Spelman College

Spelman College is a historically Black women's college in Atlanta, Georgia, that is now part of the Atlanta University Center Consortium. Over the years, Spelman has played a key role in training African American women for leadership and preparing them for graduate study. Spelman currently has about 2,100 students from forty-one states and fifteen foreign countries. With a ranking of 75, it was the only historically Black institution included in U.S. News & World Report's 2008 listing of the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the United States. The college also has the highest graduation rate among historically Black institutions, and at 77 percent, its record surpasses the graduation rate for Black students at a number of high-ranking public and private institutions.

Spelman was established following the Civil War to educate emancipated slaves. Two New England women, Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles, founded Spelman in 1881 not only to teach women and girls to read, write, and do simple arithmetic, but also to prepare them to serve as teachers, missionaries, and church workers. Practical skills were also stressed as part of preparing students to be good homemakers and mothers.

In 1882, after hearing a presentation by Packard and Giles at Wilson Avenue Church in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the church members, John D. Rockefeller, became a lifelong contributor both to the school and to African American education in general. With additional support from the American Baptist Home Mission Society and its women's auxiliary, nine acres of land and five buildings—former Union Army barracks—were purchased. The financial support of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., together with other gifts ranging from $1 to $1,000, made it possible to complete payment of the mortgage.

The school moved to its new location in February 1883, and Packard and Giles fought a proposal to merge the female seminary with the Atlanta Baptist Seminary, a school for males. Packard and Giles believed that their female students would be better served by keeping the schools separate. To do so, they had to raise enough money to support separate schools, and they received money from Baptists in the North and African American Baptists in Georgia. The Rockefellers donated the remaining amount needed, and in 1884, the school's name was changed to Spelman Seminary in honor of Laura Spelman Rockefeller and her parents.

The curriculum expanded to include college preparatory classes equivalent to high school. A nurse training department opened in 1886, followed in 1891 by a missionary training department. A new building was dedicated in 1918 to house the expanded home economics program. Spelman Seminary established the College Department in 1897, although most of the college work was at nearby Morehouse College.

One of the most significant events in Spelman's history occurred in 1924, when it changed from a seminary to a full-fledged college intended to provide a liberal arts education to its students. Under the leadership of Florence Matilda Read, who served as president from 1927 to 1953, the curriculum was expanded, with college courses established in the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.

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