Shaw University, an HBCU in Raleigh, has much to boast about in the education of African-Americans

When I did my extensive photo walk-through of downtown Raleigh in March of 2023, I didn’t use a map of the downtown as a primary guide to find places. There was an occasion or two, when I pulled up a map on my phone when I was trying to pinpoint specific places, but that was it. 

Because I hadn’t used a map as a main guide, it wasn’t until after the shoot that I realized I had been so close to several important landmarks ... and had missed shooting them. 

For the most part, I rectified those omissions on Sunday, May 17 — more than three years later — when I spent several hours walking through the campuses of two private colleges and returned to the heart of downtown for several other things I had missed in 2023. 

Today’s blog subject, Shaw University, was one of them. The pictures of the other “misses,” including one other small, private university, will be presented here in the next few days.  

I picked a Sunday because Sundays traditionally are low-traffic days on college campuses. Also, both schools recently had their spring graduation ceremonies, which led me to believe the likelihood of there being many students on campus to work around would be slim to none. I was correct on both counts, especially the first, Shaw, which I began to shoot about 9:30 a.m.

Shaw University, founded on Dec. 1, 1865, is the oldest historically black college or university in the southern United States. It sits on the southern fringe of downtown Raleigh next door to the more contemporary Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts (1932) and a short distance from the popular Red Hat Amphitheater, an outdoor concert and theater venue.

I was on the Martin Marietta campus when I saw the interesting building pictured in the lead-off photo. So that picture actually dates to the March 2023 shoot. I didn’t find out until after I got home that the building was the historic Estey Hall of Shaw University, which today is used as the chief administration building for the school. It dates to 1874 and is the oldest surviving building on campus.

As the building’s history (found in its Wikipedia entry you can access by following the link in the above paragraph) conveys, Shaw began as a seminary, and Estey was built after the school opened admissions to women. When Estey opened, it became the first building in the U.S. constructed to educate women. 

The school is named for Elijah Shaw, a wealthy Massachusetts textile manufacturer, property owner and philanthropist who in 1870 became the primary benefactor of Shaw with a donation of $5,000, which in today's currency would have the purchasing power of $127,100. The donation enabled the construction of Shaw Hall, the first building on campus. The hall was demolished in the late 1960s to make way for the James E. Cheek library.  

In 1970, Estey Hall had fallen in such disrepair that it was closed for renovation and to enable the historic structure to be preserved as a vital landmark on campus. It reopened in 1993 but it was still closed in 1973, when it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Today, it also is a Raleigh Historic Landmark.  

Some more photos of Estey, from my shoot on May 17, appear further down in this post.  

Shaw offers 21 majors for bachelor of arts or science degrees. It also offers a master of divinity, a master of arts in Christian Education and or Christian Leadership, and its School of Business and Professional Leadership offers a master of science in Early Childhood Education through the Department of Education and Child Development.

From 1888 to 1916, Shaw had a School of Law, the first of its kind for African-Americans. Shaw graduated 57 law students before it closed. 

In 1968, Shaw became the first black college to own and operate a radio station, WSHA. The university sold the station in July 2018. 

And it was at Shaw, in 1881, that the country’s first four-year medical school opened. There’s more about this below in the caption under the picture for twin-turreted Leonard Hall, the medical school’s home, and the adjacent former Leonard Hospital, now Tyler Hall. 

The school also played a critical role in earning heretofore neglected honors for African American World War II soldiers. In 1993, the U.S. Army commissioned a team of scholars at Shaw to investigate why no African American soldiers who served in the war had been awarded the Medal of Honor. The team concluded that the omission was the result of racial discrimination. 

The team recommended and named 10 soldiers who should receive the medal and sent its findings to the U.S. Department of Defense. In April 1996, the Defense Department agreed that seven of the nominees should receive the medal, and on Jan. 13, 1997, President Clinton awarded those medals. Only one of the seven honored soldiers was still alive and on hand to receive his medal. The remainder were awarded to family members of the soldiers.

Shaw is a co-founding member (with Howard, Hampton, Lincoln and Virginia Union universities) of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA), the oldest African American athletic conference in the U.S. Shaw athletes have won CIAA championships in football, volleyball and men's and women’s basketball and tennis.

To view a full gallery of photos from my shoot at Shaw University, follow the link in this sentence. 

The James E. Cheek Resource Center (library), is made of concrete and steel framing with an exterior of brick masonry and metal panels (above). George C. Debnam Hall, which houses administration and registration offices (below), is made of light-colored brick and concrete.  

Above and below are two views of the bell tower in the middle of campus. The university says the tower bell marks a student’s academic journey at Shaw. Students ring the bell when they start school their first year and again after they graduate four years later. 

Roberts Science Hall (above) and Yancy Institute for Health, Social and Community Research (below) are attached on campus. 

The campus chapel (above), Spaulding Gymnasium (below) and Tupper Hall (second photo below) are near each other in the middle of campus. A statue of a bear (third photo below), the school mascot, sits in front of the gymnasium. Tupper is named for Shaw founder Henry Martin Tupper, a Baptist minister and the school's first president.

Historic Leonard Hall (above), a twin-turret Romanesque Revival style building, was the first four-year medical school in the U.S. It opened in 1881 and is named for Judson Wade Leonard, a philanthropist and a donor for the building’s construction. He also was a brother-in-law to Shaw founder Henry Martin Tupper. The medical school trained 400 African-Americans as physicians while in operation. Leonard Hospital (below), which today is Tyler Hall, was opened in 1912 next to the medical school to give students opportunities for practical training. The medical school and hospital closed in 1918-19. Like Estey Hall, both buildings are historic landmarks and currently undergoing restoration. Today, Tyler houses the school’s philosophy and religion departments. 

The high-rise residence halls above and below are perpendicular to each other and close to the Willie E. Gary Student Center (second photo below), which houses the student dining hall. 

Above: Adjacent to one of the high-rise residence halls is this outdoor basketball court. 

There are several places on campus where people can get a nice view of the downtown Raleigh skyline. Above, just north of Cheek library, is one such location. Blount Street passes under a pedestrian bridge connecting a part of campus (below). 

Coming tomorrow: The campus of William Peace University

Downtown Raleigh, N.C. Part I: State Capitol and Union Square

For three hours on a beautiful Sunday morning (temperatures in the low 70s) into early afternoon, I strolled the downtown streets of  North Carolina's capital city, spending equal time exploring the expansive state government buildings -- beginning with the Capitol, then going north into Halifax Mall -- and the business district surrounding the Capitol. 

In addition to the Capitol Building (featured in the lead-off photo) and Union Square (where the Capitol is located), I paid special attention on my walk-around to the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts (formerly Duke Performing Arts Center) on the south fringe of downtown. 

I also photographed a half-dozen or so downtown churches, the soon-to-be-razed historic circular Holiday Inn, the Campbell University School of Law, Nash Square Park, Bicentennial Mall between the capitol and Legislative Building. 

The Capitol is a modest-sized building, and today it serves mostly as office space for the governor and lieutenant governor. Since 1963, the General Assembly (state legislature) has convened in a structure about a block north of the capitol. The two structures are separated by a very nice plaza, called Bicentennial Mall, which is flanked by North Carolina's Museum of History and Museum of Natural Sciences. It's a pretty awesome couple blocks of real estate right there.

Just north of the Legislative Building, there is a narrow but lengthy green open area, called Halifax Mall, which is flanked by more state office buildings. It reminds me a bit of the five-block-long downtown mall in downtown Indianapolis. I don't know this for a fact, but I think the Indy mall, which contains American Legion Mall, the Indiana War Memorial and Museum and University Park, covers a little more space, but probably not by much. I'd estimate that Raleigh's Halifax Mall is a bit wider, just not quite as long as the comparable Indy real estate. 

When I was shooting at Raleigh's performing arts center, I didn't realize I was within a block of Shaw University, the oldest HBCU in the South. I didn't discover that until I returned home went online to pull up a map of downtown to help me retrace my walk-around route and to find various places I'd visited. 

However, a strikingly interesting structure east of the arts center did catch my eye, and I photographed it. When I got home and went online to do my map research and realized how close I'd come to Shaw University, I wondered if that "striking structure" was something on the Shaw campus. So I then tried to compare and match my photo with online building photos taken on the Shaw campus, and I got a match. 

My photo (shown below) shows the west facade of historic Estey Hall, the first structure built for the education of African-American women in the United States and the oldest surviving building on the Shaw campus. An Estey Hall photo doesn't necessarily belong in a post about the State Capitol, but I present it here nevertheless because of its historic significance ... and, well, because I mentioned taking the photo.  

Built in 1873, with the south annex (to the right in the picture above) being added in 1882, Estey served as a women's dormitory and held classrooms for home economics, music, art and religion until the 1970s, when its deteriorating condition nearly cost it a date with the wrecking ball. It was saved by the Estey Hall Foundation, which succeeded in halting demolition and restoring it to its original appearance. Today it serves as an administrative building for housing affairs and houses the offices of the university president. 

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while know my interest in photographing college and university landscapes, and I would have been thrilled to have included Shaw on my itinerary. Yeah, it would have added time to my outing, but Shaw is a compact campus, so it probably would have required 45 minutes to an hour at the most. On the plus side, at least I know where to go when I get back to downtown. 

It turns out, I also was in close proximity -- although, again, not realizing it until after I got home -- to William Peace University a few blocks north of the Capitol. And a mile or so east of Peace Univ. is yet another HBCU, St. Augustine University. I'm excited that with some luck, perhaps some day I can get to all three on one trip. 

Because of the vast number of landmarks I photographed, I'll present my photos from this shoot as part of a multi-post series. (Are you ready to see the return of Roman numerals?) 

Today, in Part I, I begin with the North Carolina State Capitol and Union Square, the real estate on which it is located. 

There was a period since I've moved to Raleigh, probably just before the pandemic, when there was a concerted effort to remove monuments and sculptures devoted to Confederate or slave-owning authorities. You might remember that this movement triggered civil violence in many urban communities. 

Raleigh's downtown didn't escape that wave of unrest. In fact, the Capitol square itself was a target of violence because the lawn area surrounding the building accommodated monuments devoted to several prominent politicians who were slave owners. Law enforcement had to fence off the square for a period of time, so even if I wanted to have tried a shoot downtown, the Capitol would have not been accessible at close range.

Today, most of those monuments remain, but one has a picket-type fence surrounding it, perhaps to dissuade anyone with ill intentions. 

One thing that struck me while during my walk-around is the trees in downtown Raleigh. There are lots of them. And whether you're a pedestrian just trying to appreciate the various architecture or someone like me trying to photograph it, you have to decide whether any perspective that isn't right in front of a building will include trees. 

For photographers, this is a daunting task. The dilemma is to either integrate the trees into the composition or, which I attempted to do a lot most of the time, use them as a framing element. While processing my images, I concluded that I probably succeeded slightly more often than not. You can be the judge. 

As I said, there are so many trees downtown; Raleigh still has a lot of old, historic structures, especially its churches -- First Presbyterian, both First Baptist churches, Christ Church Episcopal, Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal and Edenton Street Methodist. And then there is Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the Raleigh Archdiocese's former cathedral, since replaced by Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral on the city's Westside, not far from the campus of North Carolina State University. 

The monument above is devoted to three U.S. presidents born in North Carolina. From left, they are James Knox Polk, Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson. Each has a tribute sentence at the bottom of their section. For Polk, it's "He enlarged our national boundaries." Jackson's is "He revitalized American democracy." And for Johnson, "He defended the Constitution." I guess these serve as inspirational for some; I'm not one of them.

 

The University of North Carolina-Greensboro opened in 1892 and was founded by Sanford, N.C., native Charles Duncan McIver, whose likeness is memorialized in the statue above. McIver was known in history as a promoter of education for women and was the institution's first president. UNCG began as the State Normal and Industrial School for White Girls. Five years later, the name changed to State Normal and Industrial College. In 1919, it became North Carolina College for Women, and from 1932-63 it was known as the Women's College of North Carolina (1932-63). It evolved into University of North Carolina-Greensboro when the state legislature merged several academic institutions while creating the UNC school system.   

George Washington is depicted in this monument, dedicated in 1857.

Above: A monument to white supremicist and former North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, who died in 1912, remains in Union Square. The monument was installed in 1924, and the side panels champion him as "the Education Governor."     

Above: A closeup of the Captiol's west facacde. 

A closeup of the cannon seen in the photo leading off the post. 

Raleigh native Worth Bagley, memorialized in the monument above, was the first U.S. solider to die in the Spanish-American War (in Cuba, May 11, 1898). The statue was dedicated in 1907, and the adjacent gun, taken from a Spanish naval deck, was added the following year.  

The Capitol's north facade closeup (above) and from the other side of a monument devoted to North Carolina residents killed during World War II (first two photos below).  

 

Above: A walkway on the south side of the Capitol leading to Morgan Street. 

Above and below: Photos blending the compression of a zoom lens with the integration of many trees sprinkled along Hillsborough Street. 

Above: Another zoom lens compression composition featuring the Capitol, this time looking north, several blocks south of Union Square along Fayetteville Street. 

Next Up: Nash Square Park