Today in Black History: February 18 1867 the Augusta Theological Institute was founded which will later become Morehouse

Founded in 1867 in the basement of Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga., by the Rev. William Jefferson White, with the encouragement of former slave the Rev. Richard C. Coulter and the Rev. Edmund Turney of the National Theological Institute, Morehouse College has had a 150-year legacy of producing educated men and global leaders.

Starting as Augusta Institute under the first president, Dr. Joseph T. Robert, the institution was created to educate black men for careers in ministry and teaching. At the urging of the Rev. Frank Quarles, the school moved to Atlanta’s Friendship Baptist Church in 1879 and changed its name to Atlanta Baptist Seminary.

The seminary moved to downtown Atlanta, and then, in 1885, to a former Civil War battleground site in Atlanta’s West End under President Dr. Samuel T. Graves. By 1897, the institution had become Atlanta Baptist College.

Dr. George Sale was named president in 1890, and Atlanta Baptist College expanded its curriculum and established a tradition of educating leaders for all American life.

During the tenure of the College’s first African American president, John Hope, the College was renamed Morehouse College in 1913, in honor of Henry L. Morehouse, corresponding secretary of the National Baptist Home Missionary Society.