Isaac Lane

[1] Isaac Lane was born March 4, 1834, in Madison County, Tennessee.

[2] At age nineteen Lane married Frances Ann Boyce, also a slave, but from Haywood County.

[3] In 1870 after freed slaves founded the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME), Lane quickly became a popular minister of the denomination, and in 1873, he was elected as a bishop by the 2nd General Conference of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, called together for the purpose of electing a bishop after the death of Bishop Richard Vanderhorst.

In preparation for petitioning for the school to gain college status, Lane selected a white Methodist pastor, Thomas F. Saunders, as the first president of the college to ease the process of peer recognition of the school.

The SS Lane Victory is still afloat in San Pedro, California as a museum ship.