Morehouse College

Morehouse College is a private historically Black men's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. Anchored by its main campus of near Downtown Atlanta, the college has a variety of residential dorms and academic buildings east of Ashview Heights. Along with Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and the Morehouse School of Medicine, the college is a member of the Atlanta University Center consortium. Founded by William Jefferson White in 1867 in response to the liberation of enslaved African-Americans following the American Civil War, Morehouse adopted a seminary university model and stressed religious instruction in the Baptist tradition. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, the college experienced rapid, albeit financially unstable, institutional growth by establishing a liberal arts curriculum. The three-decade tenure of Benjamin Mays during the mid-20th century led to strengthened finances, an enrollment boom, and increased academic competitiveness. The college has played a key role in the development of the civil rights movement and racial equality in the United States. The largest men's liberal arts college in the United States, Morehouse has been home to 11 Fulbright Scholars, five Rhodes Scholars, and five Marshall Scholars, and is the alma mater of many celebrated African-Americans, including civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Julian Bond, World Series MVP Donn Clendenon, and entertainment icons Spike Lee and Samuel L. Jackson. Among Morehouse alumni, traditionally known as "Morehouse Men", the college has graduated numerous "African American firsts" in local, state and federal government, as well as in science, academia, business, and entertainment. History Establishment Just two years after the American Civil War, the Augusta Institute was founded by William Jefferson White, an Atlanta Baptist minister and cabinetmaker (William Jefferson White's half brother James E. Tate, was one of the founders of Atlanta University, now known as Clark Atlanta University ), with the support of the Rev. Richard C. Coulter, a former slave from Atlanta, Georgia, and the Rev. Edmund Turney, organizer of the National Theological Institute for educating freedmen in Washington, D.C. The institution was founded to educate African American men in theology and education and was located in Springfield Baptist Church (Augusta, Georgia), the oldest independent Black church in the United States.