Born
on August 4, 1882 in Capahosic, Virginia, Ferdinand
Douglass Bluford was the third president of A&T
serving longer than any president or chancellor. Completing elementary school
in 1900, Bluford attended high school at Wayland Academy in Richmond, Virginia and college at Virginia Union University also in Richmond. He was ranked as one of the three best students in
his class at Virginia Union graduating from there in 1908. At Howard University in Washington, DC, Bluford received the Bachelor of Pedagogy degree in 1909.
Prior to coming to A&T, he taught at A&M College in Normal, Kentucky,
Kentucky State College in Frankfort, Kentucky and at Saint Paul Normal and
Industrial School in Lawrenceville, Virginia. At A&T, Bluford
was a professor of English for six years, an acting dean, a full dean and vice
president. He was appointed acting president after the death of Dr. Dudley in 1925 and
was chosen unanimously by members of the Board of Trustees as president on June
13, 1925.
With Bluford’s guidance, A & T was raised from a
"D" class college in 1927 to an "A" class institution in
1932 by the North Carolina Department of Education and by other leading
educational agencies. By 1955, the campus had grown to one hundred and ten
acres, the farm land reached a total of six hundred and seventy two acres and
the property value of the thirty five campus buildings was twelve million
dollars. The Graduate School and the
Schools of Agriculture, Education, General Studies, Engineering, Nursing, were
established as well as the Technical Institute.
Dr. Bluford was seventy three years old when he died
on December 21, 1955. His body lay in state in Bluford
Library, the new building that was erected in 1955 and named for him. The next
morning the Greensboro Daily News
carried a front page column detailing Bluford’s
contributions to A&T, Greensboro, North
Carolina and the country.
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