Joseph C. Price

Joseph Charles Price (February 10, 1854 – October 25, 1893) was a founder and the first president of Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. He was one of the greatest orators of his day and a leader of African Americans in the southern United States. His death at the age of 39 cut short a career that might otherwise have vied with that of Booker T. Washington.

Early life

Joseph Charles Price was born free in Elizabeth City, North Carolina on February 10, 1854 to a slave father and a free mother. His mother was named Emily Pailin and his father was Charles Dozier, a ship's carpenter. Dozier was sold and sent to Baltimore and Emily married a man named David Price, whose name Joseph took. When he was nine, he moved with his mother to New Bern, North Carolina, which had become a haven to free blacks after it was occupied by the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865). That year he enrolled at St. Andrew's School led by James Walker Hood, who would be an important influence upon Price. He also attended St. Cyprian Episcopal School, which was known as the Lowell Normal School of New Bern and was run by the Boston Society.Simmons, William J., and Henry McNeal Turner. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. GM Rewell & Company, 1887. p754-758

Early career

In 1871 he began his career as a teacher in the public school of Wilson, North Carolina. After four years he enrolled at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. At Shaw he converted the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and was granted a license to preach. He then enrolled in Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania to study classics. He graduated valedictorian from the classical department at Lincoln in 1879 and from the theology department in 1881. In 1880 he was a delegate to the M.E. General Conference in Montgomery, Alabama, and in September 1881 was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference in London, England. He remained in England for one year raising money for the Zion Wesley Institute which would be used to help build Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. Among his patrons back in the United States, particularly met during a fundraising tour of California, were businessman William E. Dodge, Alexander Walters, Senator Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins Jr., Mrs. Pleasant,Chesnutt 2011, p561 and Stephen V. WhiteRev Joseph C. Price, The North Carolinian (Raleigh, North Carolina) November 3, 1893, page 2, accessed December 7, 2016 at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/7761404/rev_joseph_c_price_the_north/ Price was then installed as president of the school and was professor of oratory, mental and moral science, and theology. He was also a noted figure in the 1881 North Carolina prohibition campaign.

Later career

As president, he continued his work as a preacher. He preached from many different pulpits, and was the first black man to occupy the pulpit of Henry Ward Beecher and also took the pulpit of Rev Tamage. He was a delegate to the Centenary Conference of the ME Church in Baltimore in 1884 where he was one of three selected to give welcoming addresses along with Bishop James Osgood Andrew and Dr. John Berry McFerrin, and was chairman of the board of commissioners for Zion Church on forming a Union between the AME and the AME Zion
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