Furman University

A Tribute to President Emeritus Gordon Blackwell

This tribute to President Emeritus Gordon Blackwell was delivered by President Shi at a memorial service on campus January 30, 2004.

Gordon Williams Blackwell is now at peace. Having lived a full life and compiled a fulfilling career, he bequeathed to us a rich legacy of learning and leadership. We must never forget the crucial role he played in helping Furman stretch its sense of the possible and join hands with greatness. During the 1960s and 1970s, Gordon Blackwell was one of the nation's higher education giants. He forged a sterling career of ideas leavened by ideals, action informed by reasoned reflection, and faith enriched by critical inquiry and social reform. Furman continues to be the beneficiary of his strenuous efforts to help the university raise its sights and attain what he called "excellence by national standards."

Gordon Blackwell enrolled as a Furman freshman during the depths of the Great Depression, and he quickly emerged as a campus leader. He was captain of the tennis team, editor of the literary magazine, president of the band, president of his social fraternity, and was inducted into the Quaternion Club, the college's most prestigious honorary society for men.

At the graduation exercises in 1932, he ranked at the top of his class. After graduate school at Chapel Hill and Harvard, Dr. Blackwell began his teaching career at Furman, where he served as professor and chairman of the sociology department from 1937 to 1941. After participating in World War II, he taught at Chapel Hill, where he later was named the Kenan Professor of Sociology, the most prestigious academic rank at the university. He was also director for 13 years of the Institute for Research in Social Science at UNC. As a professor and scholar, Dr. Blackwell authored several books and more than 50 articles on a variety of subjects related to social problems in the South, community relations, and higher education. In the late 1950s he became chancellor of the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Four years later he was named president of the Florida State University.

In 1965 he became Furman University's eighth president and assumed leadership of a venerable institution still adjusting to a new campus. The university Dr. Blackwell inherited had been positioned for prominence by John Plyler, and Gordon seized full advantage of the opportunities enabled by his remarkable predecessor.

Over the next eleven years President Blackwell relentlessly sought to help a very good college become a great one. Between 1965 and 1976, he oversaw dramatic increases in the operating budget, the endowment, and faculty salaries, and he took justifiable pride in tripling the amount of financial aid for students.

But numbers hardly begin to tell the story of his accomplishments. During President Blackwell's presidency, Furman organized the Collegiate Educational Service Corps, transformed the curriculum, initiated an extensive foreign study program, strengthened faculty governance and restructured the administrative staff, garnered magisterial grants from major foundations, won a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, started a student orchestra, and removed many outdated restrictions on student life. President Blackwell also adopted a long-range planning process for the university, and he enabled the construction of five major buildings.

But most important of all, President Blackwell emboldened Furman to break out of its sectarian shell and assume a leadership position within higher education and within the Greenville community. He knew that colleges, while rooted in tradition, are best nourished by progressive change and audacious aspirations, and he recognized early on that Furman had some history to overcome and some provincialism to shed.

When the Trustees unanimously invited Dr. Blackwell to become Furman's president, he insisted that the University agree to integrate the faculty, staff, and student body before he would accept the appointment. As a result, Furman became the first private college in the state to admit African Americans.

Less visible but no less significant were Dr. Blackwell's tireless efforts working behind the scenes to improve race relations in the Upstate. At the same time, he sought to help the South Carolina Baptist Convention appreciate the differences between a liberal arts college and a bible college and to understand the necessary connection between academic excellence and academic freedom.

Dr. Blackwell's presidential tenure at Furman coincided with an era of volatile turbulence on college campuses, yet through his patient and resilient leadership, he channeled student unrest into productive arenas. President Blackwell wanted Furman students not just to learn about ideas and techniques; he wanted them to embody Christian virtues: to be wise, decent, humane, generous, and sincere. He wanted them to care enough about Furman to change it, and he was always willing to listen to their concerns and proposals. Beginning in the late 1960s, he initiated a weekly dialogue between the administration and student leadership, often hosting the informal sessions at his home or at fireside chats in the Student Center, and his open-door office policy created a climate of understanding, cooperation, and patient listening that has lasted to this day.

Whatever the issue, whatever the project, Gordon Blackwell insisted that the university adopt academic excellence as its standard. Excellence by national standards is a demanding goal; it is not for the timid or the parochial. It requires intense commitment and concentration, difficult decisions, and substantial new resources. As Dr. Blackwell once declared, "Excellence in education is expensive. The only thing more costly is poor education."

Over the years, President Blackwell's academic stature and passion for liberal learning led numerous colleges to award him honorary degrees and prompted numerous national organizations to invite him to join their boards. Yet it was Furman that always remained the focus of his attention, service, and loyalty. This university proudly bears the stamp of Dr. Blackwell's exceptional accomplishments and pristine character. He personified the best of Furman. Gordon Blackwell was an eloquent, learned, and inspiring leader who helped elevate our sense of what Furman could become. Our responsibility is to help the university realize that potential. Like an ultimatum, Gordon Blackwell remains a formidable example, urging us to strive, to improve, to build, and never to yield to indifference or complacency. Furman is now excellent by national standards. Gordon Blackwell personified that excellence-by any standard.