Northern Illinois University
Illinois
1895
Formerly “Northern Illinois State Normal School”
A Northern Illinois State Normal School faculty committee chaired by Emma Stratford selected yellow and white as the school’s colors in 1899. Yellow was chosen because the college was originally built on a cornfield, and therefore the shade of yellow had a golden tint. But (golden) yellow and white were difficult to keep clean when used for football uniforms, so in December 1906 the Athletic Association decided to adopt cardinal and black colors as the school’s athletic colors. Yellow and white do not seem to have ever been officially replaced, but by the late 1940s they had not been used for many years, according to Our College Colors (1949) by Henry L. Snyder. Whether they are still considered the university’s academic colors is not known.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): light blue (1917-1918) – this color citation appears to be erroneous.
The history of Northern Illinois University’s academic hood lining is confusing. It was first described in a 1927 Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) hood lining list as “white above scarlet”, which was the way the IBAC indicated a hood lining with two colors that were horizontally divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Then, a 1948 IBAC list described the college’s hood as “white and scarlet” which was typically how the IBAC described a hood lining divided per pale (left and right).
But white and scarlet have never been the school colors of Northern Illinois, so these may have been erroneous listings for the school’s actual colors of white and yellow.
By the late 1940s or 1950s the college was using its athletic colors of cardinal and black in its hood. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the university’s hood lining as cardinal with a black chevron, which was also how it was described in an IBAC list from 1972. Unfortunately, this was identical to the hood lining already assigned to Wesleyan University (cardinal with a black chevron) in 1900.
So today it is difficult to know when the IBAC originally assigned a hood lining to Northern Illinois, and what it looked like. Without a doubt the IBAC assigned the college a hood lining before the middle of the 1920s. But were the colors golden yellow and white, scarlet and white, or cardinal and black? And were the colors arranged in a per chevron, per reversed chevron, per bar, or per pale pattern?
As a way of resolving these enigmas, here Northern Illinois has been assigned a hood lining that recreates what was probably the original Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume assignment: white above golden yellow, divided per chevron.