“The school formally opened its doors on October 15, 1885, with 107 students and nine teachers. Morris Brown was the first educational institution in Georgia to be owned and operated independently by African Americans.”
The Morris Brown Colored College (its original name) was founded in 1881 by African Americans affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal College and named to honor the denomination’s second bishop, Morris Brown. The AME Church sent missionaries to the South following the Civil War, and they founded numerous new AME churches in Georgia and other states, as hundreds of thousands of freedmen joining new congregations.
On January 5, 1881, the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church passed a resolution to establish an educational institution in Atlanta for the moral, spiritual, and intellectual growth of Negro boys and girls. The school formally opened its doors on October 15, 1885, with 107 students and nine teachers. Morris Brown was the first educational institution in Georgia to be owned and operated independently by African Americans. For more than a century, the college enrolled many students from poor backgrounds, large numbers of whom returned to their hometowns as teachers, as education was a mission of high priority.
Fountain Hall, originally known as Stone Hall when occupied by Altanta University, was completed in 1882. It is closely associated with the history of the college and has been designated a National Historic Landmark. After Atlanta University consolidated its facilities, it leased the building to Morris Brown College, which renamed it Fountain Hall.