Morehouse College

History

In 1867, a Baptist minister and cabinetmaker established the Augusta Institute in the basement of Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, the oldest independent African American church in the United States. At that time, the school’s primary purpose was to prepare Black men for Christian ministry and teaching.

In 1879, the Institute moved to the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, changing its name to the Atlanta Baptist Seminary. In the early 1900s, it was named Morehouse College in honor of Henry L. Morehouse, the corresponding secretary of the Atlanta Baptist Home Mission Society.

Morehouse College is the nation’s only private, Historically Black, four-year liberal arts college for men.

Academic Merit

The student-faculty ratio at Morehouse College is 13:1 and 61% are males. The school has 45% of classes with fewer than 20 students, which is a popular statistic among students, which have an average freshman retention rate of 80%.

The most popular majors include Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services; Biological and Biomedical Sciences; Political Science and Government. In total, Morehouse offers 32 majors in:

Business Administration
Economics
Art
Art History
Cinema, Television, and Emerging Media Studies
Dance Performance and Choreography
Theatre and Performance
Music
Software Engineering
Africana Studies
English
History
Philosophy
Religion
Biology
Chemistry
Kinesiology, Sports Studies, and Physical Education
Psychology
Applied Physics (Dual-degree engineering)
Computer Science
General Science (Dual-degree engineering)
Mathematics
Physics
Chinese Studies
Communication Studies
French
International Studies
Political Science
Sociology
Spanish
Urban Studies
Education

Campus Life

Morehouse is situated on 61 acres in Atlanta’s West End community about three miles southwest of downtown Atlanta. The campus encompasses a Civil War historic site at which Confederate soldiers staged a determined resistance to Union forces during the famous siege of Atlanta.

Recently establishing a new Center for International Studies that has been named for former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, there is also a new Leadership Development Center, and a magnificent obelisk is dedicated to alumni and teacher Howard Thurman.

Morehouse enrolls approximately 3,000 students representing more than 40 states and 18 foreign countries, and graduates about 500 each year, conferring Bachelor’s Degrees on more Black men than any other college or university in the United States.

Prominent alumni include Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, Julian Bond, Howard Thurman, Shaun King, Eddie Glaude, Nathaniel Bronner, Olympic gold medallist Edwin Moses, Sean Combs, Academy Award-winning Spike Lee and Samuel L. Jackson, among a long list of notables.

In 2019, Billionaire Robert F. Smith eliminated $34 million of student loan debt for the Morehouse College graduating class that year. This was a happy surprise since Smith is a Cornell University and Columbia University alum. At Cornell, Smith became a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

ADDRESS: 830 Westview Drive SW, Atlanta, GA MAP
PHONE: 404-681-2800
WEBSITE: https://www.morehouse.edu

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