Converse College
South Carolina
1889
In 1889, students at Converse College replaced the school colors of royal purple and deep cream with royal purple and old gold. The intended symbolism of the colors did not change: purple symbolized royalty whereas cream and old gold symbolized purity.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): royal purple/gold (1923-1931); purple/gold (1934-1935)
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) originally (c.1895) assigned an old gold hood lining with a royal purple chevron to the Municipal University of Omaha (today part of the University of Nebraska system), but between 1912 and 1927 Omaha changed its school colors to maroon and black and was reassigned a hood lining with those colors. At that point the IBAC assigned Omaha’s former hood (old gold with a royal purple chevron) to Converse College.
However, the Bureau often abbreviated “royal purple” as “purple” in the lists it published in 1927, 1948, and 1972, so in those records Converse was cited as having a hood lined old gold with a purple (not royal purple) chevron. Even more generically, lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) described the college’s hood lining as gold with a purple chevron. Here the original IBAC hood lining with the correct shades of Converse College’s colors has been restored.
