Oberlin: The College That Defied the Fugitive Slave Act

Oberlin, Ohio, is where two radical ideas took hold simultaneously in the eighteen thirties: that women and men should be educated together, and that Black and white students should sit in the same classrooms. Oberlin College, founded in eighteen thirty-three, was the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and one of the first to admit Black students in significant numbers.

The town and campus became a prominent station on the Underground Railroad, and in eighteen fifty-eight Oberlin residents staged the Wellington Rescue, openly defying the federal Fugitive Slave Act to free a captured man named John Price. The Oberlin Heritage Center tells this history across several preserved sites. The college itself remains operating today and its conservatory of music is the oldest continuously running conservatory in the country.