City Directories and History: Allen University grew out of Payne Institute, established at Cokesbury in 1871 by the Abbevilie District of the African Methodist Church. In 1880 the Columbia and South Carolina Annual Conferences of the church merged Payne into Alien University, which was opened in Columbia the following year. In 1881 Alien University purchased its first property in Columbia. Joseph M. English was paid a sum of $6000 for a four acre lot in the Waverly area, the site of the present campus. In January of 1882, Alien purchased additional property on Sumter Street and operated there for a short time. Records documenting the exact date of Alien’s permanent placement at its present site have not been located; however, the first major building was erected and in use on the present site in 1888. Founded primarily to provide an educated clergy for the A.M.E. Church, Alien also offered law and vocational degrees. Beginning with sixty students and a faculty of six, the school graduated in its first nine years seventy-five students; twelve from the collegiate department, fifteen from the law department, and forty-eight from the normal department. Alien was among the few southern colleges for blacks to have a law department, which lasted until the early 1900s. During the late 19th and early 20th Century, Alien’s curriculum had an industrial and agricultural emphasis following the example set by Tuskegee Institute and articulated by Booker T. Washington in his 1895 speech at the Atlanta Exposition. Part of this philosophy included having all students do manual labor. In 1888-89, for example, all students boarding at the university were required to do manual work for one hour each day and in the catalogue of 1896-97, it was specified that “all ladies in each Department must sew.”
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