[1] Lyman Brooks was born on May 27, 1910, to John Robert Brooks, a former slave and Union Navy veteran, who made a living as a farmer, waterman, and private music teacher, and Mary Anna Burrell, a school teacher and graduate of Hartshorne Memorial College, now Virginia Union University.
During his thirty-seven year career as the director, provost and president of the college from 1938 to 1975, he helped build the school from a three-classroom junior college with five teachers to an eighteen building campus with a faculty and staff of 375 and 6,300 students.
Under Dr. Brook's leadership a faculty committee and student government developed regulations for university fraternities and sororities.
[4] In September 1955, the school was relocated to a 55-acre campus on Corprew Avenue, formerly the Memorial Park Golf Course.
In 2012 the new Lyman Beecher Brooks Library, a LEED silver certified building was completed and rededicated in his honor.