John Rice
Cropped portrait of John Andrew Rice. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives.
Blue Ridge campus scene at Black Mountain College. John Rice is on the left with a pipe and student David Bailey is on the right wearing a hat. Rice taught Classics at BMC from 1933-1939 and was also the first Rector of Black Mountain College.
FOCUS
English/ Writing
ROLE
Faculty, Admin
ATTENDANCE
1933 - 1939
BIRTH
1888-02-01
Lynchburg, VA
DEATH
1968-11-14
Landham, MA
John Andrew Rice was an educator and founder of Black Mountain College. He was born and raised in South Carolina; his father was a Methodist minister and college educator, and his mother was sister to U.S. Senator, Ellison Durant “Cotton Ed” Smith. Rice attended the Webb School in Tennessee, a college preparatory boarding school, and Tulane University in New Orleans, where he graduated with a bachelors in classics in just three years. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1911, attended Oxford University until 1914, and was a doctoral student in classics from the University of Chicago from 1916 to 1917.
He was a professor of classics at the University of Nebraska throughout the 1920s and in 1928-1929 he taught classics at the New Jersey College for Women. He became an authority on the writings of Jonathan Swift after studying in England with a Guggenheim fellowship the following year.
In 1930, Rice began teaching classics at Rollins College under college president, Hamilton Holt. Rollins was known for its progressive education and Rice was known for his liberal ideals of education. While at Rollins, Rice was the subject of a highly publicized investigation by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
A disagreement over policies and procedures at the college led to Rice being asked to resign, and several faculty and students left the college along with him to create an “ideal college.” While at Black Mountain, Rice served as rector and taught classics. In 1939, his faculty peers charged him with self-aggrandizement and self-indulgence, and he was asked to resign.
After moving back to South Carolina, Rice became a full-time writer, contributing short stories to Colliers and the New Yorker. 1941, he published an autobiography titled I Came Out of the Eighteenth Century.
Biography written by Amanda Hartman. Sources: I Came Out of the Eighteenth Century by Rice, John A. Rice Jr. Papers at App State Ritter, Jennifer M. (2011) "Beyond Progressive Education: Why John Andrew Rice Really Opened Black Mountain College," Rollins Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 5 Issue 2 Article 2.
Relationships
Wife: Nell Rice
Child: Frank Rice
Child: Mary Rice
