27 Notable alumni of
Wilberforce University
Updated:
Wilberforce University is 1889th in the world, 662nd in North America, and 622nd 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
- programmercomputer scientistmathematician
- Biography
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Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan was an American mathematician and human computer 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
- political activistLGBTQI+ rights activisttrade unionistpoliticianpolitical campaign staff
- Biography
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Bayard Rustin was an American political activist, a prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. He is perhaps best remembered as the principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
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Hastings Banda
- Occupations
- diplomatpoliticianphysician
- Biography
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Hastings Kamuzu Banda was 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
- conductoroboistcomposerfilm 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, over thirty choral works, art songs, chamber music, and solo works. Born in Mississippi and growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, Still attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music as a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and then 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
- pianistjazz musiciancomposermusic teachermusic theorist
- 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
- politiciansocial activistmissionary
- Biography
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Charlotte Makgomo Maxeke (7 April 1871 – 16 October 1939) was a South African religious leader, social and political activist; she was the first black woman to graduate with a university degree in South Africa with a B.Sc. from Wilberforce University Ohio in 1903, as well as the first black 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
- pastorpolitician
- Biography
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Floyd Harold Flake is an American businessman, minister, and former politician who is 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, abolitionist, and United States Representative from South Carolina from 1873 to 1875 and 1877 to 1879. After the American Civil War, he was appointed by Bishop Daniel Payne as a missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. He also was one of the founders of Lincolnville, South Carolina.
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Hallie Quinn Brown
- Occupations
- suffragistwriter
- Biography
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Hallie Quinn Brown was an American educator, writer and activist. Originally of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she moved with her parents (who had been enslaved) while quite young to a farm near Chatham, 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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Frank Foster
- Occupations
- conductorjazz musiciancomposermusicologistsaxophonist
- 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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Horace Henderson
- Occupations
- conductorpianistbandleaderjazz 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 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 town 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
- politicianlawyer
- 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. He was also the city’s longest-tenured mayor to date.
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James Carroll Napier
- Occupations
- politicianbusinessperson
- 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 high position under President William Howard Taft, and they were known as Taft's "Black Cabinet." He was instrumental in founding civic institutions in Nashville to benefit the African-American business community and residents, including an emphasis on education.
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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
- preacherclergymanpoet
- 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
- journalistwriterpoet
- Biography
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Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman was an American writer.
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Charles Freeman Lee
- Occupations
- jazz musicianpianist
- 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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Benjamin F. Lee
- Occupations
- religious leaderjournalist
- 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
- politicianbusinesspersonteacher
- Biography
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Niilo Emil Koponen was an American educator and politician.
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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
- Years
- 1864-1943 (aged 79)
- 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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Susie Lankford Shorter
- Occupations
- writer
- Biography
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Susie Isabel Lankford Shorter was an American educator, philanthropist, and writer.
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Ruth Gaines-Shelton
- Years
- 1872-1938 (aged 66)
- 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.
