It’s the start of another year on the Bates College campus, and a good time to look at the local influence of that institution over more than 150 years.

I think it’s safe to say that few, if any, of the new members of the Class of 2012 know what great people went before them in classes at Hathorn Hall and the other historic buildings around the quad. I’m confident that most people of Lewiston and Auburn also would be surprised to learn about the world-wide impact of Bates alumni.

Bates College was founded on abolitionist principles in 1855, and has always accepted students of color.

Henry Wilkins Chandler was the first African American student to graduate. While Chandler was born free, six of the first nine African American students at Bates were former slaves.

The Bates College Web site states that most had been recruited by Bates founder Oren Cheney from refugee camps around Washington, D.C., during and after the Civil War.

Chandler was born in 1852 in Bath, and he excelled in the public schools. After graduating from Bates in 1874, Chandler studied law at Howard University and it’s reported that he then moved to Florida with “only two dollars and one half in his pocket.” There, he became a teacher, lawyer and politician.

Benjamin Elijah Mays is the name of another important African American whose Bates connections and later life had major impact. He was born in South Carolina in 1894 to former slaves.

Mays, Bates Class of 1920, was an adviser to U.S. presidents. He served as the first African American president of the Atlanta Board of Education, and was the president of Morehouse College for 27 years.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a Morehouse graduate, said Mays was “my spiritual mentor and my intellectual father.” Mays gave the eulogy at King’s funeral.

In his book titled “Born To Rebel,” Mays wrote, “Bates College did not ’emancipate’ me; it did the far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself, to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man. Small wonder that I love Bates College!”

Bates College also was the first co-educational college in New England. It was Mary Wheelwright Mitchell of Dover-Foxcroft who was the first female graduate of Bates College.

She worked in Maine mills to pay her way through college and help her family, and the Bates history articles say she was remembered as stubborn and independent. When Bates founder Oren Cheney offered her a scholarship, Mitchell turned it down.

She said, “I cannot take that, Mr. Cheney. Give it to the brethren. I can take care of myself.”

The Bates Web site also reported that a female classmate of Mitchell said, “She did not seem to care for friends, but went her own decisive way, probably feeling little regard for young women who had not sufficient stamina to stand their ground against the objections of men unwilling to have women graduated in class with them.”

Mitchell became a professor at Vassar College and opened a school for young women in Boston.

Of all the names associated with Bates, the most recognizable is probably Edmund S. Muskie. He was a 1936 cum laude graduate of Bates. His political career went from election as Maine governor in 1954 to 21 years as U.S. senator, followed by service as President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state. He was also running mate to Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 Democratic presidential campaign, and he ran for president himself in 1972.

It’s his connections with our Androscoggin River that make Muskie a name forever linked with the area. He was born in Rumford in 1914, so he knew of the river’s troubled industrial legacy. As a senator, he authored landmark environmental legislation, including the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, that are regarded as two of the most important bills of the 20th century. That work earned him the “Mr. Clean” nickname.

There are many other significant graduates of Bates College whose lives were shaped here at that campus and in their exposure to the communities of Lewiston and Auburn. They include Civil War hero Homan S. Melcher (1862); prominent biologist and professor Herbert E. Walter (1892); Harvard preacher and theologian Peter J. Gomes (1965); television personalities Rick Powers (1967) and Bryant Gumbel (1970); and Rick Thompson (1981), corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Zune brand.

U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy also spent time at Bates as a participant in the Navy’s 1944-45 V-12 program.

As members of the new class of freshmen enter Bates College, it’s certain that our future will benefit from what they learn here and take with them into the world.