LeMoyne Owen College Named July’s School of the Month

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tom Joyner Foundation is recognizing LeMoyne Owen College in Memphis, Tenn. as the July 2012 School of the Month.

The foundation, formed by the nationally syndicated radio personality, chose LeMoyne Owen as part of its on-going effort to assist these institutions in broadening and strengthening their efforts to raise money to help keep students attending HBCUs.

As one of the Tom Joyner Foundation ‘Schools of the Month’, each school will be promoted by the Tom Joyner Morning Show and receive

those funds raised from listeners, alumni and other interested parties that month.  The show, aired in 115 markets around the country, reaches nearly eight million listeners every week.

In 1862, the American Missionary Association founded The LeMoyne-Owen College to educate freedmen and runaway
slaves at the Union Army’s Camp Shiloh in Shiloh, Tennessee, according to the college’s website. After the school relocated to Memphis, it was destroyed by race riots in 1866.  With 150 students and six teachers, Lincoln Chapel, as the school was then known, was rebuilt and reopened in 1867.  It was nearly 47 years later that Lincoln Chapel was renamed LeMoyne Normal and Commercial School in honor of benefactor, physician and abolitionist Dr. Francis Julian LeMoyne and relocated to its current site at 807 Walker Ave.

The school continued to grow when in 1968, LeMoyne merged with Owen College. Today, the college has a student body of more than 1,000 students and offers 4-year degrees in five disciplines: Business and Economic Development; Education; Fine Arts and Humanities; Natural and Mathematical Sciences; and, Social and Behavioral and Sciences.

So far, this year, the Foundation’s ‘Schools of the Month’ have been: January – Jarvis Christian University, Hawkins, TX,  February – Stillman College, Tuscaloosa, Ala.; March – Edward Waters, Jacksonville, Fla.; April – Tuskegee College, Tuskegee, Ala.; May – Albany State University, Albany, Ga.; June – University of Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.