{"id":3260,"date":"2014-10-29T14:39:56","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T18:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/2016\/02\/10\/room-named-in-vaughns-honor\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T17:43:15","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T22:43:15","slug":"room-named-in-vaughns-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/room-named-in-vaughns-honor\/","title":{"rendered":"Room named in Vaughn’s honor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Joseph<\/a>

Joseph Vaughn junior year photo (Bonhomie 1967)<\/p><\/div>\n

Furman University renamed its MultiCultural Room in honor of Joseph Vaughn, the first African-American student to attend Furman, and held a dedication ceremony Saturday, October 25.<\/p>\n

A Greenville native, Vaughn enrolled at the university in January 1965 and graduated in 1968. He was raised in Greenville by a single mother and served as president of the student body at Sterling High School, an African-American high school in Greenville.\u00a0 In the early 1960s, students from Sterling participated in protests to desegregate the city airport, main library, skating rink and lunch counters.<\/p>\n

Furman\u2019s board of trustees passed a racially non-discriminatory admission policy in late 1963 and reaffirmed that policy in 1964. Furman searched for \u201can appropriate African-American student to admit,\u201d and hand-selected Vaughn, who also was a member of the National Honor Society. He attended one semester at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., before enrolling at Furman.<\/p>\n

While at Furman, Vaughn made friends, became involved with campus activities, such as cheerleading and the Southern Student Organizing Committee. He also organized and led a rally in support of students at South Carolina State University soon after the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968 and later \u00a0marched in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., who had been assassinated.<\/p>\n

He taught English in the Greenville County School District until he retired from teaching in 1982. He was elected president of the South Carolina Education Association in 1981. He died in 1991 in Columbia, remaining a social and political activist throughout his life.<\/p>\n

Also, two days before Vaughn enrolled, three African-American educators \u2013 Joseph Adair, William Bowling, and James Daniel Kibler \u2013 enrolled as graduate students at the university.<\/p>\n

Furman is celebrating the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of its desegregation journey\u2019 throughout the 2014-2015 academic year with lectures, events, a history of the school\u2019s desegregation efforts and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were tossing around ideas\u201d to celebrate Vaughn and \u201clanded on this\u201d to acknowledge his importance in Furman\u2019s history, said Idella Glenn, Ph.D., a Furman graduate and former assistant vice president for student development and director of diversity and inclusion.<\/p>\n

The overall celebration is to show Furman\u2019s acknowledgement of desegregation as \u201ca milestone event,\u201d she said. Between five percent and six percent of Furman\u2019s study body is African American, another three percent to four percent is Asian American, two percent to three percent is Latino and about\u00a0 three percent identify as international students.<\/p>\n

Around 15 percent of Furman\u2019s student body is multicultural, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is much better than it was when I came here,\u201d she said, but less than the percentage of multicultural residents of South Carolina or the country.<\/p>\n

The Joseph Vaughn Room is a place for Furman\u2019s multicultural students to read, study, hang out, and hold meetings of various organizations, said Nancy Cooper, Furman\u2019s coordinator for volunteer services.<\/p>\n

The ribbon cutting for the renamed Joseph Vaughn Room was held during Furman Homecoming events Saturday, with some of Vaughn\u2019s family in attendance. Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony and dedication, the Black Alumni Association held a brunch to honor black alumni, the renamed room and to wish Glenn a farewell. After 18 years at Furman, she is leaving for Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Furman University renamed its MultiCultural Room in honor of Joseph Vaughn, the first African-American student to attend Furman, and held a dedication ceremony Saturday, Oct. 25.\u00a0A Greenville native, Vaughn enrolled at the university in January 1965 and graduated in 1968. He was raised in Greenville by a single mother and served as president of the student body at Sterling High School, an African-American high school in Greenville.\u00a0 In the early 1960s, students from Sterling participated in protests to desegregate the city airport, main library, skating rink and lunch counters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":13959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}