St. Augustine’s University:A Raleigh HBCU in bankruptcy limbo

As noted in a recent previous post, I decided to try and to a photo profile of the St. Augustine’s University campus in Raleigh because I knew the school was closed after unsuccessful attempts to weather considerable financial difficulties. I also knew it was in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and I was hoping to get quality photos of the campus before it was allowed to fall into irretrievable disrepair. 

Alas, visitors are required to stop at a security checkpoint, where after telling the security guard why I was there, I was told in no uncertain terms that the school was closed and I’d have to turn around and leave. Which I did. 

I learned later that in the short time since on-campus classes ceased in May, there had already been some vandalism on the grounds. Learning about that tempered my initial reaction to being turned away at the checkpoint

I went on to photograph nearby Oakwood Cemetery and the Ruins of St. Agnes Hospital (see two previous posts), after which I doubled back to stroll down Oakwood Avenue and capture the St. Augustine’s campus pictures you see here, all taken from outside the property fence. I’ve been doing college or university campus photo profiles for more than 15 years, and this one is undoubtedly my least Ifavorite. But it’s a historic site that might not have much time left, and I wanted to try.

St. Augustine’s was a private institution founded in 1867 by Episcopal clergy to educate formerly enslaved African American people. Through its years, it grew from a normal school to a junior college to a four-year liberal arts institution. In 1883, it survived a fire that destroyed all its academic buildings because white fire companies refused to fight the blaze.

Goold Hall and lawn, shown in the photo leading off the post, was a place for events and community gatherings at St. Augustine’s. It was named for Rev. Edgar Hunt Goold, who in 1916 became the school’s fifth principal and, in 1925, he became its first president. That same year, the school changed its name to St. Augustine’s College and offered its first courses for college credit.

The name became St. Augustine’s University in 2012 at a time it prepared to offer master’s degrees. But the school began to experience serious financial troubles in the 1990s just as it reached its peak enrollment of 1,918 in 1992. 

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accrediting agency placed the university on warning in late 2001, and on probation two years later. St. Augustine’s managed to eliminate its deficit and was removed from probation in 2004. But in 2013, an audit uncovered disorganized accounting and improper issuance of checks, and by 2016 the school was back on probation.

Once more the school dug out of trouble and was removed from probation in 2018 … until landing there again a third time in 2022. After appeals and litigation to retain its accreditation over the next few years, and a brief reprieve by an arbitration panel, the accreditation agency voted in 2024 to remove the school as a member, a decision upheld on appeal the following year.

St. Augustine’s entered bankruptcy proceedings in April of this year and announced it would cease on-campus classes in May, thereafter offering online classes for certificates and apprentice programs. It also said it would pursue a way to restore accreditation.

The Wikipedia entry for St. Augustine's gives a very thorough accounting of the school's history of difficulties if you're interesting in learning more.

There aren't any more quality images from the marginal photo shoot of the campus, but if you'd like to peruse images of the full shoot, follow the link in this sentence.   

Above and below: There was no signage to help me identify this building, but based on its location on a campus map, I believe this is the Taylor Wellness Center. 

  

Above and below: Again, no signage, but based on its place on the campus map, I believe this is the Tuttle Building used for ROTC training. 

The familiar stone slab (above) greeting visitors at the main Oakwood Avenue entrance. Below, just to the right of the stone slab is this access drive … and a security checkpoint in the white hut in the distance. 

Above: I believe this was the campus chapel, but I’m not sure. 

Above: I don’t know what this building is, and even though the small blue sign in the right foreground says Chapel, I’m pretty sure this building is not the chapel. It’s a sign intended for the building in the photo above this one. 

Above: This sign is on a median in front of the school but on the south side of Oakwood Avenue.

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug.

Historic Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh

In historic Oakwood Cemetery’s 140 years of existence, it should not be surprising to learn that the grounds are the final resting place for 22,000 people, among them seven former governors, five U.S. senators, eight North Carolina Supreme Court justices and four Civil War generals. 

And, oh, it also is the resting place of North Carolina State University basketball coach Jim Valvano (see lead-off photo) and Lorenzo Charles, who scored the winning basket for Valvano’s NCAA championship team of 1983. Valvano died of cancer in 1993; Charles died in an accident while at the wheel of a 2011 tour bus in which he was the only occupant.

They are buried in the Cedar Hill section along Locust Avenue. (If you want to visit the cemetery and find certain graves, it’s best to determine whose graves you want to find, then search online for their burial section. Once in the cemetery, consult a section map the cemetery provides online.)   

In fact, Lorenzo Charles’ grave (see first photo below) is a very short distance — perhaps 15 yards — from that of his coach. In the second photo below, you can see Valvano’s monument in the foreground with Charles’ monument (look for the NCSU red colors) left of Valvano’s in the distance just below the ridge. 

Being a sports fan, my primary focus was finding the Valvano and Charles grave sits. I spent a good two hours roaming the cemetery and its perimeter; I have to note the latter because it was difficult to find an opening to the grounds. And then once inside, it took another long while on foot to find a way to reach the largest section of the cemetery. I could have taken far more pictures if I’d known the layout ahead of time, but alas, I foolishly did not scout such things beforehand.

Actually, I had a secondary (or primary?) purpose for heading to that part of the north Raleigh downtown fringe on Wednesday. I was hoping to do a photo profile of St. Augustine’s University, a former longtime degree-granting Historically Black College or University. 

That’s a story for a subsequent post, but for now, I’ll say that St. Augustine’s on-site operations have been shut down since going into bankruptcy, and private campus security would not grant me access to the interior campus. So the few campus shots I did make were taken from what I could access outside the school’s chain link fence surrounding the grounds along Oakwood Avenue.

Oakwood Cemetery covers 72 acres, 30 of which remain available for future graves, according to its website. Not surprisingly, it is part of the Oakwood Neighborhood, to which I was introduced recently when it turned out that one of my stately homes photographed while walking the Blount Street Historic District was just inside the Oakwood borders. 

I didn’t find the graves of any of the state Supreme Court justices or U.S. Senators, but I did come across the resting places of former Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock and former North Carolina Attorney General Bartholomew Figures Moore. And of the two, the monument for Moore (in the Battle Section) was far more extravagant (see first three photos below). 

Moore’s monument even contains a bust of the attorney general, often referred to as the “father of the North Carolina bar.” He is remembered for leading the legal team that compiled and revised the state’s statutes.

Aycock, whose monument is in the Beechwood Section and shown in the fourth photo below, today is a controversial figure in North Carolina history. He was championed for being “the education governor” because of his advocacy of improving public school education in North Carolina and for his post-gubernatorial travels promoting educational causes. 

But he had a reputation as a segregationist and has been singled out as the person most responsible for the horrific Wilmington Massacre, a November 1898 bloody municipal government coup in a city that had several African American political leaders. At the time, black residents also outnumbered white residents in North Carolina’s then-largest city. 

For the longest time, a statue of Aycock stood in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol Building as one of two honoring North Carolina notable citizens. In the early 2020s, amid the national Black Lives Matter movement, North Carolina replaced the statue with one of evangelist Rev. Billy Graham. 

And while I didn’t find any graves of specific military generals, I did find and photograph a section of the cemetery dedicated to the graves of Confederate Civil War soldiers. 

The remainder of my pictures were composed for landscape purposes, often focusing on interesting juxtaposition or collections of like monuments against open space or under trees. To view a full gallery of images from the shoot, follow the link in this sentence. 

Above and below: Photos of the Confederate Civil War dead in an (appropriately) southern section close to Oakwood Avenue. 

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug.