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Charles Henry Parrish Sr.




Charles H. Parrish Sr.

Parrish - A Legacy to Cherish

Charles Henry Parrish Sr. (April 18, 1859 – May 8, 1931) was a minister and educator in Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky. He was the pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Louisville from 1886 until his death in 1931. He was a professor and officer at Simmons College and then served as the president of the Eckstein Institute from 1890 to 1912 and then of Simmons College from 1918 to 1931. His wife, Mary Virginia Cook Parrish, and son, Charles H. Parrish Jr., were noted educators.


Parrish was involved in political and civil rights activity, being a delegate to Republican state conventions, colored educational conventions, and the 1886 National Convention of Colored Men in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as religious activity as a delegate at the August 1886 American National Baptist Convention and the May 1887 Southern Baptist Convention. He was briefly a replacement pastor at Zion Baptist Church in Louisville and on January 2, 1886, was ordained. September 27, 1886, he became pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Louisville. Parrish Sr. served at Cavalry until his death in 1931.


In 1890, William J. Simmons, president of State University, resigned to create the Eckstein Institute in Cane Springs, Kentucky, and Parrish moved to Eckstein with Simmons and served as president from Simmons' sudden death that year (1890) until 1912. In 1908 he established the Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children in Louisville. He was secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Lincoln Institute from 1909 to 1919.[3] In 1912, the Eckstein Institute was merged with the Lincoln Institute, and Parrish remained involved in the schools. In 1918, the Eckstein Institute fully dissolved and Parrish returned to Simmons College of Kentucky to become president,[4] serving from 1918 to 1931. After Parrish's death, Simmons College of Kentucky was faced with financial trouble and sold to the University of Louisville.[4] Parrish and his wife, Mary Virginia Cook Parrish, were central figures in African American Kentucky society

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