. It enrolls approximately 2,700 undergraduate students and 200 graduate students, representing 46 states and 53 foreign countries, on its 750-acre campus.
context_section_description: The first school building from the downtown Greenville campus was transported to the current campus, where it still stands. In 1933, students from the Greenville Women's College began attending classes with Furman students. Shortly thereafter, the two schools merged to form the present institution.
  In 1924, Furman was named one of four collegiate beneficiaries of the Duke Endowment. Through 2007, Furman has received $110 million from the endowment, which is now one of the nation's largest philanthropic foundations.  Three other colleges — Duke, Davidson and Johnson C. Smith — also receive annual support and special grants from the endowment.
  In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education found the "separate but equal" policy to be unconstitutional, starting the lengthy process of desegregating public schools. As of that date, Furman, like most Southern colleges, did not accept African Americans as students. Some Furman students began to press for change. In 1955, some students wrote short stories and poems in The Echo, a student literary magazine, in support of integration; school administrators destroyed all 1,500 printed copies. In 1953, Furman began construction on its new campus, five miles (8 km) north of downtown Greenville. Classes on the new campus began in 1958.
  By 1963, enough faculty were siding with the students over racial desegregation that Furman's Board of Trustees voted to admit black students. Action on the trustees' decision was postponed and it was later overturned by South Carolina's Baptist Convention; desegregated admission was not implemented at Furman until its incoming president, Gordon Blackwell, a past president of Florida State University, made it a condition of his acceptance of the new position. In February 1965 Joe Vaughn, a graduate of Sterling High School, became Furman's first black undergraduate.
  In 1992, Furman ended its affiliation with the South Carolina Baptist Convention and became a private, secular university, while keeping Christo et Doctrinae (For Christ and Learning) as the school's motto. Furman's "heritage is rooted in the non-creedal, free church Baptist tradition which has always valued particular religious commitments while insisting not only on the freedom of the individual to believe as he or she sees fit but also on respect for a diversity of religious perspectives, including the perspective of the non-religious person."
caption: Located in the Upstate of South Carolina, Furman University gets snow in the winter as seen in 2016.
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