27 Notable alumni of Wilberforce University
Updated: June 13, 2026 EliteDegrees
Wilberforce University is ranked #5,226 in the world and #1,376 in United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 27 notable alumni from Wilberforce University sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. Many individuals affiliated with Wilberforce University won Nobel Prizes for Peace, in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Economics.
1. Ruth Gaines-Shelton
1872-1938 (aged 66)
writer
Ruth Ada Gaines-Shelton was an American playwright and educator. She is a playwright of the Harlem Renaissance era and is best known for her allegorical comedy,The Church Fight, written in 1925.
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2. Susie Lankford Shorter
1859-1912 (aged 53)
journalist
writer
Susie Isabel Lankford Shorter was an American educator, philanthropist, and writer.
3. Zelia Ball Page
1850-1930 (aged 80)
teacher
Zelia Ball Page was a freeborn African-American teacher who spent her career teaching African-American youths in Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Her husband was the first head of Langston University and she was the first matron.
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4. Mary G. Evans
1891-1966 (aged 75)
cleric
Mary G. Evans was an American Christian minister. Evans is most known for serving as the pastor of Chicago's Cosmopolitan Community Church for 34 years, from 1932 until her death in 1966. She was the first woman to receive a Doctor of Divinity degree from Wilberforce University.
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5. Emma S. Ransom
1864-1943 (aged 79)
suffragist
Emma S. Connor Ransom was an American educator and clubwoman, active in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association).
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6. Charles Freeman Lee
1927-1997 (aged 70)
pianist
jazz musician
Charles Freeman Lee, known as Freeman Lee was an American Jazz Trumpeter, recording with the Elmo Hope Quintet, Bennie Green, Babs Gonzales and Howard McGhee.
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7. Katherine D. Tillman
1870-1922 (aged 52)
poet
writer
journalist
Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman was an American writer.
8. Benjamin F. Lee
1841-1926 (aged 85)
journalist
religious leader
Benjamin Franklin Lee was a religious leader and educator in the United States. He was the president of Wilberforce University from 1876 to 1884. He was editor of the Christian Recorder from 1884 to 1892. He was then elected a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, serving from 1892 until his resignation in 1921, becoming senior bishop in...
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9. Niilo Koponen
1928-2013 (aged 85)
teacher
businessperson
politician
Niilo Emil Koponen was an American educator and politician.
10. Theophilus Gould Steward
1843-1924 (aged 81)
novelist
Theophilus Gould "T.G." Steward was an American author, educator, and clergyman. He was a U.S. Army chaplain and Buffalo Soldier of 25th U.S. Colored Infantry.
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11. John A. Lankford
1874-1946 (aged 72)
architect
John A. Lankford, American architect. He was the first professionally licensed African American architect in Virginia in 1922 and in the District of Columbia in 1924. He has been regarded as the "dean of black architecture".
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12. Albery Allson Whitman
1851-1901 (aged 50)
preacher
poet
clergyman
Albery Allson Whitman (May 30, 1851 – June 29, 1901 was an African-American poet, minister and orator. Born into slavery, Whitman became a writer. During his lifetime he was acclaimed as the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race". He worked as a manual laborer, school teacher, financial agent, fundraiser and pastor. He died in Atlanta in 1901 of pneumonia.
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13. Horace Henderson
1904-1988 (aged 84)
bandleader
pianist
conductor
jazz musician
Horace W. Henderson, the younger brother of Fletcher Henderson, was an American jazz pianist, organist, arranger, and bandleader.
14. James Carroll Napier
1845-1940 (aged 95)
businessperson
politician
James Carroll Napier was an American businessman, lawyer, politician, and civil rights leader from Nashville, Tennessee, who served as Register of the Treasury from 1911 to 1913. He is one of only five African Americans with their signatures on American currency. He was one of four African-American politicians appointed to a government positions under President William Howard Taft, sometimes referred...
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15. James B. Dudley
1859-1925 (aged 66)
academic
James Benson Dudley was President of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University from 1896 until his death in 1925. James B. Dudley High School in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, where the Agricultural and Technical University is located, was named after Dudley in recognition of his work for his community.
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16. James H. McGee
1918-2006 (aged 88)
lawyer
politician
James Howell McGee was an American politician of the Ohio Democratic party. He served as the first black mayor of Dayton, Ohio and was the city’s longest-tenured mayor to date.
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17. Charlotte Maxeke
1871-1939 (aged 68)
missionary
social activist
politician
Charlotte Makgomo Maxeke (7 April 1871 – 16 October 1939) was a South African religious leader, social and political activist. By graduating with a B.Sc. from Wilberforce University, Ohio, in 1903, she became the first black woman in South Africa to graduate with a university degree as well as the first African woman to graduate from an American university.
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18. Richard H. Cain
1825-1887 (aged 62)
politician
Richard Harvey Cain was an American minister, bishop, abolitionist and politician. After the American Civil War, he was appointed by Bishop Daniel Payne as a missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. Cain served as a United States representative from South Carolina from 1873 to 1875 and 1877 to 1879. He also was one of the founders...
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19. Frank Foster
1928-2011 (aged 83)
conductor
saxophonist
musicologist
composer
jazz musician
Frank Benjamin Foster III was an American tenor and soprano saxophonist, flautist, arranger, and composer. Foster collaborated frequently with Count Basie and worked as a bandleader from the early 1950s. In 1998, Howard University awarded Frank Foster with the Benny Golson Jazz Master Award.
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20. Hallie Quinn Brown
1849-1949 (aged 100)
writer
suffragist
Hallie Quinn Brown was an African-American educator and activist. She moved with her parents (who were formerly enslaved) while relatively young to a farm near Chatham, Ontario, Canada, in 1864 and then to Ohio in 1870. In 1868, she began a course of study in Wilberforce University, Ohio, from which she graduated in 1873 with the degree of Bachelor of...
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21. George Russell
1923-2009 (aged 86)
music educator
composer
jazz musician
pianist
musicologist
George Allen Russell was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953).
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22. John R. Fox
1915-1944 (aged 29)
soldier
John Robert Fox was a United States Army first lieutenant who was killed in action after calling in artillery fire on the enemy during World War II. In 1997, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration for valor, for his actions on December 26, 1944, in the vicinity of Sommocolonia, Italy. It is believed...
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23. William Grant Still
1895-1978 (aged 83)
composer
oboist
conductor
film score composer
William Grant Still Jr. was an American composer of nearly two hundred works, including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, and more than thirty choral works, art songs, chamber music, and solo works. Born in Mississippi and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Still attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music as a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and then...
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24. Dorothy Vaughan
1910-2008 (aged 98)
computer scientist
programmer
mathematician
Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan was an American human computer, computer programmer and schoolteacher who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA, at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center.
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25. Bayard Rustin
1912-1987 (aged 75)
LGBTQ rights activist
political activist
civil rights advocate
political campaign staff
politician
Bayard Rustin was an American political activist and prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin was the principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
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26. Floyd H. Flake
1945-. (aged 81)
religious leader
pastor
politician
Floyd Harold Flake is an American businessman, minister, and former politician who was the senior pastor of the 23,000-member Greater Allen African Methodist Episcopal Cathedral in Jamaica, Queens, New York, and the 18th president of Wilberforce University. He is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1987 to 1997.
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27. Hastings Banda
diplomat
physician
politician
Hastings Kamuzu Banda was a Malawian politician who served as the leader of Malawi from 1964 to 1994. He served as Prime Minister from independence in 1964 to 1966, when Malawi was a Dominion/Commonwealth realm. In 1966, the country became a republic and he became the first president as a result, ruling until his defeat in 1994.
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