Furman University

not accept African Americans as students. Some Furman students began to press for change. In 1955, some students wrote short stories and poems in The Echo, a student literary magazine, in support of integration; school administrators destroyed all 1,500 printed copies. In 1953, Furman began construction on its new campus, five miles (8 km) north of downtown Greenville. Classes on the new campus began in 1958.
By 1963, enough faculty were siding with the students over racial desegregation that Furman's board of trustees voted to admit Black students. Action on the trustees' decision was postponed and it was later overturned by South Carolina's Baptist Convention; desegregated admission was not implemented at Furman until its incoming president, Gordon W. Blackwell, a past president of Florida State University, made it a condition of his acceptance of the new position. In 1965, Joseph Vaughn was the first black undergraduate to enroll.
In 1992, the South Carolina Baptist Convention ended its affiliation with Furman. …