DALLAS (ABP) — Georgetown College President Bill Crouch has announced plans to revive the spirit of Bishop College, a historically black school that closed in Dallas in 1988.
Crouch's plans, centered in the proposed Bishop Center for African-American Ministry, aim to reestablish the once-thriving Bishop community while at the same time to diversify the predominantly white Georgetown, Ky., school. Both schools have a Baptist heritage.
Roughly 200 Bishop alumni and supporters met with Crouch Nov. 2 at Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas to discuss the proposal and form a committee to raise funds for the $50 million vision.
Denny Davis, pastor of St. John's Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, Texas, attended the meeting. A Bishop alum, Davis said he takes great pride in the school's reputation for turning out good preachers.
“The name Bishop itself for many carried a great deal of respect, and it still does in many places and many ways,” he said. “The spirit of Bishop College is one of true fellowship, true brotherhood, and a commitment to spiritual excellence….”
Davis also said he hopes the endeavor will create a legacy of solid preaching, academics, and excellence, an identity Bishop enjoyed during the height of its tenure.
Founded in 1881 in Marshall, Texas, Bishop College moved to Dallas in 1961. It was a non-sectarian liberal arts school that emphasized Baptist theology and religion. It frequently hosted notable speakers like Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson. By the mid-‘70s, it had more than 100 faculty and nearly 1,300 students.
Unfortunately for Bishop students, a financial scandal and a scuffle with the American Association of University Professors resulted in the school losing its accreditation and eventually filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Paul Quinn College, an African Methodist Episcopal school, now occupies the Dallas campus.
But Crouch wants to see Bishop have a physical presence again, this time in Kentucky. His reasons, he said, are both personal and professional.
As a boy in Jackson, Miss., Crouch witnessed “a lot of showdowns” between whites and blacks and saw the anguish it caused his father, a Baptist pastor. Then one Easter Sunday, Crouch said, he walked to the church altar to commit his life to Jesus and immediately felt called to “make a difference in the world in terms of race relations.”
Now a professional educator and “nondescript white guy,” Crouch said he knows that part of a holistic education is learning to live with people from diverse backgrounds.
“I can no longer raise my head high in pride at an institution that is focused on educating only one race,” he said. “I can no longer be a part of an educational enterprise that's not multicultural. Because that's the world we live in. And I'm trying to balance this educational philosophy. How can a person be truly educated if they live on a college campus for four years and their roommate is just like them?”
Crouch made contact with Bishop College alumni with the help of Joel Gregory, a former Southern Baptist pastor and teacher at Georgetown College, who has become a popular preacher in African-American churches and conferences. Gregory, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, now teaches at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary.
Plans and action are two different things, however. The vision will take careful planning and support — not to mention faith — from both Georgetown and Bishop constituencies, supporters acknowledge. Some reports list 2008 as a target year to break ground on the memorial building, called the Bishop College Center for Academics, but no specific timeline has yet emerged for the building or the scholarship program.
Georgetown College, founded in 1829 by the Kentucky Baptist Convention, has roughly 1,400 students and offers 39 majors. Officials at Georgetown have no plan to alter its curriculum; the school is in the process of gaining Phi Beta Kappa recognition. School representatives did not return phone calls regarding the current number of African-American faculty members, although Crouch said he plans to increase the number of minority staff.
In the meantime, Crouch has signed a contract to stay at Georgetown for the next 10 years. He and his committee plan to begin a national search for and recruitment of the brightest African-American students in the nation, and they will contact the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 list to ask for financial partnerships for the endeavor.
Johnnie Johnson, the director of admissions at Georgetown, said he fully supports Crouch's “unbelievable vision,” although some African-Americans have expressed doubt about partnering with a lily-white college in the South. The culture is very different in Kentucky than in Dallas, Johnson concedes, but “that's not the world.”
“When you're in corporate situations, when you're in business, you've got to relate to everyone,” Johnson said. “And Georgetown can help you do that.”
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