Knox College is a private liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois. It was founded as Knox Manual Labor College in 1837 by Presbyterians and Congregationalists from New York and New England. The name was shortened to Knox College in 1857. Knox was one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans and women. Knox educated women in a separate Female Collegiate Division from 1850 to 1870, when the college became fully coeducational. Knox’s earliest known African American student was enrolled in 1856. In 1858, the college was the site of the fifth debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.
Knox College grants only bachelor’s degrees. Its sports teams are known as the Prairie Fire. Well-known Knox graduates include poet Eugene Field; publisher Samuel Sidney McClure; and Thomas Eugene Kurtz, who helped develop the BASIC computer programming language. Hiram R. Revels, the first African American senator, also studied at Knox.
The college’s website at https://www.knox.edu/ offers additional information.
