Nashville, Tennessee · Founded 1924
“A tiny seminary on a hill in North Nashville that trained the foot soldiers of the sit-in movement — John Lewis's classroom before he became Congressman Lewis.”
The closing word of the 2010 Garnett-Nabrit Lecture Series — the annual gathering that is ABC's signature tradition since 1958.
Promo for the 68th Garnett-Nabrit series — four days of faith, leadership, and social justice on the Holy Hill, the school's homecoming in lecture form.
The school's own recruitment video — the pitch for a 48-student seminary with a civil-rights pedigree.
'A place of growth, a place of great opportunity' — a current student in her own words, the school's story told from the inside.
New president Derrick Jackson in conversation with students and the Purple M.I.C. podcast — how the 11th presidency is introducing itself.
ABC's Presidential Bridge Series on vocation and service — the school's modern public face: interdisciplinary conversations on calling.
Another Bridge Series session, this one on education leadership with Dr. Gregory C. Hutchings Jr. — the seminary as civic convener.
Emunah Podcast panel featuring Forrest Harris, the just-retired 10th president, on Black churches and institutions as guardians of memory — ABC's legacy argued in public.
The city's own telling of the sit-in story — the lunch counters where ABC students sat, the footage every Nashville student of the movement lives inside.
A congregation streaming worship live from ABC's historic campus — the Hill doubling as a working sanctuary for the neighborhood.
Congressman from Georgia, SNCC chairman, youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, leader of the Selma march; his nonviolent fight began between classes at ABC. Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2011.
Ran the 1965 Selma voting-rights campaign that produced the Voting Rights Act; SNCC co-founder; Freedom Rider jailed at Parchman; returned to lead ABC as president 1992–1999; SCLC board chair at his death.
Minister and SCLC national director of affiliates whom MLK called 'the greatest preacher to ever live'; Freedom Rider, Nashville sit-in leader, ABC professor during the movement years. Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2013.
SCLC's chief strategist — architect of the Birmingham Children's Crusade and the Selma to Montgomery march; ABC student alongside Lewis and Lafayette.
Nashville sit-in veteran and Freedom Rider; one of the ABC students on the front line of the 1960 lunch-counter campaign.
Pastor, ABC Board of Trustees member, and vice president at large of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.; co-namesake of the Lewis-Scruggs Leadership Development Center; gave $45,000 toward the Griggs Hall restoration.
Project manager of the $3.7 million Griggs Hall restoration that brought the historic dorm back to life after 15+ years closed.
Recent graduate working with formerly incarcerated citizens — the school's social-justice mission carried into reentry work.
Recent graduate who worked to secure a historical marker recognizing the sit-in movement that so many ABC students built.
Pastor and community activist; among the recent graduates ABC cites as carrying the school's justice tradition forward.
Recent graduate featured in the school's centennial coverage; found ABC by what he called divine intervention through an ABC-graduate pastor in Detroit, and now preaches the school's 'hidden gem' gospel.
Current student whose testimonial — 'a place of growth, a place of great opportunity' — the college uses to tell its own story.
Pastor of New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church and president of the National Baptist Covenant of America, who delivered a celebrated closing word at the 2010 Garnett-Nabrit Lecture Series.
Civil rights activist who joined ABC president Forrest Harris and Julius Scruggs in the school's public dialogues on the movement then and now.
The idea of a seminary to train Black Baptist ministers grew out of conversations between National Baptist leaders and O.L. Hailey about the possibility of establishing a seminary for the education of its ministers. That same year, in a resolution presented by Edgar Young Mullins and adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention, the all-white convention pledged its cooperation and appointed its own committee. The two committees met together and recommended the college be established in Memphis, Tennessee — where the seminary actually held its first classes in 1916 — but by 1918 the planners had decided on Nashville instead. With the help of the National Baptists, the present 53-acre site was purchased in 1921: a rural, riverside campus along White's Creek Pike in northeast Nashville, managed by a holding board and a governing board representing both conventions.
Construction began on the campus's first building, Griggs Hall, which housed dormitory rooms, a dining hall, classrooms, and a library all under one roof. It was named to honor the Griggs family: Sutton E. Griggs, the seminary's first president, and his father Allen R. Griggs, a former enslaved person who helped found the school. Nearly a century later, the National Park Service would note that Griggs Hall became one of the most important dormitories in American civil rights history.
American Baptist College formally opened its doors for the training of Christian workers under the name American Baptist Theological Seminary on September 14, 1924, with classes beginning October 1. Enrollment was 28 men and 2 women — thirty students total. The first faculty consisted of just three men: William T. Amiger, James Henry Garnett, and O.L. Hailey. Sutton E. Griggs was elected the first president, and at the dedication of Griggs Hall, National Baptist Convention president Lacey Kirk told the audience that the seminary would be 'the greatest contribution the white Baptists of the South could possibly make to their Negro brethren.'
The school's earliest years were unsteady at the presidency. Sutton Griggs served only one year as president before William Thomas Amiger, a member of the original three-man faculty, stepped in as acting president for 1924-1925 and then led the school outright from 1926 to 1930. James Henry Garnett followed from 1930 to 1932 — he would later be remembered less for his presidency than for fourteen years teaching systematic theology and New Testament Greek, and for the lecture series that still bears his name. Roy Mayfield held the office from 1932 to 1936, keeping a fragile institution alive through the Depression.
James Madison Nabrit became president in 1936 and stayed eight years, a stretch of stability the young seminary badly needed. His tenure advanced the institution and brought forth the development of the National Baptist Training School for Christian Workers, widening the school's reach beyond its tiny ministerial student body. Nabrit led through 1944, when Ralph Waldo Riley succeeded him for another long run, 1944 to 1956, carrying the school through World War II and the early postwar years. Like Garnett, Nabrit's name endures in the annual Garnett-Nabrit Lecture Series.
The Southern Baptist Convention agreed to share operation of the college 50/50 with the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. — an unprecedented cooperation between the all-Black and all-white Baptist conventions. For more than five decades the SBC provided scholarships and fiscal support for the operations of the college, a significant contribution to the education of Black men and women for Christian service. Neither side could have known that SBC money was about to train the young ministers who would dismantle segregation. The partnership lasted until a joint decision in 1996 to turn the assets over to the college's Board of Trustees.
The J.B. Lawrence Administration Building was completed on campus, named in honor of J.B. Lawrence, a former secretary of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board. It houses administrative offices and classrooms and became one of three buildings later listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2011, the name of J.H. Flakes was added to the building in honor of his work and ministry on behalf of the college. The building's 1947 construction was part of the slow postwar build-out of a campus that still had only a handful of structures.
The T.L. Holcomb Library was built in 1954, giving the campus a proper three-floor library in the center of the grounds. It serves the entire student body and the surrounding community, providing research and study areas, a computer lab, and — unusually — housing the ABC Chapel itself. The 1954 building became the third and final structure named in the National Register of Historic Places listing in 2013. By the 1950s the campus was taking its permanent shape: Griggs Hall, the administration building, and the library on 53 acres above the Cumberland River.
The catalog lists Victor T. Glass as president for just one year, 1956 to 1957, followed by Maynard Phillip Turner from 1957 to 1963. These were quiet years on the surface, but the campus was about to become a crucible. Turner's presidency overlapped with the arrival of the students who would change the country. In 1963, Charles Emerson Boddie became president and would hold the office for seventeen years, steering the school through the movement era and its aftermath.
Two things began in 1958 that defined the school's soul. The inaugural Garnett-Nabrit Lectures took place, an annual campus event honoring James Henry Garnett and James Madison Nabrit that bridges academic theology with justice activism and runs to this day. And beginning that year, ABC students were among Black Nashville collegians attending workshops on nonviolent resistance led by activist James Lawson, who had studied nonviolent techniques in India with Mahatma Gandhi. Inside Griggs Hall, professor Kelly Miller Smith taught those same students the tactics of nonviolence.
When Lawson's workshops eventuated in lunch-counter sit-ins on February 13, 1960, American Baptist students played key roles. John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, William Barbee, and Julius Scruggs — under the tutelage of professor J.F. Grimmett, Kelly Miller Smith, and C.T. Vivian — sat down at downtown Nashville lunch counters and endured verbal and physical abuse for three months. The campus itself became a popular command post for organizing and training students for social justice causes throughout the city; members of the Nashville Student Movement took to calling the college 'the Holy Hill.' After the April 19 bombing of attorney Z. Alexander Looby's home and a march to the courthouse, Mayor Ben West conceded segregation was wrong, and on May 10 Nashville became the first major Southern city to desegregate its lunch counters.
The same ABC students carried the fight onto the highways. Lewis, Lafayette, Bevel, Vivian, and Barbee all joined the 1961 Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate bus travel, drawing violent response across the South. Lafayette was arrested with other Freedom Riders in Jackson, Mississippi, and jailed at Parchman State Prison Farm — one of 27 arrests he would endure. The Rides forced the Interstate Commerce Commission to ban segregation in interstate travel. What had started in Lawson's workshops and Griggs Hall dorm rooms had become national policy.
Charles Emerson Boddie became president in 1963 and led the college through 1980, a seventeen-year tenure spanning the movement's peak and the hard rebuilding years after it. The school was, in David Halberstam's phrase from 'The Children,' 'small and exceedingly poor' — Baptist historian Keith Harper later found the school averaged just 70 students and 13 graduates a year from 1955 to 1965. But Halberstam also wrote that American Baptist had become 'a magnet for many of the most talented and passionate young blacks in the country,' a place 'filled with political ferment and passion' whose students were 'diamonds in the rough, hungry to learn.'
The school earned accreditation from the American Association of Bible Colleges — the agency now known as the Association for Biblical Higher Education — and officially dropped the term 'Theological Seminary' from its name. American Baptist Theological Seminary became American Baptist College, a name change that reflected a broadening mission beyond training ministers. It had taken 47 years to win accreditation; the school would spend the next decades proving it belonged in the top tier of Black theological education. The name change stuck everywhere except the National Register, which still lists the campus under the seminary's name.
The Baptist World Center was dedicated in 1989, constructed as the official international headquarters of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. — the first building of its kind ever erected by the convention. It sits on the south edge of campus on the original site of the former National Baptist Missionary Training Center. The center houses NBC administrative offices and serves ABC as classroom space, event space, workshops, and the campus dining hall, with a sanctuary large enough for the convention's annual Mid-Winter Board Meeting. Its presence made the campus a genuine hub of Black Baptist life, not just a school.
Odell McGlothian's twelve years of steady stewardship (1980–1992) had kept the school open and solvent through the 1980s, when many small Black colleges were under brutal financial pressure. The college's choice for his successor was striking: Bernard Lafayette — Selma voting-rights campaign leader, SNCC co-founder, the boy who once roomed with John Lewis in Griggs Hall — returned to lead the school that had trained him, serving through 1999. During the same years he pastored Progressive Baptist Church in Nashville. At his death in March 2026, Lafayette was chairman of the board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The Southern Baptist Convention, in a joint decision with the National Baptists, turned over the college's assets to the Board of Trustees of American Baptist College — ending the 50/50 partnership that had begun in 1937. The transition was not entirely smooth: at its 1993 annual meeting the National Baptist Convention had appointed a committee to investigate support of the college, and a later lawsuit over the school's Baptist ties and theology was settled with a two-step process in which ABC nominates board members and the NBC approves them. The college continues as the primary theological training center of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
Forrest E. Harris Sr. was named president in July 1999, beginning a 26-year run that would carry the school into its centennial. An HBCU graduate himself — bachelor's from Knoxville College and a bachelor of theology from American Baptist — he held a master of divinity and doctor of ministry from Vanderbilt, where he had directed the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies. He authored scholarly works including 'Ministry for Social Crisis: Theology and Praxis in the Black Church Tradition.' His tenure would bring accreditation strength, fundraising growth, and the HBCU designation the school had sought for decades.
The John R. Lewis and Julius R. Scruggs Leadership Development Center opened in 2005, named in honor of two ABC alumni: Congressman John R. Lewis of Georgia and the Rev. Dr. Julius R. Scruggs, pastor, Board of Trustees member, and a leader in the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The building sits behind the T.L. Holcomb Library and the Susie McClure Library. Naming a campus building for a living congressman — Lewis was still in the House — showed how tightly the school holds its civil rights lineage. Scruggs would later give generously toward the Griggs Hall renovations.
On March 20, 2013, the U.S. Department of Education informed the school that it qualified as a historically Black college or university — official HBCU status and eligibility for federal HBCU grants, something president Forrest Harris called an important designation worth being 'grandfathered in' for. Three months later, on June 14, the National Park Service added the campus to the National Register of Historic Places as the American Baptist Theological Seminary Historic District, recognizing its significance in African American ethnic heritage, education, and religion. The listing covers the historic campus landscape plus three buildings: Griggs Hall, the J.B. Lawrence Administration Building, and the 1954 T.L. Holcomb Library.
Griggs Hall — the 1923 building where John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, and C.T. Vivian once lived and plotted the sit-ins (it had grown by a fifty-foot addition back in 1948) — reopened after a $3.7 million restoration, having sat closed for more than fifteen years. Project manager Rev. Martin Espinosa, class of 1988, led the work; alumnus Julius Scruggs gave $35,000 plus another $10,000 on top, and president Harris himself pledged. In 2015 the college renovated it into a 'living-learning center' with a computer lab, study space, laundry, half kitchen, and a student center with games and televisions. Students sleep today in the same dorm where nonviolence was taught.
The college celebrated its 95th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of Forrest Harris's presidency with a Presidential Scholarship Gala at the Nashville Downtown Renaissance Hotel, keynoted by former president Bernard Lafayette. The settlement of the litigation between ABC and the National Baptist Convention produced a workable two-step governance process: ABC nominates board members and the NBC approves them, letting both institutions move forward together. Board chair Don Darius Butler called it a milestone for a school that had 'weathered major storms and many triumphs, including financial challenges, the Civil Rights era of the 60s, and morphing into a HBCU institution.'
Rep. Jim Cooper announced that $4,796,812 in Community Project Funding had been included in the House's seven-bill spending package for American Baptist College and Meharry Medical College. ABC's share, developed in partnership with the Metro Historical Commission, would restore campus buildings where civil rights leaders were educated and create a complementary civil rights walking tour of the campus to teach the public about the college's role in the movement. It was the largest single public investment in the physical campus in the school's history. Around the same era the school also launched planning for a new campus Forum building with classrooms and gathering spaces oriented outward toward the city.
American Baptist College celebrated its 100th year — a century that began with 30 students and three professors and produced some of the most consequential Americans of the twentieth century. President Harris told reporters that for any institution to exist 100 years it must have built a significant legacy, 'producing, in our case, students who lead in areas of social justice.' As the centennial celebrations concluded, Harris announced his upcoming retirement after 26 years at the helm. The campus on the Holy Hill, towering over North Nashville just above the Cumberland River, had become a landmark twice over: a National Register historic district and a living school.
Forrest Harris retired on June 30, 2025, after 26 years, and the Board of Trustees named the Rev. Dr. Derrick Jackson interim president effective July 1 — then quickly made it permanent, announcing Jackson as the school's 11th president. Jackson, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Gallatin for 24 years and executive director of the Sunday School Publishing Board, was charged with increasing enrollment, raising funds, engaging alumni, and strengthening the NBC relationship. The same year brought a $1,999,994 Lilly Endowment grant through its Ministry in Rural Areas and Small Towns initiative, a proposed 'Kingdom Land' riverfront mixed-use development with 500 homes and 500,000 square feet of commercial space, and a Homecoming celebration on November 14. In 2026 the school announced a new documentary, 'Untold Stories. Unending Struggles. Unlimited Possibilities.,' on its first century.
American Baptist College has no marching band and no instrumental music program of this kind — it is a ~48-student seminary with no athletics department and no band tradition. The school does offer a music and arts academic concentration and hosts music-centered events (its 2026 Presidential Bridge Series featured a Music & Arts session), but there is no ensemble to list directors for. Listing one would be fabrication.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
American Baptist College's own catalog framework describes Greek-letter organizations operating under charters granted by the college (open to male and female students above first-year classification with a 2.5 GPA), but no specific chapters are named in the school's materials, press coverage, or any national org chapter roster — no Divine Nine chapter at American Baptist appears on any of the nine national lists. With a seminary mission centered on chapel, ministry training, and social justice, organized Greek life is at most a nominal feature of campus culture here.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
A fifty-foot addition expanded the school's 1923 first building, adding dormitory and classroom space around its basement cafeteria and laundry. The expanded hall is the same structure that housed John Lewis and Bernard Lafayette a decade later.
Completed and named for J.B. Lawrence, former secretary of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board. It houses administrative offices and classrooms and was later listed on the National Register. In 2011 the name of J.H. Flakes was added to the building in honor of his ministry on the college's behalf.
Built as a three-floor library in the center of campus, serving students and the surrounding North Nashville community with research areas, a computer lab, and the ABC Chapel itself. It completed the trio of historic buildings later placed on the National Register.
Dedicated as the official international headquarters of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. — the first building of its kind ever erected by the convention. Built on the site of the former National Baptist Missionary Training Center on the campus's south edge, it doubles as ABC classroom space, event venue, and dining hall, with a sanctuary big enough for the convention's Mid-Winter Board Meeting.
Opened behind the Holcomb and Susie McClure libraries and named for two ABC alumni: sitting Congressman John R. Lewis and the Rev. Dr. Julius R. Scruggs, pastor, trustee, and NBC leader. Naming a building for a living congressman showed how tightly the school holds its civil rights lineage.
The American Baptist Theological Seminary Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 14, 2013 — the campus landscape plus Griggs Hall, the J.B. Lawrence Administration Building, and the 1954 Holcomb Library. The listing locked in federal recognition of the campus as a civil rights landmark and opened preservation funding pathways.
After sitting closed for more than fifteen years, Griggs Hall reopened following a $3.7 million restoration led by project manager Rev. Martin Espinosa '88. Alumni answered the call — Julius Scruggs gave $45,000 total, president Harris pledged $10,000. In 2015 it was refitted as a 'living-learning center' with a computer lab, study space, laundry, half kitchen, and student center, and it now serves as the campus dorm.
Rep. Jim Cooper secured $4,796,812 in Community Project Funding for ABC and Meharry Medical College. ABC's share, developed with the Metro Historical Commission, funds restoration of the campus buildings where civil rights leaders were educated and creates a public civil rights walking tour of the campus — the largest public investment in the physical campus in school history.
ABC was awarded $1,999,994 from Lilly Endowment through its Ministry in Rural Areas and Small Towns Initiative, to translate the college's urban social-justice ministry model to rural contexts. For a school with a $2.82 million endowment, a two-million-dollar grant is transformative.
The seminary proposed Kingdom Land, a mixed-use development along the Cumberland River in North Nashville: 500 homes plus 500,000 square feet of commercial space, built in two phases with green space and a greenway connection to downtown. If it moves forward, it would be the most ambitious use of the school's land in its history.
In September 2026 the Metro Council approved zoning changes allowing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build a medical clinic on land owned by American Baptist College in North Nashville — another sign of the school's growing footprint in the neighborhood's development.
'Untold Stories. Unending Struggles. Unlimited Possibilities.,' a documentary on the college's first century of history, struggle, leadership, and possibility, was announced for the big screen — the school's story, told at feature length for the first time.
Leadership at ABC has always been small and pastoral — a president, a board chair, and a handful of professors who doubled as movement mentors. The sit-in era faculty (Smith, Vivian, Grimmett) are the reason the school's name carries weight far beyond its enrollment.
Senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Gallatin for 24 years; former board audit chair; charged with enrollment, fundraising, alumni, and the NBC relationship.
Announced both Jackson's interim appointment and his permanent presidency in 2025.
President 1999–2025; now professor at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, where he previously directed the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies.
Pastor of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill, who taught nonviolence tactics to ABC students inside Griggs Hall; one of the three mentors ABC's own history credits with preparing students for the lunch counters.
Taught at ABC during the student movement years before becoming national director of affiliates for the SCLC, a Freedom Rider, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.
The faculty mentor ABC's history names first among the teachers who prepared students to sit down at segregated lunch counters and endure what followed.
Not ABC faculty — he led the nonviolence workshops that ABC students attended beginning in 1958, having studied Gandhian technique in India; his students included Lewis, Lafayette, Bevel, and Nash.
With about 48 students, ABC runs on intimacy, not scale. Students and alumni describe arriving at 'the Holy Hill' — the campus's nickname since the movement days — and finding a family: dorm life in the restored Griggs Hall, faculty who check in on you, and a student body of future pastors and justice workers who chose a seminary on purpose. One student put it plainly: 'American Baptist College is a place of growth, a place of great opportunity.' The social calendar is chapel, lectures, and service, not parties — and the students like it that way.