Saturday, October 20, 1866

The Orphan Asylum is quite pleasantly situated about 9 miles from Helena. There are over fifty children here. John Harvey is here [and] has been teaching, but is now going to take charge of the farming. Mary Stuart had a chill day before yesterday and did not feel able to come out last evening. She and sister Lizzie stayed at Dr. Palmer’s until this afternoon when they came with Mr. Clark to this place. We here found Uncle Stephen of whom so much has been said.

–Mary Jane Edwards

By late October, the sisters were settled in Helena, Arkansas, teaching freedmen in schools within the city itself. But they were also providing instruction at the nearby Helena Orphan Asylum.

In 1864, Indiana Yearly Meeting had appointed Friends Alida and Calvin Clark to house and care for Black war refugees and orphans in Arkansas. Two years later, in 1866, with the monetary support of the Fifty-sixth US Colored Infantry Regiment, eighty acres northeast of Helena were bought and used to establish the school, voluntarily built by Black soldiers.

The Quaker-run academy became Southland College under the guidance of Indiana Yearly Meeting’s Missionary Board and graduated its first class of teachers and students in 1876.

Southland College was the first African-American college in the state and the first west of the Mississippi River.