HISTORY MINUTE

Joseph Carter Corbin built one of the most successful African-American universities in the nation from nothing and helped keep it alive when so many forces threatened to wreck it. He was born in Chilicothe, Ohio, in 1833, into a family of free African-Americans and the oldest of twelve children. He was extremely intelligent as a youngster. At a young age, Corbin developed a passion for teaching, and left to teach school at age 15 in Louisville, Kentucky. He returned to Ohio to complete his own education, earning a bachelors and masters degree at Ohio University by 1856.

During the Civil War, Corbin published a newspaper in Ohio. In 1872, after the war ended, he moved with his wife and family to Little Rock. In 1873, he was named superintendant of public schools for Arkansas, but there were still very few public schools in the state. The Reconstruction-era government struggled to establish a school system in Arkansas even remotely approaching the other states. The state legislature established the University of Arkansas that same year. As superintendant, he oversaw the construction of the university’s first buildings. In the segregated environment, a college was also established for African-Americans, to be called Branch Normal College, designed to train teachers for African-American schools.

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