This dissertation used archival and historical methods to examine Fayette Avery McKenzie\u27s tenure as President at Fisk University from 1915-1925. Specifically, this project investigates the influence McKenzie\u27s work with Native Americans, industrial philanthropy, and American culture of the period played in McKenzie\u27s administration. The research seeks to provide a more complete narrative of McKenzie\u27s administration that is absent from current scholarship, and examine how McKenzie\u27s work at Fisk helped advance Black liberal arts higher education. Analysis of McKenzie\u27s personal papers and other primary and secondary sources provide a strong scholarly basis to examine his administration from multiple perspectives. Through an enhanced understanding of the forces that shaped McKenzie\u27s presidency, the research will contribute to existing scholarship on the history of higher education in the United States (and specifically histories of Black higher education and Fisk University), industrial philanthropy in Black higher education, and presidential leadership at Black colleges and universities in the Progressive Era