Guy Snavely
Guy Everett Snavely (born October 26, 1881 in Antietem, Maryland; died March 12, 1974 in Birmingham) was president of Birmingham-Southern College from 1921 to 1937 and from 1955 to 1957 and later served as Chancellor of the college and as executive director of the Association of American Colleges and Universities from 1937 to 1955.
Snavely, the son of Charles and Emma Rohrer Snavely, earned his bachelor's degree in education as Johns Hopkins University in 1901. He married the former Ada Rittenhouse on September 27, 1905 in Kingsville, Maryland and continued to study at Johns Hopkins, completed a Ph.D. in 1908. He served as registrar and as a professor of Romance languages at Allegheny College from 1909 to 1919 and as dean and professor at Converse College in South Carolina until he was appointed to succeed Cullen Daniel as the second president of Birmingham-Southern College in 1921.
Snavely was inaugurated on his fortieth birthday at a 2:30 PM ceremony at First Methodist Church downtown. President Warren Harding, visiting Birmingham for its semicentennial was in attendance, along with Harvard president Henry U. Sims.
in 1933 Snavely dismissed sociology professor Kenneth Barnhart, partly because of his liberal writings about prostitution, slum housing and criminal justice. The decision to dismiss him was announced shortly after he appeared at a Birmingham rally for the Scottsboro boys.
As director of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Snavely led the lobbying effort to raise the draft age to 21 in the Burke-Wadsworth Act. He was asked to head the scholarship program for the Miss America contest.
Ada Snavely, the mother of three children, died in 1949. He remarried Louise Hutcheson in Birmingham in 1950, and later married Madelyn Hale in 1964.
Snavely died in 1974 and is buried at Fork United Methodist Church Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.
| Preceded by: Cullen Daniel |
President of Birmingham-Southern College 1921 - 1937 |
Succeeded by: Raymond Paty |
| Preceded by: George Stuart |
President of Birmingham-Southern College 1955 - 1957 |
Succeeded by: Henry Stanford |
Publications
- Snavely, Guy E. (1908) The Aesopic Fables in the Mireoir Historical of Jehan de Vignay. Baltimore, Maryland: J. H. Furst
- Snavely, Guy E. (1941) Choose and Use Your College. New York, New York: Harper
- Snavely, Guy E. (1945) History of the Southern College Association. Southern College Association
- Snavely, Guy E. (1955) The Church and the Four-Year College. New York, New York: Harper
- Snavely, Guy E. (1964) A Search for Excellence; Memoirs of a College Administrator. New York, New York: Vantage Press