LeMoyne-Owen College

The college began in 1862, when the American Missionary Association sent Lucinda Humphrey to Camp Shiloh to teach free Black people and people who had escaped slavery. The school, then called Lincoln Chapel, was destroyed in the white mob violence of 1866 and reopened in 1867 with 150 students and six teachers. Abolitionist Francis Julius LeMoyne's gift of $20,000 in 1870 and 1871 gave it his name. Graduates include Benjamin Hooks, Marion Barry and Memphis mayor W. W. Herenton.

What the plaque says

LeMoyne-Owen College LeMoyne-Owen College, originally known as LeMoyne Normal and Commercial School, opened its doors circa 1870 on Orleans Street. The school operated under the auspices of the American Missionary Association and was funded through a gift of Dr. F.J. LeMoyne. Established at its present site in 1914, it became a junior college in 1924 and was chartered by the State of Tennessee in the 1930s as a 4-year college. In 1968, it merged with Owen Junior College, founded in 1954 by the Tennessee Baptist Missionary and Education Convention.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 0.3 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 0.4 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Sun Studio — 1.4 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.6 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• The 1960 Memphis Sit-In Movement — steps away
• Hollis Freeman Price, Sr. — steps away
• People's Grocery — 0.3 mi
• Dr. Joseph Edison Walker — 0.3 mi