Robert Shaw Wilkinson was an American negro educator.
Background
Robert Shaw Wilkinson was born on Feburary 18, 1865 in Charleston, S. C. , just before the 54th Massachusetts Regiment entered that city, and was named by his enthusiastic parents for Robert Gould Shaw, the deceased commander of that famous negro organization. His parents, Charles H. and Lavinia (Brown) Wilkinson, were "free persons of color"; at the time of his birth his father kept a butcher shop; later he became janitor of the Porter Military Academy and of the Church of the Holy Communion.
Education
Encouraged by his father and the rector of the church, Rev. A. T. Porter, young Wilkinson received his early education at the Shaw Memorial School and Avery Institute, and in 1883 went to Beaufort, S. C. , to prepare for entrance into West Point. He was appointed to that institution by Edmund W. M. Mackey, a white Republican congressman, and is said to have passed the entrance examinations but to have been denied admission because of physical disabilities. In 1884 he entered the preparatory department of Oberlin College and graduated from the college with the degree of A. B. in 1891.
Career
He had supported himself by doing odd jobs in the afternoons and by acting as a writer on a negro newspaper and as a Pullman porter during vacations. Giving up an ambition to become a lawyer because of pecuniary difficulties, in 1891 he became professor of Greek and Latin in the State University, Louisville, Ky. , a negro institution, where he served until 1896. In that year he was called to the professorship of science in the State Agricultural and Mechanical College, a negro institution at Orangeburg, S. C. His success as a teacher was so marked that ambitious white youths came into his laboratory at night to watch his experiments. Having previously taken an active part in the administration of the Orangeburg institution, he was elected to its presidency in 1911 and served brilliantly in that capacity until his death twenty-one years later. When he died he enjoyed the esteem of all South Carolinians of both races who were acquainted with his work.
Achievements
When he took office, the school was a neglected academy of 592 students, which received an annual legislative appropriation of only five thousand dollars and in no instance maintained a level of instruction above that of the high school; before his death the institution was a college of 1, 691 students which received an annual legislative appropriation of $126, 000 and in no instance maintained a level of instruction below that of the high school. Moreover, the morale of the college had been greatly improved by Wilkinson's encouragement of advanced study by members of the faculty and by his emphasis on a balanced compromise between industrial and literary instruction.
Religion
A devout Episcopalian, Wilkinson was a lay reader and the most active colored layman of his Church in South Carolina. In his extensive travels he carried the gospel of social and economic progress into the humblest negro homes.
Personality
He was a patient and urbane little man, always immaculately dressed, whose mind was fertile in practical suggestions for the uplift of his race and keenly alive to all possible sources of revenue for negro education. He won the admiration and support of the white officials and legislators who controlled the educational destinies of South Carolina by eschewing politics and accepting the racial conventions of the state, without, however, groveling before those of whom he asked favors. The intelligent were won with arguments; the indifferent or ignorant by petty gifts.
He was active in many negro business and fraternal undertakings, serving as president of the state Business League and as the very efficient treasurer of the state negro organization of the Knights of Pythias. He educated his four children in Northern colleges and left his wife a substantial competence.
Connections
On June 29, 1897 he acquired an able assistant in his endeavors when he married Marion Raven Birnie, the daughter of Richard Birnie, a Charleston cotton sampler.
