How Alta Vista Became Prairie View: Lawrence Washburne Minor and the Beginnings of Public Higher Education for African Americans in Texas

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• How Alta Vista Became Prairie View:Lawrence Washburne Minor and the Beginnings of Public Higher Education for African Americans in Texas
• John A. Adams Jr. (bio)

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Lawrence W. Minor. Courtesy of Prairie View University Archives.

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Lawrence Washburne Minor was, in many ways, a quintessential Black Texas leader of the late nineteenth century. Born into slavery in the South and educated in the North, he returned to his roots to serve and lead his people. Minor's contributions have been overlooked, perhaps because they were both varied and geographically diverse. His experiences laid a solid foundation for his later career as an educator. Minor followed a varied path to becoming one of the first faculty at Alcorn University, having worked as an abolitionist, merchant, schoolteacher, riverboat porter, and administrator of the Freedmen's Bank. When conditions at Alcorn proved untenable, Minor served in the Mississippi state government before opportunity brought him to Texas. Minor's experience, adaptability, and proven intelligence made him a crucial figure in the history of Texas higher education. He set the foundation of the state's first African American institution of public higher education and saved the fledgling institution from an early demise. The story of Black leadership in the trans-Mississippi West following Reconstruction has not been fully explored, and Minor's contributions and career have gone unnoticed. As of this writing, the Handbook of Texas does not include an entry for him. His foundational leadership at what would become known as Prairie View A&M University ultimately resulted in the [End Page 269] institution having the largest enrollment of any Black public institution of higher learning in the nation by the turn of the twentieth century.

Lawrence Minor was born in 1830 into slavery on Linwood Plantation, in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, some seventy miles upriver from New Orleans. Ascension Parish, located along a bend in the Mississippi River was a prime sugar production region where more than two hundred enslaved people labored on the 2,000-acre plantation. Lawrence's father, Philip Minor, was among the leading White plantation owners in the region, and so was his grandfather. Philip's father, William, an absentee owner of numerous plantations south of Baton Rouge, directed the management of his Louisiana plantations from his home in Natchez, Mississippi. Lawrence, his mother, and siblings lived and worked in the main house, and the children received their early education from the Minor family tutors.¹

A bachelor until his death in about 1836, Philip made explicit provisions for his children with Lawrence's mother, Lucy, an enslaved woman who lived in the home. His will noted: "I will and bequeath & give unto my negro woman named Lucy [Lydia 'Lucy' Walker] and her five children William, Adelia, Larry [Lawrence], Patrick and Finn [Josephine] their freedom. Second, unto Lucy and each of his children as aforesaid, the sum of Two Thousand dollars, making the total sum Twelve Thousand dollars." This was a substantial sum; $12,000 in 1836 would have been equivalent to more than $400,000 in 2023 dollars. Philip's concern for his children went beyond financial considerations, and during their formative years in the late 1830s and early 1840s, his bequest provided for their care and private tutors.²

Minor's father intended to send his children "north … where better [educational] facilities existed." He died before carrying out these plans, but the provisions of his will made clear his intentions. With their freedom secured and good financial backing, the family began a new life. During the late 1840s, Lucy relocated the children to Oberlin, Ohio, to continue their education at the local college. (Research has not revealed who decided on the small community in northern Ohio as the new home for Lucy and the children.) Oberlin had a reputation as an educational destination for the mixed-race children of southern planters. Lawrence and brothers William and Patrick, as well as his sisters Adelia and Josephine, first attended [End Page 270] Oberlin's Preparatory Department (high school equivalent) from 1839 to 1845. Patrick and William finished college in 1848, while Ella only attended the prep school. In...