There is a useful but somewhat misleading (through omission) history on the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch_College .
Steven Jay Gould, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rod Serling, Coretta Scott King.
Those are some of the small number of alumni who became well known. Sadly, even that bigot David Horowitz was another graduate. But beyond the small number who became well known there were countless others who carried on the good fight for the greater good whose names you will never hear.
The legacy, the goals, were set forth at the very beginning, as were the money problems associated with these objectives - from the Wiki article:
Horace Mann, Antioch's first president, ran the college from its founding in 1853 until his death in 1859. The young college had relatively high academic standards, and "good moral character" was a requirement for graduation.<11> The first curriculum focused on Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, philosophy and science, and offered electives in art, botany, pedagogy, and modern languages.<12> Tuition was $24 a year, and the first graduating class consisted of 28 students. Although the founders planned for approximately 1,000 students, enrollment only exceeded 500 once in the 19th century, in 1857.<13>
One notable character in Antioch's history is Rebecca Pennell, who was one of the college's ten original faculty members. She was the first female college professor in the United States to have the same rank and pay as her male colleagues.<14> Her home, now part of the Antioch campus and called Pennell House, currently serves as community space for several of Antioch's student led independent groups.
In 1859, Mann gave his final commencement speech, including what became the college's motto: "Be ashamed to die until you win some victory for humanity."<15> Mann died in August and was initially interred on the Antioch College grounds. The next year, he was reinterred in Providence, Rhode Island, next to his first wife.
The original founders gave no consideration to the question of whether Antioch should admit students of color, neither forbidding nor explicitly allowing it.<16> The associated preparatory school admitted two African American girls during the mid-1850s, an action one trustee responded to by resigning and removing his own children from the school. His opinion was apparently the minority one, though, as the African American students were not withdrawn.<17> In 1863, Antioch trustee John Phillips proposed a resolution stating "the Trustees of Antioch College cannot, according to the Charter, reject persons on account of color." The resolution passed with nine trustees in favor and four opposed. However, the college remained nearly all white until after World War II, when the school undertook a minority recruitment program.
Antioch College faced financial difficulties in its first years, mostly due to the Panic of 1857.<18> From 1857 to 1859, Antioch ran an annual deficit of US$5,000, out of a total budget of US$13,000.<19> In 1858, Antioch was bankrupt. Mann died in 1859 and the college was reorganized, but deficits continued.<19> Mann's successor, Thomas Hill, took Antioch's presidency on the condition that faculty salaries be paid despite deficits. Despite this stipulation, his salary was often not paid, and he supported his family with loans. Hill and a colleague attempted to raise an endowment, but potential donors were put off by the strong sectarian leanings of some of the college's trustees.<20> Hill resigned in 1862 due to increasing financial troubles, sectarian conflict between Christian Connection and Unitarian trustees, and his election as president of Harvard. In 1862, the college was closed until finances improved and remained closed until after the end of the Civil War.
In 1865, the college reopened, now administered by the Unitarian church. The financial health of the college seemed improved, as the Unitarians had raised a US$100,000 endowment in the space of two months.<21> The endowment was originally invested in government bonds and later in real estate and timber. The investment income, while performing well, was still insufficient to maintain the college at the high level desired by the trustees. Some of the principal was lost to foreclosures during the Long Depression, which began in 1873.<21>
And it went. Doing good was always in conflict with doing well and was losing but still fighting. And it made enemies among the ruling elite.
Beginning in the 1940s, Antioch was considered an early bastion of student activism, anti-racism, and progressive thought. In 1943 the college Race Relations Committee began offering scholarships to non-white students to help diversify the campus, which had been mostly white since its founding. The first scholarship recipient was Edythe Scott, elder sister of Coretta Scott King. Coretta Scott received the scholarship and attended Antioch two years after her sister.<26> Antioch was one of the first historically white colleges to actively recruit black students. Antioch was also the first historically white college to appoint a black person to be chair of an academic department, when Walter Anderson was appointed chair of the music department.
In the 1950s Antioch faced pressure from the powerful House Un-American Activities Committee and faced criticism from many area newspapers, because it did not expel students and faculty accused of having Communist leanings. College officials stood firm, insisting that freedom begins not in suppressing unpopular ideas but in holding all ideas up to the light. The school, including professors and administration, was also involved in the early stages of the American Civil Rights Movement and remains a supporter of free speech.
In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the commencement speech.
Antioch became increasingly progressive and financially healthy during the 1960s and early 1970s under the Presidency of Dr. James P. Dixon. The student body topped out around 2,400 students, the college owned property all over Yellow Springs and beyond, and the college grew throughout the decade. It began to appear in literary works and other media as an icon of youth culture, serving, for example, as the setting for a portion of Philip Roth's most popular novel, "Portnoy's Complaint". At this time, Antioch became one of the primary sources of student radicalism, the New Left, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the Black Power movement in the region. The town of Yellow Springs became an island of liberal and progressive activism in southern Ohio.
Antioch had a work-study system in which two quarters were spent somewhere in the "real world," partly for money but mainly for experience since the guidance was always to seek something different from the last job. This meant that every student, every year, learned something about the world that could never be taught through academics. Not just the jobs, but the neighborhood and social and natural environments. Just imagine what kind of impact it would have if every young person in this country had that kind of experience.
Sadly, one example of the the kind of institution of higher learning that actually met that definition is soon to disappear. But they did good work, they made a difference, and they changed the life trajectory and works of many who attended for the better and for the greater good.
Thank you so very much, and R.I.P.. You did good.
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