Gregory W. Hayes
*Gregory W. Hayes was born on this date in 1865. He was a Black education administrator and activist.
Gregory Willis Hayes was born in Alameda County, Virginia, and graduated from Oberlin College. In 1891, he became the second president of the Virginia Seminary, which he led until he died. His wife, Mary Rice Hayes Allen, was the daughter of a Confederate general and a Black mother, as related by her daughter (of her second marriage) Carrie Allen McCray.
Hayes intervened to provide Ota Benga, a Mbuti pygmy formerly enslaved person exhibited at anthropological exhibitions, the opportunity to live with his family and study at the seminary. Gregory Hayes, a prominent leader in the Black Baptist community of Richmond, Virginia, died on December 2, 1906.
After his death, his wife succeeded him as the seminary's president. She remarried and moved to Montclair, New Jersey, with her second husband. The G. W. Hayes School of Arts and Sciences, a Virginia Seminary and College division, was named in 1988 to honor Hayes as its second president. The institution also celebrates an annual Hayes Day celebration, and a statue commemorates his life and leadership.
