Claver College

Claver College was founded in 1933 by Sr Joseph O'Connor, a Benedictine religious sister from St. Joseph's Monastery in Tulsa, to serve the African American population of Guthrie, Oklahoma.^[1][2] The college was supported with funding from Katharine Drexel (who had founded Xavier University of Louisiana, the nation's only Catholic HBCU, in 1925).^[3] The college was named after Peter Claver, a Jesuit missionary and the patron saint of African-American ministry.^[4]

The college, a night school, operated out of a building that also hosted a grocery store.^[5] It ceased operations in 1944, and its former place of operation, the floodplain neighborhood of "Little Africa", was later destroyed. It has since experienced sustained restoration efforts.^[6]