Knoxville College, an HBCU located in Tennessee, has been struggling to gain accreditation recently. But the university has a new problem on its hands as a vacant building on its historic campus was engulfed in flames.
Monday night the Knoxville Fire Department responded to a call about a fire on the campus. The building was Elnathan Hall, once the administration building for the HBCU.
“It‘s a sad day for the Knoxville community,” Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon told WVLT. “Knoxville College was established not long after the Civil War to educate formerly enslaved people, and it did that job and did it well for 100-plus years. In recent years, it‘s been a harder thing. It‘s going to be sad to lose this building, and we’ll continue to work with the private board that owns this property and manages the school.
“This is not city property. We have had to go in to address fire situations many times in recent years, and it can be very dangerous,” Kincannon continued.
Ironically this isn’t the first time this building has been decimated by fire. Back in 1896, Elnathan Hall burned to the ground as a four-story dormitory before being rebuilt two years later.
Enrollment problems at the HBCU date back to the 1970s. It lost its state accreditation and dropped to just 11 students back in 2015, causing a brief suspension in enrollment. The state of Tennessee eventually allowed the school to re-open, offering online classes only.
There is a $10,000 fee with the accreditation application. The HBCU is $1.8 million in debt, according to its most recently filed Form 990 (an Internal Revenue Service form for tax-exempt organizations). The college also owes the city of Knoxville more than $28,000 in property tax, according to the city’s property tax database.
The accreditation application was previously promised the last two years, but never completed, according to the report.