Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History

Sauer, Anne

Branco, Jessica

Bennett, John

Crowley, Zachary

2000

Wendell Phillips Memorial Scholarship, 1896

 

The Wendell Phillips Memorial Scholarship is one of two scholarships (the other being assigned to Harvard College)which was established in 1896 by the Wendell Phillips Memorial Fund Association in honor of Boston's greatest preacher and orator. The scholarship is given annually to the junior or senior who has best demonstrated both marked ability as a speaker and a high sense of public responsibility. The recipient of the scholarship traditionally gives an address at commencement. Candidates for this award are recommended by the Committee on Student Life and are chosen through a series of public speeches presented at a campus-wide event.

Wendell Phillips was born in Boston on November 29, 1811, graduated from Harvard in 1831, and went to Harvard Law School. He passed the bar in 1834 but soon concentrated his energies on the fight against slavery and left his professional practice in 1839. He became a public figure and the chief of American orators with his Faneuil Hall speech of Decembe r 8, 1837. In that speech, he rebuked the Massachusetts attorney general for having just derided E. P. Lovejoy, who had been murdered for defending freedom of the press against a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois. Pointing to the portraits in the hall he said, "When I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries and murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought these pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead."

He fought to keep the abolitionist movement open to participants of all faiths, and when slavery was finally abolished, continued the struggle for the education and enfranchisement of blacks. In 1870, after passage of the fifteenth amendment, he turned to the causes of native Americans and the Irish, and he worked for women's suffrage, improvements of criminal law and prison administration, as well as the regulation of liquor sales.

As an orator he is placed with Daniel Webster and Edward Everett, and he changed the style of American oratory from rounded sonority to the easier colloquial style of modern day speechmaking. He died in Boston on February 2, 1884.

Source: BTU[Arts and Sciences/Engineering]; 100H

 
 
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  • The encyclopedia seeks to capture more than 150 years of Tufts' achievements, societal contributions and outstanding alumni and faculty in concise entries. As a source of accurate factual information, the Encyclopedia can be used by anyone interested in the history of Tufts and of the people who have made it the unique institution it is.
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Dame, Lorin Low, 1838-1903
Dana, Charles A., 1881-1975
Dana Laboratory, 1963
Daniel Ounjian Prize in Economics,
Davies, Caroline Stodder, 1864-1939
Davies House, 1894
De Florez Prize in Human Engineering, 1964
de Pacheco, Kaye MacKinnon, ca. 1910-ca. 1985
Dean Hall, 1887-1963
Dean, Oliver, 1783-1871
Dearborn, Heman Allen, 1831-1897
Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, 1893
Department of Anesthesia, 1970
Department of Art and Art History, 1930
Department of Biochemistry, 1893
Department of Chemistry, 1882
Department of Community Health, 1930
Department of Dermatology, 1897
The Department of Economics, 1946
Department of Medicine, 1893
Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology
Department of Neurology, 1893
Department of Neuroscience, 1983
Department of Neurosurgery, 1951
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1893
Department of Ophthamology, 1893
Department of Orthopedic Surgery, 1906
Department of Otolaryngology, 1895
Department of Pathology, 1893
Department of Pediatrics, 1930
Department of Pharmacology, 1915
Department of Physics and Astronomy, 1854
Department of Physiology, 1893
Department of Psychiatry, 1928
Department of Radiation Oncology, 1968
Department of Radiology, 1915
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, 1955
Department of Surgery, 1893
Department of Urban and Environmental Policy, 1973
Department of Urology, 1910
Dental Health Sciences Building, 1969
Dewick, Cora Alma (Polk), 1875-1977
Dewick/MacPhie Dining Hall, 1959
Dickson Professorship of English and American History, 1913
Dirlam, Arland A., 1905-1979
Dog Cart, 1900
Dolbear, Amos Emerson, 1837-1910
Donald A. Cowdery Memorial Scholarship, 1946
Dr. Benjamin Andrews Professorship of Surgery, 1987
Dr. Philip E. A. Sheridan Prize, 1977
The Drug Bust, 1970
Dudley, Henry Watson, 1831-1906
Dugger, Edward Jr., 1919-75
Durkee, Frank W., 1861-1939
Durkee, Henrietta Noble Brown, 1871-1946
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