The College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources has named their newly renovated plant studies lab after the first African American teacher at MU: Henry Kirklin.
Chris Campbell, the director of the Boone County Historical Society, hosted the ceremony and gave a quick history lesson about Kirklin’s legacy in Columbia.
Campbell talked about how Kirklin was born into slavery and worked in Joseph B Douglass’ greenhouse industry in Columbia once freed. It was only when he started working as a greenhouse supervisor at MU that the head of the horticulture department brought him in as an unofficial teacher.
While Kirklin taught the art of gardening and agriculture to students and other Black Missourians around the state, he never stepped into a MU building, as it was prohibited for Black people to teach inside college buildings. Now, a lab sits in the CAFNR building named after him.
The ceremony was held in the new lab on Feb. 23, with Kirklin’s decedents in virtual attendance. Members of MU administration were also in attendance such as Vice Chancellor and CAFNR Dean Christopher R. Daubert and Mun Choi, president of the UM System and chancellor of MU.
“Our hope is that through this special classroom, [Kirklin] will continue to inspire students for decades to come,” Daubert said.
Daubert said the new lab’s design is meant to provide a hands-on, experience-oriented learning environment to promote group work and problem-solving. The lab was also designed to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic by adding technology that makes virtual field trips possible.
“The overall design and technology of the new learning lab will allow our college to better prepare our students for the plant science workforce,” Daubert said.
During the ceremony, Daubert also shared that the CAFNR and the Boone County Historical Society donated money to create the Henry Kirklin Memorial Scholarship for underrepresented minority students.
CAFNR senior Maya Puller was the only student speaker at the ceremony. She shared what it meant to her — a Black, biracial student who has met very few Black students in plant sciences — that this lab was named after the first Black teacher at MU.
“[Kirklin] paved the way for people who look like me,” Puller said. “It is because of men and women like Mr. Kirklin — fighting for the rights to an education that was on par with that of their white counterparts — that is why I am able to walk the graduation stage.”
The ceremony for the Henry Kirklin Plant Sciences Learning Laboratory ended with Campbell unveiling two plaques: one with a picture of Kirklin and the other with a message to students about Kirklin’s accomplishments and legacy.
“I feel certain that he would be incredibly pleased by this lab and excited for the future students who will make a future for themselves by what they learn in this lab,” Campbell said.
Edited by _ Sophie Chappell | [email protected] _
