MOREHOUSE COLLEGE

Morehouse College is one of ten historically Black colleges and universities in Georgia. Located a few miles from downtown Atlanta in the historic West End district, Morehouse is one of only five all-male colleges in the United States and the only one for African Americans.

A private, historically-black college for men, Morehouse College opened in 1867 to train former slaves to be Protestant ministers and educators. Today, Morehouse is one of five colleges in the Atlanta University Center, a complex that has included Morehouse’s sister school, , as well as Spelman College Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, and the Interdonimational Theology Center. The affiliated Morehouse College  opened in 1975.

Although currently located in Georgia's capital city, Morehouse originated as the Augusta Institute in Augusta, Georgia, just two years after the Civil War.  The Augusta Institute relocated to Atlanta in 1879 and became known as Atlanta Baptist Seminary.  Students initially attended classes in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church.  When John D. Rockefeller donated land near Spelman for the men’s college in the 1880s, the school moved to its present location in southwest Atlanta.

In 1913, while under the leadership of the college’s first African American president, , John Hope the school’s name changed to Morehouse College. The new designation honored Dr. Henry Lyman Morehouse, the white, northern-born minister and prominent member of the American Baptist Home Mission Society of  New York who donated funds to the college.  Since the school opened its door during the Reconstruction era, Morehouse has continued to benefit from the donations of philanthropists and alumni.