Clark Atlanta University

Overview

Clark Atlanta University is a private, Methodist-affiliated historically Black research university in Atlanta, formed in 1988 by the consolidation of Atlanta University (founded September 19, 1865) and Clark College (founded 1869). Atlanta University was the first HBCU in the country to confer graduate degrees to African Americans and the first to award bachelor’s degrees to African Americans in the South; Clark College was the nation’s first four-year liberal arts college to serve Black students. Atlanta University itself traces back to 1862, when two literate formerly enslaved men, James Tate and Grandison B. Daniels, opened the first school for Black children in Atlanta while the Civil War was still underway, in a Baptist church building at the corner of Courtland and Jenkins Streets; Tate and Daniels, with 25 other former slaves, also founded Friendship Baptist Church, which had begun holding classes in a building constructed in 1848. That school became Atlanta University in September 1865.