Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: Hollis F. Price (1904-1982) was a distinguished African-American educator, longtime president of LeMoyne College (1943-1970), and an influential civic leader in Memphis during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. A serious Christian, Price made the Congregational Church a center of his life.

Though Hollis Price grew up in a part of Virginia in which there were no Congregational churches, his father was principal of a secondary school funded by the American Missionary Association—the outreach arm of the Congregational Church. Since the college which he eventually headed was also an AMA school, Price was a member of the AMA “family” all his life.

He was able to attend Congregational churches regularly during his six years in Massachusetts (1921-27), first at a prep school and then at Amherst College. But for fourteen years after that, doing graduate work at Columbia University and teaching first at his father’s secondary school and then at Tuskegee Institute, Price found it necessary once more to attend non-Congregational churches.

Thus it was not until 1941, when he arrived at LeMoyne College in Memphis— to serve as dean for two years and president for twenty-seven—that Price was able to have a Congregational church home. For the remaining four decades of his life he was a dedicated member, lay preacher, and deacon of Second Congregational Church, located just across the street from LeMoyne’s campus. On a seemingly endless series of trips through the northeast and Midwest, seeking funding both for LeMoyne and for the United Negro College Fund, Price spoke scores of times in white Congregational churches. Having thus become well known within the Congregational Church family, he was elected moderator, or chief lay officer, of the national church in 1965—the first African-American to serve in that position.

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: HOLLIS F. PRICE AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MEMPHIS

Hollis F. Price (1904-1982) was a distinguished African-American educator, the first black president (1943-1970) of LeMoyne College in Memphis. A member of the Talented Tenth, he spent his whole life in private schools: as a student from first grade through graduate school and as an educator at Tuskegee and LeMoyne. Despite this experience in private schools, Price believed strongly in the importance of public schools, not only for the sake of most students but also for the sake of a functioning democracy. His interest in the public schools of Memphis showed itself in several episodes over more than two decades.
In 1956 he engaged in a rare public argument with the unenlightened president of Memphis State College concerning desegregating that state school. In 1963 he ran for a position on the Memphis board of education, but like all previous African-American candidates lost in an at-large election.
In 1969, Price became one of two black nonvoting “advisors” to the school board. After two years in that position, he again ran for the school board, this time from an African-American district. In the first round of voting he led all candidates by a wide margin but fell just shy of the necessary majority—only to be soundly beaten in the two-way runoff.
Despite that painful defeat, Price continued to work for stronger public schools, both by serving on the Memphis Better Schools Committee and by continuing to speak out against the racism which led to massive white flight from the public schools.

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: Hollis F. Price (1904-1982) was a distinguished educator, the first African-American president of LeMoyne College in Memphis (1943-1970). He was also, during the 1950s and ’60s, the chief bridge between the black and white communities in that city.
In July 1943—just two months before Price was inaugurated as LeMoyne’s first black president—Memphis’s Community Welfare League formally affiliated with the National Urban League and was renamed the Memphis Urban League (MUL). Since Price was ABD in economics from Columbia University, it was natural that the Urban League should be one of his central off-campus activities.
Between 1943 and 1965 the MUL was a small institution. The executive director, Rev. J. A. McDaniel, and his part-time secretary constituted the organization’s (inadequately) paid staff until the early ’60s. For the most part the MUL served as an employment agency, searching for jobs open to black workers and finding qualified workers to fill them, as well as organizing training for black nurses, accountants, etc. Beginning in the late ’40s, as more industry came to Memphis, the MUL increasingly pushed those plants to allow black workers to fill skilled positions.
Beginning in the early ’50s, the MUL also became involved with the housing needs of the black community, both finding rooms for families left homeless by crisis and pushing the city to replace widespread slum housing.
All of the MUL’s efforts were greatly hampered by various manifestations of Memphis’s notorious Jim Crow racism. Most fundamentally, the MUL, like most Urban League affiliates, received virtually all of its modest funding from the white-controlled Community Chest. This dependence on the approval of white businessmen led to the two great crises of the MUL during Price’s years. In 1944, the Community Chest threatened to cut off the MUL’s funding because white Memphis was offended by a “radical,” outspoken young MUL executive secretary. Again in the mid-1950s, the MUL was in danger of losing its funding because members of the White Citizens Council, reacting against the Brown decision of 1954, accused the Urban League of being linked to the “radical” NAACP. In both crises, Price worked deftly to reassure the Community Chest’s white board and prevent the loss of funding.
In dealing with such problems for more than twenty years, Hollis Price spent countless hours attending MUL board meetings (often held on the LeMoyne campus), writing letters to NUL offices in Atlanta and New York, even traveling to northern headquarters of Memphis industries in hopes of influencing the hiring of more black workers. Despite the severe constrictions of black people’s situation in Memphis, he (like McDaniel) persisted year after year, pushing the city forward inch by inch. Price was convinced of the importance of the Urban League not only as an instrument of equal economic opportunity for all but as what he called “a bridge organization” between the white and black communities.

PLEASE NOTE: ASALH HEADQUARTERS TOLD ME, IN RESPONSE TO AN E-MAIL INQUIRY, THAT ABSTRACTS SHOULD NOT EXCEED 500 WORDS. I HAVE FOLLOWED THOSE INSTRUCTIONS.NA