Atlanta, Georgia · Founded 1988 · Panthers
“Two 1860s Black institutions merged into one Panther — an AUC research university where Du Bois once taught, Drumline was filmed, and the marching band is the heartbeat.”
AJC documentary tracking the Mighty Marching Panthers' rebirth from ~20 to 100+ members, recruiting drives, and the homecoming halftime show.
2004 tunnel battle between Tuskegee's Marching Crimson Pipers and CAU's Mighty Marching Panthers.
Band documentary: the Drumline film, Honda Battle of the Bands runs, BET Hip Hop Awards, the Essence Dance Team and Silver Breeze Flag Corps.
BandTubeHD footage of CAU's halftime show in the 2026 Labor Day Classic rivalry game vs Morehouse.
4K band battle footage from September 19, 2026 — Mighty Marching Panthers vs Miles College's Purple Marching Machine, song for song.
The band's march-in before the Miles College game, captured in 4K.
Senior-year spotlight on CAU drum major Jashon Sullivan, including his first home-game halftime show (2022).
Full 4K walking tour of the 126-acre, 37-building campus in the Atlanta University Center.
Official CAU welcome video: the 1988 consolidation, 150+ years of legacy, and campus culture.
Official 2026 back-to-school video filmed by CAU student Jalen Jones — campus, the Yard, and Panther pride.
History of the original Clark University land in South Atlanta — the 450-acre 1880 purchase and the campus Drumline-era viewers drive past daily.
Short history piece: the September 19, 1865 founding, Du Bois's sociology chair years, and the 1988 consolidation.
Atlanta University graduate; educator, diplomat, NAACP leader, and songwriter of 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing,' the Black National Anthem (1904).
Civil rights leader and minister; president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after Martin Luther King Jr.
Television writer-producer-director; creator of Black-ish, Girls Trip, and Grown-ish.
U.S. Congressman representing Georgia — CAU claims him among its notable alumni.
Tony-winning playwright and stage/film director — claimed by CAU as a notable alumnus.
Restaurateur and founder of the Slutty Vegan empire.
DJ, record executive, and mixtape mogul who helped launch a generation of Southern hip-hop.
R&B singer-songwriter known for hits 'Slow Down,' 'Tell Me,' and 'Anonymous.'
Actress and model; season 3 winner of America's Next Top Model and star of BET's All the Queen's Men.
Grammy-winning songwriter-producer behind Usher's 'U Got It Bad,' Jagged Edge's 'Let's Get Married,' and Mariah Carey's 'Shake It Off.'
Former VP of Partnerships & Engagement at Google, former co-president of the Recording Academy, and co-founder of WEEN.
Singer best known as the voice of the Brand New Heavies' biggest records.
Legendary Chicago educator whose Westside Preparatory School became a national model.
First African American graduate of West Point (1877); listed among CAU's historic alumni.
Human rights activist and 2016 Green Party vice-presidential nominee.
First African American graduate of the University of Georgia.
Atlanta politician and first Black graduate of Emory University School of Law.
First Black woman to sit on the Atlanta City Council.
Novelist, playwright, and essayist (What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day).
Jazz saxophonist and composer; also the Clark College band's first recorded director (1942–1967).
While the Civil War was still raging, two literate African American ex-slaves, James Tate and Grandison B. Daniels, opened the first school in Atlanta for African American children, meeting in a Friendship Baptist Church building at Courtland and Jenkins streets. Tate and Daniels, along with 25 other former slaves, had founded Friendship Baptist Church itself, and classes met in a church building dating to 1848. This school would become Atlanta University in September 1865 — founded by Black men, not for them.
On September 19, 1865, the school was formally organized as Atlanta University under the American Missionary Association, with later assistance from the Freedmen's Bureau. When missionary Frederick Ayer and his wife arrived that November, the AMA bought a boxcar for $310 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and sent it to Atlanta to serve as both classroom and meeting space for the Friendship congregation. Tate and Daniels readily handed the educational work to Ayer, who was better prepared to lead it. A school that began in a church and a boxcar became the nation's first graduate institution to award degrees to African Americans.
Edmund Asa Ware of the American Missionary Association was appointed Atlanta University's first president, and the school was chartered on October 17, 1867, with help from Freedmen's Bureau chief Oliver Otis Howard. Ware set the institution's intellectual character: uncompromising academic excellence and a rejection of the doctrine of racial inferiority. His stance influenced Black colleges and American education far beyond Atlanta. Howard also appointed William J. White — Tate's half-brother and a co-founder of what became Morehouse College — as a trustee.
The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (later the United Methodist Church) founded Clark College in 1869 — originally Clark University — the nation's first four-year liberal arts college to serve African-American students. Named for Bishop Davis Wasgatt Clark, the society's first president, it held its first classes in a sparsely furnished room at Clark Chapel in Atlanta's Summerhill section. The same year, Atlanta University built North Hall: the first purpose-built women's dormitory on a coeducational campus anywhere in the United States. AU offered its first postsecondary instruction in 1869, graduated its first class (a normal school for teachers, women included) in 1873, and awarded its first six bachelor's degrees in June 1876.
Clark was chartered as Clark University in 1877, and in 1880 it conferred its first degree on its new 450-acre campus in South Atlanta — land secured through the vision of Bishop Gilbert Haven, who imagined Clark as the 'university' of all the Methodist schools founded for freedmen. It was one of the largest land purchases in Atlanta at the time. In 1883 Clark opened a theology department named for Elijah H. Gammon; in 1888 it spun off as the independent Gammon School of Theology, now part of the Interdenominational Theological Center.
Stone Hall rose on the crest of Diamond Hill as Atlanta University's administration building, housing a chapel, lecture halls, recitation rooms, and laboratories. Designed by Atlanta architect G. L. Norrman in High Victorian style, its clock tower became a rare and visible landmark. It served AU until 1929, then Morris Brown College, and was renamed Fountain Hall for Bishop W. A. Fountain. In 1975 it was made a National Historic Landmark for its role in providing higher education to African Americans.
W. E. B. Du Bois taught at Atlanta University from 1897 to 1910 and built the Atlanta University Studies — pioneering annual sociological conferences that made Atlanta the first American school of sociology. Running the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory from 1896 to 1924, he produced data-driven studies of Black life that underpinned his later NAACP leadership. Du Bois returned as sociology chair from 1934 to 1944 and revived the conferences as the Phylon Institute, until President Rufus Clement retired him in 1944 at age 76 — eleven years past retirement age — a dismissal Du Bois suspected had an ulterior motive.
Atlanta University graduate James Weldon Johnson wrote 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing,' the song that became known as the Black National Anthem; that same year he received an honorary master's degree from the university. Johnson's career — educator, lawyer, diplomat, NAACP executive — embodied the graduate school's reach into national leadership. Through Du Bois, Atlanta University became closely affiliated with the NAACP, and the artist Henry O. Tanner served on its faculty.
AU's 1912 catalog shows a school of just 403 students: 40 in college, 62 in the normal school, the rest in preparatory divisions. Half of the university's alumni were working as teachers. Six small Black colleges — Atlanta, Morehouse, Spelman, Clark, Morris Brown, and Gammon — guarded their independence while depending on Northern philanthropy. By the end of World War I, the philanthropists were demanding mergers to improve educational quality — pressure that would reshape the Atlanta schools.
Clark University — not yet Clark College — played Morehouse in football for the first time; Morehouse won 48-0, then won the next two meetings 48-0 (1916) and 47-0 (1923). The Panthers' first win came 7-6 in 1926. The series became one of college football's oldest HBCU rivalries, today's Big Cat Classic. From 1942 to 1953, Clark would rip off 12 straight wins over Morehouse — the longest winning streak in school history.
The Atlanta University Affiliation was formed: Atlanta University became the graduate school, with Morehouse and Spelman as the undergraduate colleges, and Clark College, Morris Brown College, and the Interdenominational Theological Center joining later. It was the consolidation Northern philanthropists had been demanding for a decade. The 1957 articles of affiliation created the Atlanta University Center as the modern consortium — the nation's largest gathering of historically Black institutions.
Clark University was renamed Clark College in 1940, a change that fit its four-year liberal arts identity. Growth on the AU side came instead through new graduate schools: Library Science in 1941, Education in 1944, and Business Administration in 1946. The Atlanta School of Social Work gave up its charter in 1947 to become an integral part of the university. Atlanta University had by then awarded bachelor's degrees for 53 years (1876–1929) before going graduate-only.
Students from across the Atlanta University Center, organized as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, launched sit-ins at segregated downtown lunch counters, inspired by Greensboro a month earlier. The protests lasted nearly a year before an agreement desegregated the counters. CAU's students were in the thick of the Atlanta Student Movement — the city's defining civil rights campaign, organized and sustained by the AUC's own young people.
On July 1, 1988, Atlanta University and Clark College consolidated as Clark Atlanta University, ratifying the joint committee's April report, 'Charting a Bold New Future.' The boards had authorized exploring the combination in 1987, and Thomas W. Cole Jr. — who had been named president of both schools to manage them jointly — became CAU's founding president. The merger joined a graduate research school with an undergraduate liberal arts college, making CAU the largest institution in the United Negro College Fund.
CAU won a three-year, $13 million Department of Defense award to build defense research capacity — the centerpiece of Thomas Cole's campaign to make the merged school a genuine research university. Departments of physics and computer science and a chemistry Ph.D. were created with federal money, and the scientific faculty doubled to 112 while science enrollment more than doubled. CAU became the only private HBCU classified by Carnegie as a doctoral/research-intensive institution, a distinction it still holds as an R2 university.
The 20th Century Fox film Drumline, shot mainly at Clark Atlanta with members of Morris Brown's band featured, hit theaters and grossed $57 million — making HBCU marching band culture mainstream. Extras were recruited from Atlanta high schools and trained by local band director Don Roberts. The fictional Atlanta A&T was, in brick and grass, CAU's campus. The Mighty Marching Panthers' fame — already built on Honda Battle of the Bands appearances — went national.
The Mighty Marching Panthers began a run of seven appearances at the Honda Battle of the Bands in the Georgia Dome (2003–2007, 2010–2011), performing before 60,000-plus crowds. The band's ambassador run went far beyond Honda: a national McDonald's commercial, the Ellen DeGeneres Show, the BET Hip Hop Awards nomination broadcast, Falcons halftimes, the Atlanta Falcons championship parade, the NCAA Final Four Salute, the College Football Hall of Fame opening, and political rallies for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Few college bands anywhere have had that kind of mainstream run.
Walter D. Broadnax retired on July 31, 2008, after six years marked by a $25 million deficit and controversial program cuts. Carlton E. Brown, who had spent the prior year as executive vice president and provost — meeting frustrated students in financial-aid lines and talking through a housing crunch — took the helm on August 1. Brown, a self-described institution-builder from Hampton and Savannah State, said of the 1988 merger: 'The idea of building a stronger, bigger, more comprehensive institution... was one of the best things that could happen.' He stabilized the school over seven years before retiring in June 2015.
The university declared a controversial 'enrollment emergency' in 2009, a move that drew national press and alumni anxiety. Yet enrollment beat expectations that year at 3,941 students — the most in the AUC at the time. The episode became a case study in how a public crisis declaration can backfire on perception even when the numbers hold.
The Panthers men's basketball team won the SIAC tournament championship in 2010–11, the school's biggest athletic trophy of the modern era — and repeated the feat in 2016–17 and again in 2023–24. Three conference tournament titles in fourteen years made CAU a periodic power in the SIAC. The titles also punched automatic tickets to the NCAA Division II tournament.
A mid-August fire threatened Gaines Hall — the former North Hall, built in 1869 as the first women's dormitory on a coeducational American campus — nearly razing it. The building survived. That July 1, Ronald A. Johnson, former dean of Texas Southern University's business school and a Stanford Ph.D. economist, became CAU's fourth president, chosen unanimously from more than 100 applicants. He described his first 100 days as 'hectic' and set out to overhaul the curriculum around career competencies.
Tomisha Brock was named CAU's first female band director in June 2017 — and the first woman to lead a band anywhere in the SIAC — arriving when the Mighty Marching Panthers had withered to about six members. She launched an aggressive recruiting campaign with scholarships, aiming for 65 members by fall, under the mantra 'Watch out — The Rebirth.' After her 2017–18 season, Rhonda Harper — who in 2005 became the first Black woman to direct any HBCU band, at Lincoln University in Missouri — served as interim director in 2018–19.
George T. French Jr., a former minister and ex-president of Miles College whose career pivot began at a funeral, became CAU's fifth president in 2019 after a brief acting stint by Lucille H. Maugé. His formal investiture waited out the pandemic until 2022 — held days after he buried his mentor, founding president Thomas Cole. French has pushed research spending toward $100 million, floated the dream of a CAU law school, and was honored at the 2026 convocation for seven years of leadership.
MacKenzie Scott gave CAU $15 million in December 2020 — then the second-largest single gift in school history — followed by $38 million in November 2025, the largest single gift ever, bringing her total to $53 million. Both gifts were unrestricted, a vote of trust French called transformational for academic programs, innovation, campus infrastructure, scholarships, and the endowment. In September 2021 CAU launched a 10-year, $250 million capital campaign for scholarships, research and teaching, campus infrastructure and technology, and endowed chairs and professorships.
CAU beat Morehouse 28–17 in the 'Battle of the Big Cats' at B.T. Harvey Stadium, and with Albany State's Fountain City Classic win over Fort Valley State providing the tiebreaker, the Panthers punched their ticket to the SIAC Championship Game against Miles College. A year later the rivalry produced its highest-scoring game ever: CAU 48, Morehouse 45 — 93 combined points — giving the Panthers their second straight Big Cat Classic. The 2026 edition was rebranded under the ATL HBCU Labor Day Classic.
The oldest and fiercest rivalry — it dates to 1913, when Morehouse shut out Clark University 48-0, and Clark answered with 12 straight wins from 1942 to 1953 (including ten shutouts; the Panthers outscored Morehouse 160-12). The series includes two ties (0-0 in 1934, 7-7 in 1935). Morehouse leads the Clark Atlanta era 21-16, but CAU has taken the last two: 28-17 in 2024's 'Battle of the Big Cats' (which sent the Panthers to the SIAC title game) and 48-45 in 2025 — 93 combined points, the highest-scoring game in series history. The 2026 meeting was branded under the ATL HBCU Labor Day Classic.
A longtime SIAC rival on the field and in the stands — the 2004 Honda Tunnel Battle pitted Tuskegee's Marching Crimson Pipers against the Mighty Marching Panthers. The basketball rivalry is live: Tuskegee beat CAU 70-53 in the 2026 SIAC tournament semifinals on the way to the title game.
SIAC football and band rival — 2025's full game video shows both bands going song-for-song through halftime and the fifth quarter. Fort Valley is woven into CAU's biggest recent moment: Albany State's 2024 Fountain City Classic win over FVSU is what gave the Panthers the tiebreaker into the 2024 SIAC Championship Game.
An SIAC rival whose Marching Rams Show Band trades barbs with the Mighty Marching Panthers — an Andscape photo essay caught CAU's band heckling Albany State's during the Panthers' homecoming game. Albany State also did CAU the decisive favor in 2024, beating Fort Valley State 20-15 to send the Panthers to the conference title game.
🥁 Mighty Marching Panthers · since 1942 (Clark College band lineage under Wayman Carver)
The Mighty Marching Panthers are CAU's most famous face: Drumline (2002) put them on movie screens, and seven Honda Battle of the Bands appearances (2003–2007, 2010–2011) — plus the Ellen DeGeneres Show, the BET Hip Hop Awards, Falcons halftimes, and rallies for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — made them nationally known. After the program collapsed to about six members in 2017, Tomisha Brock, the first woman to direct any SIAC band, began 'The Rebirth,' and the band climbed back past 100 members. The drumline, Essence Dance Team, and Silver Breeze Flag Corps carry the school motto as their own: 'I'll find a way or make one.'
Jazz saxophonist and composer who built the Clark College band program over 25 years; his tenure is the band's recorded origin.
Led the band through the late 1960s transition years.
Directed the Clark College band in the early 1970s.
Led the band into the 1980s, spanning the years before consolidation.
Directed the band across the 1988 consolidation and returned as interim in 2016–17; a 1990 campus paper shows him confident of the band's homecoming spirit even as numbers dipped.
Directed the post-consolidation band in the early 1990s.
Interim director in the late 1990s.
Led the band into the 2000s, through the Drumline filming era and the first Honda Battle of the Bands run.
Directed through the later Honda Battle of the Bands years (2007, 2010–2011).
Interim director in the early 2010s.
Directed the band in the mid-2010s.
First woman to direct CAU's band and the first female band director anywhere in the SIAC. Arrived in June 2017 with the band down to about six members and launched 'The Rebirth' — an aggressive scholarship recruiting drive.
The second Black woman to lead CAU's band — and in 2005 the first Black woman to direct any HBCU band, at Lincoln University in Missouri. Brought decades of St. Louis public-school and college band experience to the rebuild.
Led the band through the pandemic years and the early 2020s rebuild.
Current director, leading the band as it climbed back past 100 members — the revival chronicled in an AJC documentary on the band's mission to dominate HBCU bands in the South.
All nine NPHC organizations are chartered on campus, but Greek life is a small slice of CAU — under 5 percent of students affiliate, per a long-running Atlanta Magazine profile. Social life runs more through the AUC consortium, the marching band, the Essence Dance Team, and 80 student organizations than through the yard.
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Stone Hall — built 1882 on Diamond Hill as Atlanta University's administration building — was designated a National Historic Landmark for its role in Black higher education. Renamed Fountain Hall for Bishop W. A. Fountain after Morris Brown took over the old AU campus, its clock tower remains the AUC's most recognizable silhouette.
Federal grants funded the creation of physics and computer science departments and a chemistry Ph.D., doubling the scientific faculty to 112 and more than doubling science enrollment. An engineering department followed. The buildout is why CAU became — and stayed — the only private HBCU with Carnegie's doctoral research classification.
The AUC's shared Robert W. Woodruff Library was renovated into the consortium's academic and social hub — students call it 'Club Woody.' CAU shares the facility with Spelman, Morehouse, and the rest of the Center.
A mid-August 2015 fire threatened Gaines Hall — the former North Hall, built in 1869 as the first women's dormitory on a coeducational American campus — nearly razing the university's oldest purpose-built building. It survived, and remains the most historically significant structure on CAU's own grounds.
Scott's December 2020 gift — then the second-largest single gift in CAU history — was earmarked for academic programs, innovation initiatives, campus infrastructure, student scholarships, and the endowment. It was unrestricted, a deliberate vote of trust in the school's leadership.
In September 2021 CAU launched a 10-year, $250 million capital campaign: scholarship funds for more low-income students, research and teaching support, campus infrastructure and technology upgrades, and new endowed chairs and professorships.
CAU's Center for Functional Nanoscale Measures (CFNM) became the HBCU that has graduated more Black Ph.D.s in nanoscale science than any other — a concrete product of the research-university bet Thomas Cole made in the 1990s.
The Robert H. 'Bob' Bell Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development (CIED) opened as the campus home for entrepreneurship training, mentoring, business-modeling support, and student innovation programs.
MacKenzie Scott's second gift, $38 million in November 2025, was the largest single donation CAU has ever received and brought her total support to $53 million — the largest private giving in university history. The money continues the unrestricted backing of scholarships, research, and campus renewal.
CAU's faculty bench runs deep in the sciences — the research buildout of the 1990s doubled scientific faculty — and the School of Social Work's graduate program consistently ranks among the nation's top 100. The Isabella T. Jenkins Honors Program anchors the high-achieving undergraduate cohort.
Fifth president (2019–present); former minister and Miles College president; honored at the 2026 convocation for seven years of leadership.
Held the presidency during the transition between Ronald Johnson and George French.
Leads the Mighty Marching Panthers' post-2017 rebirth (2023–present).
Took over the Panthers football program for the 2026 season, per the Morehouse–CAU game notes.
CAU sits inside the Atlanta University Center with Spelman, Morehouse, and Morris Brown a short walk away, so campus life bleeds across the consortium — cross-registration, a shared library, shared parties. The Panther student newspaper, CAU-TV, and the 'Jazz of the City' radio station give media students real outlets, and 80 student organizations fill the calendar. The band's collapse-and-rebirth saga and the Drumline legacy give CAU a pop-culture swagger most schools can't buy.