September 14 …
American Baptist College — a historically Black College with a liberal arts emphasis — was founded for the training of Christian workers under the name of the American Baptist Theological Seminary on September 14, 1924.
A seminary for Black Baptist ministers was the culmination of conversations between National (Black) Baptist leaders and O.L. Hailey, Chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention, as early as 1913 about the need for advanced training of Black ministers. That year a resolution presented by Edgar Young Mullins and adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention, pledged the Convention’s cooperation in pursuing that end.
Committees of the two conventions held joint meetings, and the following year recommended to their respective bodies that a college be established, initially in Memphis, TN, deciding later to move it to Nashville. Because of conditions resulting from World War, I and a division in the National Baptist Convention, the founding and opening of the seminary was delayed until 1924.
The seminary was to be managed by a holding board and a governing board representative of the two conventions. The seminary opened October 1, 1924, with an enrollment of 28 men and 2 women. The first faculty consisted of William T. Amiger, James Henry Garnett, and O.L. Hailey. Sutton E. Griggs was elected the first president.
The College’s mission is to educate, graduate, and prepare diverse students for Christian leadership, service, and social justice in the world. Over the years the school evolved into a spiritual and social incubator for students dedicated to making positive change.
The College has educated Civil Rights champions, national leaders and Christian ministers. The school’s history during the 1960s and 1970s was filled with the activities of civil rights activists, political leaders and Christian advocates for justice.
Under the tutelage of then-professors J.F. Grimmett, Kelly Miller Smith, and C.T. Vivian, many students held sit ins at local lunch counters to protest racial segregation. The campus itself was a popular command post for organizing and training students for city-wide social justice causes. A number of American Baptist students of that period became major names in civil rights history and American politics, notably John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, and Julius Scruggs.
In 1971, the school became accredited and its current name became official. By the 1990s the long-standing joint educational partnership between the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention, was coming to an end. The Southern Baptist Convention relinquished any ownership and authority over the American Baptist Seminary, dissolving its oversight commission by Convention action in 1996.
American Baptist College continues to serve as the primary theological training center for the National Baptist Convention, USA Inc.
Sources:
- American Baptist College Website
- “The Southern Baptist Commission on The American Baptist Seminary Records – AR 630” (PDF). Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 25, 2004. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
- Wikipedia contributors, “American Baptist College,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, (accessed February 21, 2026).
