By Dannie Gore Sr.

W.H. Council was born in Fayetteville, NC, in 1848. When he’s was nine years old, he was carried by slave traders to Alabama, where he worked in the cotton fields until set free as a result of the Civil War.

He attended one of the first schools opened by Northern teachers at Stevenson, AL, in 1865. 

In 1875, he founded Alabama A&M University to educate other former slaves like himself. He was also the founder, and editor of the Huntsville Herald from 1877 to 1884.