Hendrix College
Arkansas
1876
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned Hendrix College a hood lining that was orange with two black chevrons no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. Identical descriptions appeared in 1948 and 1972 IBAC lists. But a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as orange with a single black chevron.
None of these hood lining descriptions specifically cited the slightly burnt shade of orange used by Hendrix, but this was apparently what was intended by the IBAC, as there were only two institutions officially assigned “burnt orange” and black: Occidental College (burnt orange with a black chevron) and Kalamazoo College (burnt orange with three black chevrons). Hendrix would have been the most likely candidate to fill the two-chevron position between them. Both of the college’s black chevrons would have been about 1½ inches in width placed approximately two inches apart so that the dark orange color of the hood lining showed between them.
In the 1890s one of the professors and one of the coaches at Hendrix College had graduated from Vanderbilt, which had old gold and black school colors. So the professor and coach persuaded the students at Hendrix to adopt school colors that were similar but not identical to the colors of Vanderbilt. Because old gold is an orangish-brownish shade of gold, Hendrix students voted to adopt orange and black as their school colors. Judging from collegiate memorabilia from the early 20th century, the shade of orange used by Hendrix was a slightly dark, somewhat burnt orange that occupied a place in the spectrum between a medium orange and a “true” burnt or dark orange.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/black (1917-1935)
