Livingstone College Historical Marker

This historical marker shares the history of Salisbury's Livingston College, which was founded as the Zion Wesley Institute in 1879. The college traces its roots back to an effort to educate formerly enslaved persons and provide them with training for a handful of trades. The school was established in Concord, North Carolina, but was moved to Salisbury in 1887 and renamed to honor the African missionary David Livingstone. Today, Livingstone College is a Historically Black College with a campus five blocks west of this marker.

Founded in 1879 as the Zion Wesley Institute, the school that would later become Livingstone College was founded to educate formerly enslaved persons and their children during the era known as Reconstruction. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church launched the project to provide general education and ministerial training. Shortly after its founding in Concord, North Carolina, the school closed. However, the school's leaders and supporters worked to raise funds to reestablish the institution. Eventually, the nearby small town of Salisbury, NC, would offer the trustees of the Zion Wesley Institute a one thousand dollar grant and an invitation to establish their school on a forty-acre farm in Salisbury called Delta Grove. The trustees accepted the offer, and the Zion Wesley Institute reopened.

The school was first led by Dr. Joseph Charles Price, who was born to a free mother and an enslaved father. Being born to a free woman, Price was also free and would attend Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania where he was the top graduate of the classics department. Price would later also graduate as the valedictorian from the theology department. While serving on the London Ecumenical Council of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Dr. Price raised money for the Zion Wesley Institute and worked to reestablish the school under the name of Livingstone College.

The Zion Wesley Institute would continue to operate under that name until 1887, when an act of the legislature changed the name to Livingstone College in honor of the African missionary David Livingstone. It was also in 1887 that Livingstone College would graduate its first class and grant bachelor's degrees to a class of ten, including the first two Black women to receive bachelor's degrees in North Carolina.

Today, Livingstone College is a Historically Black College and located within a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. Livingstone College has grown from its original forty acres to encompass a two hundred and seventy-acre university district in Salisbury. Livingstone has grown to include numerous departments beyond its early mission centered on trades, with courses in the liberal arts, including African-American history and culture. Highlights of the campus include Andrew Carnegie Library, which was the first library building constructed on the present campus. The library was built following a donation by Andrew Carnegie in 1908 and remains in operation today. The flagship campus building is the Price Memorial Administration Building, named in honor of Dr Price and featured on the school's logo. As of 2023, the school is led by University President Dr. Anthony J. Davis, who was elected to the position in 2022.

https://livingstone.edu/about-livingstone-college, Livingstone College accessed November 20, 2023

"National Register Information System – (#82003509)". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth (1996). Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0807845967.

Franz, Alyssa (March 11, 2010). "Livingstone College (1879-- )". Online Encyclopedia of Significant People and Places in African American History.

Annotated Bibliography of Joseph Charles Price (manuscript, Livingstone College Archives, Salisbury, 1956)

J. W. Hood, One Hundred Years of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1895)