27 Notable alumni of
Wilberforce University
Updated:
Wilberforce University is 1882nd in the world, 646th in North America, and 607th in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 27 notable alumni from Wilberforce University sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
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Dorothy Vaughan
- Enrolled in Wilberforce University
- In 1929 graduated with Bachelor of Science
- Occupations
- computer scientistprogrammermathematician
- Biography
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Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan was an American human computer, computer programmer and schoolteacher who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA, at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center.
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Bayard Rustin
- Occupations
- LGBTQ rights activistpolitical activistcivil rights advocatepolitical campaign staffpolitician
- Biography
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Bayard Rustin was an American political activist and prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin was the principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
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Hastings Banda
- Occupations
- diplomatphysicianpolitician
- Biography
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Hastings Kamuzu Banda was a Malawian politician who served as the leader of Malawi from 1964 to 1994. He served as Prime Minister from independence in 1964 to 1966, when Malawi was a Dominion/Commonwealth realm. In 1966, the country became a republic and he became the first president as a result, ruling until his defeat in 1994.
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John R. Fox
- Occupations
- soldier
- Biography
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John Robert Fox was a United States Army first lieutenant who was killed in action after calling in artillery fire on the enemy during World War II. In 1997, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration for valor, for his actions on December 26, 1944, in the vicinity of Sommocolonia, Italy. It is believed that he called in his own coordinates because he was in an area overrun with German soldiers.
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William Grant Still
- Occupations
- composeroboistconductorfilm score composer
- Biography
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William Grant Still Jr. was an American composer of nearly two hundred works, including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, and more than thirty choral works, art songs, chamber music, and solo works. Born in Mississippi and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Still attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music as a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and then as a student of Edgard Varèse. Because of his close association and collaboration with prominent African-American literary and cultural figures, Still is considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.
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George Russell
- Occupations
- music educatorcomposerjazz musicianpianistmusicologist
- Biography
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George Allen Russell was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953).
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Charlotte Maxeke
- Occupations
- missionarysocial activistpolitician
- Biography
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Charlotte Makgomo Maxeke (7 April 1871 – 16 October 1939) was a South African religious leader, social and political activist. By graduating with a B.Sc. from Wilberforce University, Ohio, in 1903, she became the first black woman in South Africa to graduate with a university degree as well as the first African woman to graduate from an American university.
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Floyd H. Flake
- Enrolled in Wilberforce University
- In 1970 graduated with Bachelor of Arts
- Occupations
- religious leaderpastorpolitician
- Biography
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Floyd Harold Flake is an American businessman, minister, and former politician who was the senior pastor of the 23,000-member Greater Allen African Methodist Episcopal Cathedral in Jamaica, Queens, New York, and the 18th president of Wilberforce University. He is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1987 to 1997.
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Richard H. Cain
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Richard Harvey Cain was an American minister, bishop, abolitionist and politician. After the American Civil War, he was appointed by Bishop Daniel Payne as a missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. Cain served as a United States representative from South Carolina from 1873 to 1875 and 1877 to 1879. He also was one of the founders of Lincolnville, South Carolina.
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Frank Foster
- Occupations
- conductorsaxophonistmusicologistcomposerjazz musician
- Biography
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Frank Benjamin Foster III was an American tenor and soprano saxophonist, flautist, arranger, and composer. Foster collaborated frequently with Count Basie and worked as a bandleader from the early 1950s. In 1998, Howard University awarded Frank Foster with the Benny Golson Jazz Master Award.
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Hallie Quinn Brown
- Occupations
- writersuffragist
- Biography
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Hallie Quinn Brown was an African-American educator and activist. She moved with her parents (who were formerly enslaved) while relatively young to a farm near Chatham, Ontario, Canada, in 1864 and then to Ohio in 1870. In 1868, she began a course of study in Wilberforce University, Ohio, from which she graduated in 1873 with the degree of Bachelor of Science.
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Horace Henderson
- Occupations
- bandleaderpianistconductorjazz musician
- Biography
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Horace W. Henderson, the younger brother of Fletcher Henderson, was an American jazz pianist, organist, arranger, and bandleader.
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James Carroll Napier
- Occupations
- businesspersonpolitician
- Biography
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James Carroll Napier was an American businessman, lawyer, politician, and civil rights leader from Nashville, Tennessee, who served as Register of the Treasury from 1911 to 1913. He is one of only five African Americans with their signatures on American currency. He was one of four African-American politicians appointed to a government positions under President William Howard Taft, sometimes referred to as Taft's "Black Cabinet." He was instrumental in founding civic institutions in Nashville to benefit the African-American business community and residents including educational opportunities.
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James B. Dudley
- Occupations
- academic
- Biography
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James Benson Dudley was President of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University from 1896 until his death in 1925. James B. Dudley High School in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, where the Agricultural and Technical University is located, was named after Dudley in recognition of his work for his community.
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James H. McGee
- Occupations
- lawyerpolitician
- Biography
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James Howell McGee was an American politician of the Ohio Democratic party. He served as the first black mayor of Dayton, Ohio and was the city’s longest-tenured mayor to date.
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Theophilus Gould Steward
- Occupations
- novelist
- Biography
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Theophilus Gould "T.G." Steward was an American author, educator, and clergyman. He was a U.S. Army chaplain and Buffalo Soldier of 25th U.S. Colored Infantry.
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John A. Lankford
- Occupations
- architect
- Biography
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John A. Lankford, American architect. He was the first professionally licensed African American architect in Virginia in 1922 and in the District of Columbia in 1924. He has been regarded as the "dean of black architecture".
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Albery Allson Whitman
- Occupations
- preacherpoetclergyman
- Biography
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Albery Allson Whitman (May 30, 1851 – June 29, 1901 was an African-American poet, minister and orator. Born into slavery, Whitman became a writer. During his lifetime he was acclaimed as the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race". He worked as a manual laborer, school teacher, financial agent, fundraiser and pastor. He died in Atlanta in 1901 of pneumonia.
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Katherine D. Tillman
- Occupations
- poetwriterjournalist
- Biography
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Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman was an American writer.
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Benjamin F. Lee
- Occupations
- journalistreligious leader
- Biography
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Benjamin Franklin Lee was a religious leader and educator in the United States. He was the president of Wilberforce University from 1876 to 1884. He was editor of the Christian Recorder from 1884 to 1892. He was then elected a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, serving from 1892 until his resignation in 1921, becoming senior bishop in the church in 1915.
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Niilo Koponen
- Occupations
- teacherbusinesspersonpolitician
- Biography
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Niilo Emil Koponen was an American educator and politician.
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Charles Freeman Lee
- Occupations
- pianistjazz musician
- Biography
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Charles Freeman Lee, known as Freeman Lee was an American Jazz Trumpeter, recording with the Elmo Hope Quintet, Bennie Green, Babs Gonzales and Howard McGhee.
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Zelia Ball Page
- Occupations
- teacher
- Biography
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Zelia Ball Page was a freeborn African-American teacher who spent her career teaching African-American youths in Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Her husband was the first head of Langston University and she was the first matron.
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Mary G. Evans
- Occupations
- cleric
- Biography
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Mary G. Evans was an American Christian minister. Evans is most known for serving as the pastor of Chicago's Cosmopolitan Community Church for 34 years, from 1932 until her death in 1966. She was the first woman to receive a Doctor of Divinity degree from Wilberforce University.
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Emma S. Ransom
- Occupations
- suffragist
- Biography
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Emma S. Connor Ransom was an American educator and clubwoman, active in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association).
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Ruth Gaines-Shelton
- Occupations
- writer
- Biography
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Ruth Ada Gaines-Shelton was an American playwright and educator. She is a playwright of the Harlem Renaissance era and is best known for her allegorical comedy,The Church Fight, written in 1925.
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Susie Lankford Shorter
- Occupations
- journalistwriter
- Biography
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Susie Isabel Lankford Shorter was an American educator, philanthropist, and writer.
