page_title: Shaw University
section_title: Foundation to the 1860s
hierarchical_section_title: Shaw University / History / Foundation to the 1860s
caption_attribution_description: English: Newspaper advertisement for Shaw University, 1900.
context_page_description: Shaw University is a private Baptist liberal arts institution and historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded on December 1, 1865, Shaw University was the second HBCU in the Southern United States. It has been called the "mother of African-American colleges in North Carolina" as the founding presidents of North Carolina Central University, Elizabeth City State University, and Fayetteville State University are all Shaw alumni. The founder of Livingstone College studied at Shaw, before transferring to Lincoln University. What became North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University was located on Shaw's campus during its first year.
  Shaw University is affiliated with the General Baptist State Convention of North Carolina and a member of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. which supports the Shaw University Divinity School. Along with Howard University, Hampton University, Lincoln University, PA and Virginia Union University, Shaw was a co-founding member of the NCAA Division II's Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association Conference, the oldest African American athletic association in the U.S.
context_section_description: The school was founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Henry Martin Tupper came south immediately after the end of the Civil War, establishing the Second Baptist Church of Raleigh (changed to Tabernacle Baptist Church in 1910, and now the Tupper Memorial Baptist Church.) Later Tupper and his Bible study students constructed a two-story church, with one story for the church, and one for the Raleigh Institute, where he taught freedmen. By 1915, supported by the American Baptist Home Mission, the school had 291 students, evenly divided between men and women.
  In 1867 the school consisted of three buildings, two of which were Antebellum cabins. As of 1875 when Shaw Collegiate Institute became Shaw University only two major structures existed – The Shaw Building and Estey Seminary. The former, erected where once stood corn fields in which Tupper hid from lynch mobs, with a 165-foot frontage, four stories high and possessing a tower, was the most commodious school building in all of North Carolina at that time. It provided instruction services, a library, and lodging. The seminary, reputed to be the first building ever erected for the education of African-American females, was devoted to training women in cooking, sewing, music, and the like. Henry Martin Tupper bought the material from which the women made garments and he himself sold the garments in an effort to pay for the cost of the material and other expenses.
  In 1879, a third major building was erected – a chapel and dining hall called the Greenleaf Building. It was named for O.H. Greenleaf of Springfield, MA, a yearly liberal contributor. The upper part of the building was accessible by stairs. Doors on either side of the tower provided entrance to the dining room. At the right of the chapel was a small room and at the left a library. A storeroom existed under the stairway. Funds saved from the school were used to build this structure. These were augmented by contributions of $650 (15,116.28 in current dollars) from O.H. Greenleaf, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, and Deacon O.B. Grant of Stonington.
  It was renamed Shaw Collegiate Institute after Elijah Shaw, benefactor of Shaw Hall, the first building. In 1875, it became Shaw University. In 1873, Estey Hall was built, marked the first female dormitory on the campus of a co-ed school in the United States. In 1866 when the Raleigh Institute was first being developed, Tupper had hoped to open a medical school; in 1881 the medical building became a reality, $15,000 (220,588.24 in current dollars) was contributed to make it. The medical school complex consisted primarily of three structures – a four-story medical dormitory built to accommodate 75 men and erected around 1880 when the trustees approved the establishment of a medical department; the Leonard Medical Building, erected in the summer and fall of 1881 and containing lecture rooms, dissecting rooms,  an amphitheater, and opened for its first session on November 1, 1881; a 25-bed hospital which opened for the reception of patients on January 10, 1885. It was the first four-year medical school to train African-American doctors in the South.
  On December 11, 1888 the university opened their law school. The full curriculum offering at Shaw are unknown, but it was the only black law school that had a course in legal shorthand. The course was offered on the premise that such a skill would broaden the opportunities for a black lawyer to work in a legal firm in a clerical position or as an office assistant should discrimination impede their ability to practice law. Shaw University graduated fifty-seven law students before it closed in 1916. It graduated fifty-four law students between 1891 and 1914. North Carolina politician John S. Leary was an important figure in the founding of the law school served as its dean starting in March 1890. He was followed as dean by Edward A. Johnson, who was the law school's first graduate and later the first African-American member of the New York State Assembly.
  Leonard Medical School was founded in 1881 as the first four-year medical
caption: An ad for Shaw University from 1900, placed in a black-owned newspaper in Minnesota.
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