As the 2024 new year dawns, the celebration of a lifetime will occur for American Baptist College. President Forrest Harris announces a year of celebrating the College’s higher education, and social justice legacy of one hundred years. In October 2024, American Baptist Theological Seminary, established in 1924, now legally doing business as American Baptist College (ABC), will celebrate 100 years of existence.
The beginnings developed from a unique partnership between the (predominantly white) Southern Baptist Convention and the (predominantly black) National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The intent was to help aspiring Black church leaders and scholars become certified and ordained preachers, pastors, Christian educators, community leaders, and agents of the Christian social gospel. In Nashville’s Athens of the South culture, ABC became the social justice incubator for students, graduating more Civil Rights champions and movement leaders than anyone imagined. Students from the U.S., Caribbean, and beyond, and Veterans came to the “Holy Hill” to learn at the feet of Biblical scholars who came hungry to learn.
In the sixties, American Baptist was pivotal, a mecca for preparing students for justice movements in lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides, and the Civil Rights movement. American Baptist College was the quiet think tank setting for strategy sessions training students that included Bernard Lafayette, C. T. Vivian, John Lewis, Julius Scruggs, James Bevel, and others to be at the forefront of the fight for racial justice.
Three decades after the sixties Movement, the Southern Baptist Convention ended its ABC partnership. This left the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. (NBC) as the College’s sole denominational affiliation. The College survived challenges and triumphs, notwithstanding the realities of building disrepair and deferred maintenance. ABC successfully opened the John Lewis-Julius Scruggs Leadership Development Center; completed a $3 million renovation of the oldest campus building, Griggs Hall; and renovated the Susie McClure Library.
Today, ABC continues to nurture leaders as change agents. By leveraging its historical, social, and civic assets, ABC’s academic mission undergirds the principles of social justice, equity, advocacy, and leadership. At the associate and bachelor’s degree levels, the College forms a symbiosis between liberal arts education and social justice, behavioral studies, and entrepreneurial leadership.
In March 2013, ABC received the designation as a Historically Black College. This status allows ABC to compete for numerous grants and contracts. Federal grant awards total millions to date, plus the College received private foundation awards, including a multi-year grant from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment to create an innovation hub for design-thinking centered on vocational meaning and purpose. In early 2022, ABC also received the largest single grant in the history of the institution, a $3 million award from the Department of Commerce for the NTIA Connecting Minority Communities Initiative.
American Baptist College is a Nashville treasure! Its mission warrants resources to not only archive its history but also to preserve its educational future. I am proud as president of American Baptist College for 25 years, it has been a torchbearer for higher education, and because of its existence for one hundred years, it is a bright flame where legacy meets the future that we celebrate in 2024.
Dr. Forrest E. Harris, Sr. is the president of American Baptist College.
