On September 18, 1868, the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee held its first convocation with nine students and four faculty members present. The dream of the University had been shared by Bishop Stephen Elliott, the first Bishop of Georgia, who joined Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana and Bishop Otey of Tennessee as the founding Bishops of Sewanee in the late 1850s. Though the cornerstone for the University was laid October 10, 1860, construction of the University was halted by the Civil War. Bishop Elliott, who died in 1866, did not live to see their vision realized.
The story of The University mirrors that of this country, the South, and the church in Georgia. Very much a vision of those privileged, educated bishops and wealthy Southerners to provide an excellent higher education for Southern young gentlemen along the lines of Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale so that the sons of the South would not have to travel North or abroad. As our society has struggled with the issue of slavery and discrimination so has Sewanee. For many years, it was a bastion of higher education but not for people of color or women. The early years of the University were of that era. That era is over.
Beginning in the 1950s the University began reckoning with its legacy which, on the one hand being an Episcopal university held the faith high, but on the other hand, was fraught with the flaws of our American government, slavery, injustices seemingly inbred. Certainly this was contradictory to the Episcopal nature of the University. Students of color and women were finally admitted in the 1960s.
This reckoning came to an ultimate resolution unanimously passed by the Board of Trustees in 2020 as a result of the 6-year Roberson project: “The University categorically rejects its past veneration of the Confederacy and the “Lost Cause”. The Trustees have pledged that “Sewanee will be a model for diversity, for inclusion, for intellectual rigor and loving spirit in an American that rejects prejudice and embraces possibility.”
Sewanee is now the University of the New South as one of the top small liberal arts colleges in the country. Georgia continues to be one of the owning Dioceses along with 27 other Southern Dioceses. The School of Theology is highly respected as is the School of Letters. Sewanee has 18,000 alumni for all 50 states and 40 countries and has produced 27 Rhodes Scholars and dozens of Fulbright Scholars. The Board of Trustees, the Faculty and Staff and the student body currently reflect the diversity and display the strength of that diversity. Sewanee is becoming the place where its motto can ring true: Ecce Quam Bonum “Behold how good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity.”
Pictured: Bishop Elliot placing items in Sewanee’s Cornerstone (top); Sewanee seen from above (bottom).
