Atlanta, Georgia · Founded 1943 · Cougars
“A sixty-student Bible college in the woods off Cascade Road, training pastors and missionaries since 1943 — and the little basketball team that spent a whole season getting throttled by Division I programs on ESPN+.”
Dallas Theological Seminary profile of Carver's fifth president and his dual role leading the college and pastoring Mt. Calvary — the single best video record of the man who defined modern Carver.
Crummie preaching in the DTS chapel as president of Carver Bible College — his voice, his message, his era.
Official highlight reel from the November 24, 2021 game, a textbook artifact of the Cougars' famous barnstorming seasons — Carver scores the opening bucket, then it's all Skyhawks.
Official highlight reel from the December 15, 2021 game, another chapter of the little Bible college's long road through Division I gyms.
Pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas and one of the most prominent Black evangelical pastors in America; he ordained Carver president Robert Crummie and is the school's most famous alumnus.
Vice president of Carver College and holder of an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the school; a fixture of its current leadership.
Carver was established in 1943 as the Carver Bible Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. It was founded by Solomon Randolph, a Black pastor in Atlanta, together with Grace and Talmage Payne, graduates of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. The school was named for the agricultural scientist George Washington Carver. From day one it was built for African Americans who had been shut out of most Bible training schools in the Jim Crow South.
Talmage and Grace Payne had been missionaries in China when World War II broke out, and they could not get their visas renewed to return. Stranded stateside, the couple came to Atlanta and started the college for African Americans with the Moody Bible Institute as their explicit model. The wartime displacement of two missionaries is the direct reason the school exists. That missionary DNA — training people to carry the gospel into the marketplace and the mission field — has stayed in the school's language for eight decades.
The founders named the school for George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee scientist and devout Christian, rather than for any donor or denomination. It was a statement: the school would stand for Black achievement, faith, and service at a time when Atlanta was still fully segregated. The name survived two renamings — Carver Bible College in later decades, then Carver College in 2009. No other namesake was ever attached to the institution.
Public records of Carver's middle decades are thin, which is typical of tiny independent Bible schools that kept their own counsel. What is documented is the outcome: the school kept its doors open through the civil rights era and beyond, and by the 21st century it could point to thousands of men and women graduated into pulpits, mission fields, and Christian service. It remained independent and nondenominational, never folding into a larger denomination or university system. That stubborn independence is part of why the school is still standing while many peer Bible institutes closed.
After earning his Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1996, the Rev. Robert Crummie accepted an invitation to serve as vice president of Carver. He had been licensed to preach at Mount Sinai Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and ordained by Dr. Tony Evans at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. Before seminary he had worked as a grants management specialist at the National Institutes of Health and done missionary work in D.C. with CRU. His arrival marked the beginning of the school's most publicly documented era.
The campus underwent major renovations in 1997, a rare documented capital project in the school's history. The administration building was remodeled, the gymnasium was remodeled, and a new bookstore was established for the campus. For a school that has always run lean, the 1997 work was the physical foundation for everything that followed — including the basketball program that would launch the next year. The renovations are recorded in the college's own history and carried into its Wikipedia entry.
Carver's athletics program was established in 1998, and it was the brainchild of Robert Crummie. He did not start it to win games. He called it his 'second-chance ministry': a way to reach young Black men who could play basketball but had gotten off on the wrong path, giving them a chance to play the game they loved while the school reached them spiritually. The team joined the National Christian College Athletic Association as the Cougars. Two decades later that ministry team would become nationally famous for all the wrong reasons — and keep playing anyway.
In 1998, the same year the basketball program launched, Crummie was elected pastor of the Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in College Park, Georgia. He would hold both jobs — college president-in-waiting and then president, plus pastor — for the rest of his life. The dual role tied Carver directly into Atlanta's Black church community and gave the school a visible local anchor. Dallas Theological Seminary later described his dual roles as casting 'a broad net for Christ' across both the student body and the congregation.
In May 2000 the Carver Board of Trustees elected Robert Crummie the fifth president of the college. He had been waiting in the wings as vice president since 1996, and one longtime board member later recalled being present at his installation and watching him serve for the next twenty years. A Benedict College graduate with a B.S. in economics and business administration, Crummie brought both administrative training and pastoral energy to the job. His two-decade presidency would become the longest and most documented in school history.
Carver received full accreditation from the Association for Biblical Higher Education in 2006, the school's major academic milestone. For a small independent Bible college, ABHE accreditation meant its degrees carried recognized weight with graduate schools, employers, and donors. The accreditation is recorded in the school's history and in its Wikipedia entry. A recent third-party college profile (Appily) lists the school as currently not accredited, which suggests the ABHE status may have lapsed — the school's own site does not currently publish accreditation details, so the present status could not be independently confirmed.
In 2009 the Carver Bible College was renamed Carver College, dropping 'Bible' from the name even as Bible study remained the core of the curriculum. The change reflected the school's broadened offerings: alongside Biblical Studies it was granting degrees in Business Administration and Psychology. The rename put it in line with other small Christian colleges that kept their faith identity while signaling a wider academic menu. The school's website and all public records use Carver College from this point forward.
The Metropolitan Atlanta Baptist Ministers Union has long held an annual support service for Carver at the college's campus chapel, a gathering of MABMU clergy with Carver's administration, faculty, and students. The 2016 edition drew the MABMU dean, former presidents, and pastors from across metro Atlanta, with the Carver president offering remarks from the president's office. It is one of the school's durable traditions: the local Black church community showing up, year after year, to stand behind the little college. Photo records of these services are among the few public windows into campus life.
By the late 2010s Carver's men's basketball team had settled into an unusual niche: playing guarantee games against NCAA Division I programs across the Southeast. On January 2, 2018, Kennesaw State beat Carver Bible 98-75; on November 28, 2018, Jacksonville State beat Carver 101-61 in Centre, Alabama; Troy hosted the Cougars in November 2019; and Georgia Southern beat Carver 139-51 in 2018. For the Cougars these games were paydays and exposure; for the big schools they were schedule filler. Nobody involved pretended it was competitive — and Carver kept signing up.
In November 2019 Carver traveled to Panama City, Florida, for the inaugural Battle at the Beach tournament. Faulkner beat Carver Bible 96-68 in the first round after the Cougars had actually led by as many as 14 points in the first half — one of the better showings of the era. A year later, in November 2020, Faulkner routed Carver 107-41 in Montgomery with only six Eagles available, setting Faulkner team records for rebounds (64) and margin of victory (66). The contrast between those two Faulkner games tells the whole story of Carver basketball: occasionally plucky, usually overwhelmed, always out there.
The Rev. Robert Crummie died on January 2, 2020, after serving twenty years as Carver's president. He was 58. Tributes poured in from Dallas Theological Seminary, where he had served on the board, from Mt. Calvary, and from Carver's own board — one longtime trustee wrote of watching him installed as president twenty years earlier and called him 'a blessing to Carver and many hundreds and thousands of people.' He left a wife, Dr. Carla Michelle, a son, Robert Wayne II, and a daughter, Meagan Michelle. His death ended the longest presidency in school history and opened the first leadership transition in two decades.
The COVID-disrupted 2020-21 season made Carver nationally famous. With Division I programs desperate to fill schedules, the Cougars barnstormed the Southeast playing a D1 opponent seemingly every night — and losing by about 60 points a night. The Associated Press called them the Washington Generals and 'a willing patsy.' The scoreboard told the story: Kennesaw State 87-40, Appalachian State 105-23, Wofford 111-37, Georgia Southern 92-27, Georgia State 122-57, FIU 111-34, and on and on, finishing 0-19 against D1 competition. Coach Bryan Spencer joked about adding games by group text mid-road-trip; forward Glenn Sims told reporters the ESPN+ exposure had been 'a blessing in disguise.' The season remains the most written-about chapter in school history.
On February 1, 2021, the Rev. C.L. Jordan became the sixth president of Carver College, succeeding his late friend Robert Crummie. Jordan had been a Carver board member for 13 years and came from pastoring Bible Community Fellowship in the Portland neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky, where he had ministered for 17 years and helped unite Black and white Kentuckians. A Black pastor taking over a predominantly Black college, he said he wanted to diversify the student body and keep preparing men and women for the marketplace and the mission field. His wife Peggy and daughters A'Kia and A'Keisha moved with him to Atlanta. The school's current leadership page still lists him as president.
Carver ran it back in 2021-22 with another brutal slate of guarantee games, including a pair of HBCU-vs-HBCU matchups that stand out in the record. On January 16, 2021, North Carolina A&T beat Carver 112-46 in Greensboro, with fifteen different Aggies scoring; the Cougars returned to face A&T again on December 3, 2021, losing 97-55. North Carolina Central beat Carver 94-61 in January 2021 and 102-50 that December. Other stops included UT Martin (103-43, November 24, 2021) and Presbyterian (98-33, December 15, 2021), both preserved in the hosts' highlight reels. Dyllon Scott and Glenn Sims carried the scoring load for the Cougars all season.
Carver's women's basketball team suffered one of the worst defeats in college basketball history, falling 133-15 to Georgia Southern — reported as the second-largest margin of victory in women's Division I history. The Cougars shot 12 percent from the floor and went 2-for-18 from three in a game that, like the men's barnstorming, should never have become a national story but did, drawing coverage from CBS Sports and ESPN. It stands as the starkest single data point in the Carver athletics saga: a tiny Bible college program taking the floor against a full Division I roster and paying the price on the scoreboard.
As of 2026, Carver College is still operating from its wooded campus at 3870 Cascade Road SW in southwest Atlanta, with C.L. Jordan as president and the Rev. Clifford Ice as vice president. Recent third-party profiles put enrollment around 50 to 100 students, with degrees in Biblical Studies, Business Administration, and Psychology, a 4-to-1 student-faculty ratio, and a notably international student body. In early 2026 the school was advertising on CampusReel for student videographers to document campus life for prospective students — a small sign of a small school still trying to tell its story. The Cougars' basketball odyssey remains the thing the wider world knows about Carver; the school itself keeps doing what it has done since 1943, training a handful of students at a time for ministry.
No rivalry — named or otherwise — could be verified for Carver. The Cougars compete as an NCCAA independent with no conference and no repeat peer opponent; their most-played 'rivals' are Division I guarantee-game hosts like Kennesaw State, Wofford, and Faulkner, none of which constitutes a rivalry. This is marked honestly rather than invented.
No marching band, pep band, or formal band program at Carver College could be found in any source surveyed — the school's site, news coverage, reference profiles, and athletics pages. With roughly 60 students and a single NCCAA basketball program as its extracurricular centerpiece, Carver has never fielded a band. This section is left honest rather than padded.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
No Greek-letter organizations; no Divine Nine chapters, fraternities, or sororities at Carver could be verified in any source — not on any national chapter roster, the school's materials, or press coverage. A ~60-student independent Bible college with twice-weekly required chapel is not fertile ground for Greek life.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
Part of the 1997 renovation wave documented in the college's own history: the administration building was remodeled, giving the tiny school's offices and leadership a proper home.
The campus gymnasium was remodeled in the same 1997 wave — the building that would, a year later, house the newborn Cougars basketball program, Crummie's second-chance ministry.
A new bookstore was established on campus in 1997, completing the renovation wave and giving students a real campus retail point for the first time in the school's documented history.
The founding of the Cougars basketball program in the NCCAA was, for a school this size, a campus-life upgrade as much as an athletics one — it gave Carver its first intercollegiate identity, its mascot's meaning, and eventually its national notoriety.
The board of trustees includes Weston Irby, Dr. Donald Canty, Dr. C.L. Jordan, Dr. Clifford Ice, Christina Broadway Esq., Rev. Joel Redmon, Dr. Clarence Clavon, Dr. Thomas Fritz, Rev. Bo Paddock, Rev. Michael Matala, Rev. Marcus Webster, and Dr. Silas Sessions. Support staff include Barbara Woolfolk (academic support), Kurt Atkins (financial aid), and Kattie Gore (institutional effectiveness). With roughly one full-time instructor on record, nearly everyone at Carver wears several hats.
Sixth president, in office since February 1, 2021.
Holds an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Carver College; listed as VP on the school's current leadership page.
Th.M., Ed.D.; leads the school's academic core.
M.A.; the student-life and alumni point person.
The coach behind the famous 2020-21 barnstorming season — the man adding guarantee games by group text mid-road-trip.
Carver is intimate to the point of familial: under 200 students, a 4-to-1 student-faculty ratio, and about a third of students living in the men-only and women-only residence halls. Chapel twice a week is required, not optional, and the student body is strikingly international for a school this size — about a third of students come from abroad. The campus itself sits in the woods off Kimberly Road in southwest Atlanta, easy to drive past; one visiting writer described it as looking like 'a postcard from the wilderness.' There is no Greek life, no marching band, no football — basketball season is the social calendar.