Bishop Payne Divinity School

Bishop Payne Divinity School was a segregated school in Petersburg, Virginia. It operated on Perry Street, West Washington Street, and finally South West Street. The school's Emmanuel Chapel still stands, at the corner of South West and Wilcox Streets.[1]

Whittle Hall, Bishop Payne Divinity School, Petersburg, Virginia

It was the only Divinity School in the Episcopal Church devoted exclusively to the training of "young Negro men" for the ministry; as of 1921, there were 91 alumni, who constituted about 60% of the Episcopal Black clergy. It was founded in 1878 as the St. Stephen's Episcopal Church Normal and Industrial School, and provided high school level instruction, as did most normal schools at the time..[2] It was chartered in 1884 by the state of Virginia as the Bishop Payne Divinity and Industrial School, in honor of John Payne, first Episcopal bishop of Liberia. In 1910 it gained the ability to award the Bachelor of Divinity degree and was renamed Bishop Payne Divinity School. Enrollment was low, only 12–15 at a time. In 1921 there were five professors, four of them white.[3] All the trustees, photographed in an old film clip, were white.[4]

From 1905 to 1922 the president was Corbin Braxton Bryan, a white supremacist who believed whites had a responsibility to offer blacks the benefits of Christianity.[5]

The last graduation class of the school was in 1949. VirginiaTheological Seminary started admitting African-American students in 1951.[6]

On June 3, 1953, the school's assets and records were transferred to Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia.

The library at Virginia Theological Seminary is named the Bishop Payne Library.[7]

Alumni

Notes
  1. Our history, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church (Petersburg, Virginia), 2020, archived from the original on May 16, 2021, retrieved April 24, 2022
  2. Fisher, Bernard (2014), Bishop Payne Divinity School, Historical Marker Database, archived from the original on 2021-11-24, retrieved 2022-04-30
  3. "Bishop Payne Divinity School". Our church schools for Negroes : under the supervision of the American Church Institute for Negroes. New York: Church Missions House [of the Episcopal Church]. c. 1922.
  4. "Separate and Unequal: Payne Divinity School". The Archives of the Episcopal Church. Archived from the original on April 16, 2022. Retrieved April 20, 2022.
  5. Tarter, Brent (Dec 22, 2021), "C. Braxton Bryan (1852–1922)", Encyclopedia of Virginia, archived from the original on March 17, 2022, retrieved April 30, 2022
  6. "Frequently Asked Questions about the Reparations Initiative". Virginia Theological Seminary. 2022. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
  7. Virginia Theological Seminary. "Bishop Payne Library". Archived from the original on March 26, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
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