Founding of Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary (future Spelman College)

On April 11, 1881, the institution that would become Spelman College opened as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Founded by New England educators and Baptist missionaries Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles, and supported by the Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society, the school began with just a handful of Black women and girls, many of whom had been enslaved and were largely excluded from formal education in the post–Civil War South.[1][2][3]

This founding was a radical act of educational and social justice. In an era of Jim Crow segregation and pervasive sexism, creating a dedicated institution for Black women’s learning challenged both racial and gender hierarchies. The seminary’s early curriculum combined basic literacy and teacher training, aiming to prepare women to uplift their communities through education and Christian service.[3][5]

The opening of the school laid the groundwork for the oldest private, historically Black liberal arts institution for women in the United States.[2][5] Over time, it evolved into Spelman College, a nationally recognized liberal arts college and a hub for Black women’s intellectual and civic leadership. The 1881 founding is thus remembered as a seminal moment in the history of African American education and women’s higher education.