Southland College was one of the oldest private institutions in the South established for the education of blacks. Located at Helena (Phillips County), Arkansas, Southland was originally founded as an asylum for lost and abandoned children by the Friends' Freedmen Committee of the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) and their local agent, Elkanah Beard, at the request of the Union commandant at Helena, General Napolean B. Buford. With the appointment by the Friends' Freedmen Committee and the arrival of Calvin and Alida Clark of Wayne County, Indiana, Southland orphanage and school was established April 19, 1864.

Supported by the Friends' Freedmen Committee and the Freedmen's Bureau, the school remained at Helena almost two years until Colonel Charles Bentzoni, Buford's successor, was ordered to return the buildings which housed the orphanage to the original owners. Rather than evict the school, Bentzoni and his command, the 56th United States Colored Infantry Regiment, volunteered to save the orphanage by donating money with which to buy thirty acres, located nine miles northwest of Helena, and the labor to erect buildings. The new site and temporary buildings, deeded to the Indiana Yearly Meeting, were dedicated in March 1866. To the original thirty acres, the Indiana Yearly Meeting added fifty more during the same year; and by 1925, the Southland campus comprised 167 acres.

With the demise of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1869, the sole maintenance of the school devolved on the Missionary Board of the Indiana Yearly Meeting which had succeeded the Friend's Freedmen Committee. Calvin and Alida Clark remained at Southland as the superintendent and matron. During the Clarks' tenure, a normal course was added to the curriculum in 1869 and the primary goal of the school was to train black teachers for the uplift of the race. By 1874 sixty teachers had been trained. As a consequence, the Missionary Board of the Indiana Yearly Meeting renamed the school Southland College and diplomas were granted to the first graduating class of 1876. In 1880 the first black teachers, Southland graduates, were added to the faculty thereby constituting one of the few integrated faculties in the South. By the end of the Clarks' tenure in 1886, five permanent buildings had been constructed and enrollment approached 300 students.

The Clarks were also concerned with the Southland community's spiritual development. In December 1876 the Indiana Yearly Meeting officially recognized the Southland Monthly Meeting, with seventy-eight friends, with the authority to establish Preparative Meetings. In 1880 the Executive Board of the Indiana Yearly Meeting also made Daniel Drew, member of the Southland Monthly Meeting, a duly accorded minister. Chandler Paschal, a member of the first graduating class, was designated minister in March 1898. Although Southland provided much needed educational opportunities and Christian ethics, the financial condition of the school was always tenuous. School revenues were entirely dependent on inadequate tuition payments of one dollar per month for day students and three dollars per week for boarding students; appropriations from the Indiana Yearly Meeting; and donations. George Sturge, an English Friend, contributed $25,000 in 1881 which eventually provided an endowment of $40,000. The Sturge Fund, renamed the Geoffrey Sawyer Fund in 1976, is still administered by the Indiana Yearly Meeting for the education of black students. Despite the Sturge Fund, financial support remained meager.

The Clarks were succeeded by five superintendent and matron couples including Elkanah and Irena Beard for two brief periods, 1886-1888 and 1889-1891. The instability generated by the frequent changes in administration was exacerbated by other problems: the school building and chapel were destroyed by fire in 1900; the financial condition was worsened by the cancellation of insurance on the remaining buildings; and a drought ruined most of the farm crops.

In this situation, H. C. and Anna B. Wolford, as president and matron, began their long tenure from 1903 to 1922. During the Wolford administration, Southland was revived. Enrollment, which had fallen to 100 in 1902, numbered over 350 in 1916 and the number of boarders reached 200 in the same year. In 1917 the name of the school was changed to Southland Institute to more accurately reflect the elementary and secondary work being offered. But the Wolfords were unable to change the insolvency of the school. In protest, they left for one year, 1917-1918, but agreed to return provided additional funds were forthcoming for the maintenance of the school and improvement of the physical plant. To increase Southland's appropriations, responsibility for the school was officially transferred, in August 1920, from the Indiana yearly meeting to the Board of Home Missions of the Five Years Meeting of Friends which could solicit support from all thirteen yearly meetings.

Under the aegis of the Board of Home Missions, a survey team, dispatched in January 1921, which included agents of the Rockefeller General Education Board and the Phelps-Stokes Fund, inspected Southland and made several recommendations to improve the academic standards and the physical plant. In seeking to improve the school academically the Board of Home Missions appointed F. Raymond Jenkins, a recent graduate of Earlham College, as principal for the 1922-23 school year. Jenkins, who had also studied at Hampton Institute, immediately clashed with the older Wolford and his methods. Jenkins's complaints to the Board of Home Missions concerning Wolford resulted in two visits to Southland by members of the Board and Wolford's departure on October 8, 1922.

Jenkins, with his wife Cecelia, as acting director and matron, modernized the organization of the school, instituted a longer school term and improved the library. But the school continued to be financially insolvent, and the Board's primary goal was trying to keep the school open.

In April, 1924, the Rockefeller General Education Board appropriated $20,000 for Southland if matched by October 1, 1924. Unfortunately, the Rockefeller grant was applicable only if Southland retired its current indebtedness. To this end, Jenkins remained in Indiana during the 1924-1925 school year conducting fund- raising activities. Despite these efforts, the Board of Home Missions decided in March 1925 to close the school at the end of the spring term.

Additional information on the history of Southland College can be found in the following articles, all of which are maintained in the Special Collections Department:

Kennedy, Thomas C. "The Last Days at Southland." The Southern Friend 8 (Spring 1986): 1-19.

Kennedy, Thomas C. "The Society of Friends and Black Education in Arkansas." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 42 (Autumn 1983): 207-238.

Kirkman, Dale P. "Southland College." Phillips County Historical Quarterly 3 (September 1964): 30-33.