(EDUCATION) Diploma for the Colored Normal College of South

Sale 2562 - Lot 209

Price Realized: $ 1,125

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750

(EDUCATION.) Diploma for the Colored Normal College of South Carolina, signed by former congressman Thomas E. Miller. Partly-printed Document Signed by Thomas Ezekiel Miller as college president, Miles B. McSweeney as governor, and others, made out to graduate Lillian Garrett, 16 x 20 inches, with embossed ribbon seal; folds, wrinkling, foxing and offsetting from ribbon. Orangeburg, SC, 2 May [circa 1900-02]

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Thomas Ezekiel Miller (1849-1938) was adopted by formerly enslaved parents in South Carolina, moved north after the war, graduated from Lincoln University in 1872, and then returned to South Carolina for a distinguished political career. He served in the United States Congress from 1890 to 1891, one of the final handful of Southern Black congressmen until 1972. He then served as president of the Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina from the school's 1896 founding through 1910. We trace no other examples of his signature at auction.

The diploma is also signed by Miller's successor Robert Shaw Wilkinson, then a faculty member; and Nelson C. Nix--both have buildings named after them on the campus of what is now South Carolina State University. John Wesley Hoffman is another faculty signer. McSweeney's signature as governor limits the date range to 1900-1902.