Huntingdon borough

Native American Civil Rights

Did you know? The man who helped bring the first national Native American rights organization into being spent the last fourteen years of his career teaching in Huntingdon. His story is more complicated than a post like this usually allows, so here is the whole of it.

Fayette Avery McKenzie was the first American sociologist to specialize in Indian affairs. He taught at the boarding school on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. In April of 1911 he sent invitations, and six American Indian intellectuals came to a meeting at Ohio State University. Dr. Charles Eastman, Santee Dakota. Dr. Carlos Montezuma, Yavapai Apache. Thomas L. Sloan, Omaha. Charles Edwin Dagenett, Peoria. Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Oneida. Henry Standing Bear, Oglala Lakota. What came out of that meeting became the Society of American Indians, the first national rights organization run by Native people themselves. McKenzie pushed for it to be Native run, played down his own title, and worked in the background.

From 1915 to 1925 he was president of Fisk University. He won Fisk its academic recognition and raised a million dollar endowment. He was also forced out. He closed the student newspaper, abolished the student council and banned most extracurricular activities, and students who broke those rules were expelled. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in The Crisis that no decent Negro should send a child to Fisk until McKenzie was gone. The students protested in 1924 and 1925 and he resigned. There is a scholarly literature on that strike.

He came to Juniata College in 1927, taught sociology, served two years as dean of men, opened the Altoona Center in 1928, and retired in 1941.

Both of those things are true about the same man, and leaving either one out makes him into somebody he was not.

What the fact check changed. SUPERSEDES the batch 005 verdict on this post, with 8 quoted sources against 4. Batch 005 was right about what it caught and blind to something bigger. WHAT BATCH 005 GOT RIGHT AND STILL STANDS: the queued post's opening, 'A Juniata College teacher founded a Native American rights organization', is wrong. Six American Indian intellectuals founded it at a meeting McKenzie convened, and he deliberately kept himself out of the credit. WHAT BATCH 005 MISSED, AND SO DID THE QUEUED POST AND SO DID MY OWN REWRITE: it presented 'ten years as president of Fisk University' as a clean credential in a post framing McKenzie as a rights pioneer. He was FORCED OUT of Fisk. He closed the student newspaper, abolished the student council, banned most extracurricular activities, and students who broke those rules were expelled and labelled Bolshevists. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in The Crisis, 'Men and women of Black America: Let no decent Negro send his child to Fisk until Fayette McKenzie goes.' Students protested in 1924 and 1925 and he resigned in 1926. TWO INDEPENDENT ARTICLES AGREE, which matters because this is a serious claim about a real person. The Fisk University article, which is separate from the McKenzie article and notably more balanced, says he was 'eventually forced to resign when his strict policies on dress code, extracurricular activities, and other aspects of student life led to student protests in 1924 and 1925.' The same article's bibliography carries a Journal of Southern History paper devoted to the strike (Lamon, 49#2, pp. 225-44), so this is documented scholarship, not an internet grievance. AND THE OTHER SIDE IS ALSO SOURCED, so the post carries it: the Fisk article credits him with developing Fisk into the premier all-Black college in the United States, winning its academic recognition from the Carnegie Foundation, Columbia and Chicago, and raising a million dollar endowment. He was also genuinely the first American sociologist to specialize in Indian affairs and he taught at Wind River. He is a complicated man, not a villain and not a hero, and the rewrite says so in as many words. NOTHING HERE IS A FALSE-STATEMENT FINDING. This is an OMISSION finding, and for an elected official omission is the expensive kind: a reader who knows Fisk history closes that gap in the comments, and the correction is more visible than the post. LIVE POST NOTE, IMPORTANT: the version that actually went out on 2026-08-01 at 18:55 is NOT the queued text. It is a better, separately written version that already says 'helped found', 'helped bring together', 'run by Native people themselves', and even 'He was not from Huntingdon County. He came to it.' Its Juniata chronology is correct: he returned in 1927 and retired in 1941. Its only problem is the Fisk omission. STILL A LEAD: the Du Bois quote reaches me through the McKenzie article citing the Pennsylvania Gazette, Nov/Dec 2023. The quote is famous enough that it should be findable in the original.

Sources

Checked 2026-08-01 · County history, independently fact checked

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