学院是年轻人的上进之路. Here he can acquire his first capital, get his foot on the first round. 没有资本比它更有价值、更安全、更容易获得. Everybody helps the earnest student, for some day he may help the world. 战斗就是要有信念 开始吧.” – 伯洛伊特学院的一些特点 ——1890年代的小册子

劳伦斯·奥斯利当然有“开创事业的信念”.” One of Beloit’s earliest African-American students entered Beloit Academy in the fall of 1890, where he studied and worked for three years in the Scientific Division, 毕业前离开. But the “way out and up” proved to be a struggle and he had to quell whatever ambitions he harbored about attending college and pursuing a career.

他的父母都出生在南北战争之前的南方. His mother, Mary Ann Connor, came to Beloit in the early 1870’s where she married William Ousley. 他们搬到了芝加哥, 在北达科他州住过一段时间, 威廉死后, 玛丽·安带来了她的孩子们, 小威廉., Laurence, and Grace, back to Beloit where she worked as a laundress. 他们住在教堂街731号学院附近, 这附近唯一的非裔美国人家庭, more than thirty years before industrial needs brought a great migration of African-Americans to Beloit and other Midwestern cities. 决心教育她的孩子, 玛丽·安给了他们一切她能提供的机会, 尽管选择有限.

After Laurence left Beloit Academy in 1893, he worked as a laborer at the Fairbanks-Morse factory. In 1900, his sister Grace became the first African-American to graduate from Beloit High School. 劳伦斯帮助她在伯洛伊特学院度过了四年, 1904年，她成为该校第一位非洲裔女毕业生, 就在学院接受男女同校的九年后. She taught at an orphan school in Harvey, Illinois, but returned home after she became ill. 她于1908年去世，年仅26岁. Beloit Academy principal and Church Street neighbor, Almon Burr, conducted the funeral services. 讣告在 圆桌 揭示了, “Since her graduation her one ambition had been to share her knowledge with the less fortunate members of her race.”

In 1905, Laurence replaced his brother William as janitor at the Beloit Public 图书馆, 他一直担任这个职位，直到38年后去世. 的 贝洛伊特每日新闻 纪念他服役25年, noting that over the years “he has seen it grow from a few book stacks and some 500 volumes or more, 到一个拥有超过12个藏书的现代化图书馆,000本书.劳伦斯显然很好地利用了他接触这些藏品的机会, 根据一份未出版的回忆录，外交官罗伯特C. 斯特朗，1931届毕业生，未来的驻伊拉克大使. “公共图书馆的看门人是劳伦斯·奥斯利[原文如此],他写道, 他是20世纪初十大菠菜台子的毕业生. 他住在离我们一条街的地方, the only black household in the city not situated along the railroad tracks. For a good many years in the wintertime he tended our coke-burning furnace early morning and mid-evening, and did many maintenance jobs for us…I had many conversations with Lawrence, who was able to converse intelligently on any subject in which I was interested. He told me that despite his college education he had never been able to find a better job, 他读了图书馆里所有的书. 这让我第一次了解了种族主义, 人们有多不公平, 从那以后一直困扰着我……”

的 贝洛伊特每日新闻 described Laurence as “a representative of a group of respected colored citizens…who earlier made a place for themselves in the community.“他参与了伯特利A.M.E. 他是“芝加哥黑人兄弟会”的成员. A 1920 clipping in his sadly too-sparse archives file mentions that he served as chairman at a Harding-Coolidge rally, where a speaker “urged his hearers to support the straight Republican ticket…for the reason…that this party has shown itself friendly to the negro’s cause.”

劳伦斯·奥斯利于1943年6月24日去世. A few days later 十大菠菜台子 received word that he’d left it the family home at 731 Church and his entire estate of $10,000, “the sum ‘to be used to assist needy colored students therein…’” 的 June 30^th 的版本 贝洛伊特每日新闻 刊登了一篇关于劳伦斯·奥斯利的社论, which served as both troubling commentary and moving tribute: “We can learn something from Lawrence (sic) Ousley. 这个温和的有色人种, who lived unassumingly and spent his life at work many people would think humble and unimportant, had a vision and a generosity far beyond the farsightedness of most of us…Whatever needed doing Lawrence Ousley did, 悄悄地，不引人注目. 随着年龄的增长，他一直在为社区服务, 他有很多没人知道的大想法.