Our Founder: Dr. Mansfield Tyler (1826-1904)

Dr. Mansfield Tyler was the most effective and creative Black leader in

Lowndes County, before and after the Civil War. He excelled in the spheres of religion, politics, and education. Determined to establish a school after the Civil War, he founded the Lowndesboro School in 1867 for Black children and adults who were yearning for education and new opportunities.

Mansfield Tyler was born enslaved in 1826 and was the property of Reverend Jacob White who lived about twelve miles from Augusta GA. Tyler was allowed to live with a great aunt and her husband Jacob Walker, who was the pastor of the extant Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta which had more than 1000 African American parishioners. It is possible that this is where Tyler learned to read and write.

At age eighteen Tyler was taken to Alabama by his owner, and he later became a Baptist preacher. He married Phyllis, his first wife of twenty-six years, and census records show that the couple had six children: Mariah (1845), Millie (1848), Albert (1859), Felix (1862), Hannah (1865) and Robert (1868). Hannah apparently died in childhood, but the others graduated from Selma University, {which their father played a critical role in founding}. Felix practiced medicine in Lowndesboro and Robert was a pharmacist; both having graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Albert was a schoolteacher in Birmingham. Mansfield’s daughters both married and remained in Alabama. Tyler joined the Lowndesboro Baptist Church which had been interracial for some years but by 1867 its membership of 137 included only five white people and the African American membership wanted to become a separate church. Freedmen’s Bureau records document that a school for blacks was operating successfully with Dr. Jennings in 1867 in a building that had been built by Tyler and Daniel Alexander. The congregants selected Tyler and Alexander to represent the church at a convention in Montgomery on December 17, 1868, that organized the Alabama Colored Baptist State Convention (ACBSC). In 1869, Tyler founded another church in Lowndes County, First Baptist Church of White Hall. He remained diligent in pursuing new congregants, baptizing as many as 1,000 in Lowndesboro and 500 in White Hall during his ministry.

Tyler married his second wife, Amanda Moore, on March 6, 1870. Also, that year he was elected to serve as Lowndes County’s representative to the Alabama House of Representatives. During his two-year term, Tyler advocated for a strong public education system, land ownership for African American people, and universal suffrage, including women.

Tyler sought additional land and purchased property from a family named Meadows and in 1871 he built another church to continually serve as a school and church. In 1873, Tyler was elected vice-president of ACBSC and in 1876 was elected president. Under his leadership, the ACBSC resolved to establish a theological school to educate young African American men in Alabama, with Tyler as chair of the Board of Trustees. Though white Baptists opposed the plan, Tyler and the other trustees approved the purchase of land and secured the site of the Old Fair Grounds in Selma, Dallas County, with a donation from white Baptists in northern states. The Alabama Baptist Normal and Theological School was established in 1878. (Recognizing Tyler’s contributions to the school’s founding, the leadership established the Mansfield Tyler Medal in 1880, and Tyler was conferred a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1890. Tyler served as chair of the Board of Trustees from its inception until his death in 1904. The school’s name was officially changed to Selma University on May 14, 1908). In 1880, Tyler realized that the current membership exceeded the size of the existing Lowndesboro First Baptist Church’s building, so he built a new building in the same location which bears his name on its cornerstone. That building still stands today. 

In 1883, Tyler sold a portion of his property to the Lowndesboro Colored Education Association, an organization that had a ten-member board of trustees, which included Tyler. Together, they built the school for African American children, known as Lowndesboro School. The school is a one-story two room structure with a gabled roof and pine board-and-batten construction. Both the church and the school were added to the National Register of Historic Places as contributing structures to the Lowndesboro Historic District in 2014. The school, which closed in 1967, was listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 2011.

Dr. Mansfield Tyler was honored as one of the “Reconstruction Period Black Members of the Alabama Legislature 1868-1879” in a marker erected on the Alabama State Capitol lawn in 2011 and in 2018 was inducted into the Alabama Men’s Hall of Fame.

The school's longevity stands as a testament to the resilience of the Lowndesboro community and the enduring legacy of Dr. Mansfield Tyler.