Johns Hopkins University
Maryland
1876
The official academic colors for Johns Hopkins were taken from the heraldic shield of the Lords Baltimore, which are black and old gold. Since old gold is an orange-gold shade, the athletic uniforms of Johns Hopkins in the late 19th century were often indistinguishable from the black and orange colors of Princeton, so dark blue and black began to be used for the athletic uniforms of Johns Hopkins at that time. The academic colors of the university have remained black and old gold.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): black/blue (1895); dark blue/black (1896); black/old gold (1897-1912); black/blue (1913); black/old gold (1914-1931); old gold/sable (1934-1935)
In 1895 Johns Hopkins University became one of the first institutions to adopt the new Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume, according to the 1896 edition of the Living Church Quarterly (published in December 1895).
A reporter covering commencement ceremonies at the University of Chicago for the Indianapolis News (9 July 1896) described the hood lining of a professor from Johns Hopkins as having the “oriole colors” of “gold and black, the gold being in the shape of a V chevron on a lining of black.”
The first definitive description of the hood assigned to Johns Hopkins was in an Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) list in the 27 July 1902 edition of The Argus, an Albany NY newspaper, which contained a list of IBAC hood lining patterns that had been assigned to some of the more prestigious colleges and universities of the time. Here Johns Hopkins was said to have a hood lined black with a gold chevron. All other contemporary sources like the World Almanac correctly described the school colors of Johns Hopkins to be black and old gold, so the IBAC assignment has been corrected here. (See the citation for Colorado College for a similar hood design that was also assigned the incorrect shade of gold.)
