Antioch College

Private school located in Yellow Springs, Ohio, that became the first institute of higher education in the United States to offer a coeducational curriculum and open its doors to African Americans and students of other races. Initially founded as a Christian school in 1852, Antioch College was later reorganized on a nonsectarian basis. From the beginning, the school had strongly humanistic values and challenged students beyond the framework of traditional higher education. The school offers interdisciplinary majors in the arts, sciences, humanities, and social sciences.

Antioch's first president was former U.S. congressman and public school reformer Horace Mann. Mann was a well-known antislavery campaigner who did much to shape the challenging student environment that has become Antioch's trademark. At the 1859 graduation ceremony, Mann told departing students, “Be ashamed to die unless you have won some victory for humanity.”

In 1920, Antioch introduced the cooperative workstudy program. This program divides the curriculum between on-campus study and off-campus work at more than 350 locations worldwide, in such areas of study as community government and college administration.

Antioch has developed a reputation as a very progressive school, where faculty members encourage students to become politically aware and to voice their opinions on the issues of the day. Its black graduates include the civil rights leaders Mary Church Terrell and Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr.