Founder of UAPB praised at ceremony

PINE BLUFF - Gladys Turner-Finney of Dayton, Ohio, has been researching an Arkansas mystery since 2008.

For five years, the 1957 alumnae of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff made dozens of phone calls and combed through hundreds of documents searching for the final resting place of Joseph Carter Corbin.

He’s the man who founded Branch Normal College - now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff - in 1875.

Turner-Finney not only found Corbin’s grave recently, but she and others connected with the university also traveled to Chicago to honor his memory Monday with a new headstone.

Corbin died in Pine Bluff in 1911 and was buried at the Forest Home Cemetery in the Windy City.

The headstone, which includes the UAPB seal and an inscription thanking Corbin for his “gift of education to countless generations,” was sponsored by the Joseph Carter Corbin Headstone Project, the Black History Commission of Arkansas and the Alumni and Friends of UAPB.

Turner-Finney said she still hasn’t found out why Corbin, his wife and two of his children were buried at a cemetery for white people in an area he wasn’t known to frequent.

But that’s where her sleuthing skills will come in handy once again.

“It is a mystery so far,” she said. “I did find out that his wife had been in Chicago two years before her death. I will find out eventually. To me, though, the biggest surprise of all was that no one knew where he was buried.”

Born March 26, 1833, in Chillicothe, Ohio, Joseph Carter Corbin was an educator, scholar, linguist, mathematician and musician, according to the UAPB archives.

Turner-Finney - a member of the genealogical group African Americans of Miami Valley, Ohio - said she was especially interested in finding Corbin’s grave because of his Ohio roots.

Corbin enrolled at Ohio University at 17, and three years later he received a bachelors degree in art. Later, he would earn two masters degrees from Ohio University.

He came to Arkansas in 1872 and was elected state superintendent of public education on the Republican ticket. He served as chairman of the board of trustees of the newly formed Arkansas Industrial University, now the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

It was during this time that Corbin recommended a college “for the education of the poorer classes,” according to UAPB archival information.

In 1875, Corbin became founder and principal of Branch Normal College - predecessor of the Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff - where he served until 1902.

After that, he took the principal’s position at Merrill High School in Pine Bluff and was a leader in the public education movement and the Prince Hall Masons in Arkansas.

As a poor black child growing up in rural Jefferson County, Turner-Finney said she considered Corbin “a friend,” even though he died many years before her birth.

Without his contributions to education and the founding of Branch Normal College, Turner-Finney said she likely never would have received a higher education.

“He is the father of higher education in Arkansas for African-Americans,” she said. “He helped me and so many others do what we otherwise would never could have. This has been an absolute labor of love for me. This man means so much to so many around the country.”