Selma, Alabama · Founded 1922 · Hornets (Lady Hornets)
“The only Black Lutheran college in America — founded by a Black woman educator in 1922, kept alive by faith and grit for 96 years, gone by 2018.”
The Magnificent Marching Hornet Band in the streets for the 2018 Mardi Gras parade — the school's final semester, the band still marching.
Selma's band goes head-to-head with Alabama State's Mighty Marching Hornets in a battle of the bands — two Hornet bands, one field.
The official livestream of Concordia College Alabama's 2017 graduation — one of the last commencements before the 2018 closure.
Roland Martin's #HBCUGivingDay spotlight on Concordia College in Selma — a national HBCU fundraising push for the little Lutheran school.
Honda Campus All-Star Challenge teammates Avonne Rice and Jene Matthews share their Concordia love story — a window into student life at Selma.
Trailer for the LCMS documentary on Dr. Rosa J. Young, the educator who founded Concordia College Selma — 'Rosa Parks started a civil-rights revolution. Our Rosa started a spiritual revolution.'
The full LCMS-produced documentary on Rosa J. Young, filmed in Selma on and around the Concordia campus — the definitive film record of the school's founder and her 30 schools and 35 congregations.
unverified: ID embedded in the LCMS Reporter article about the September 2014 Selma filming (page could not be re-opened to confirm); reportedly the Rev. Jon Vieker interviewing the actors playing Rosa Young on the Selma set.
From the Yard's video feed.
From the Yard's video feed.
The school's driving founder and a professor there from 1946–1961; 'mother of Black Lutheranism,' planter of 30 schools and 35 congregations, first woman and first African-American to receive an honorary doctorate from Concordia Theological Seminary.
Former CCA student and administrator; LCMS pastor and interim president 2007–2010; the man Rosa Young once pointed at in her garden and told, 'McNair, you're going to be a pastor.'
Wide receiver out of Tuscaloosa who played college ball at Concordia College, Selma; signed by the Chiefs in 2007 and spent time with the Saints, Panthers, Cowboys, and Jets, plus the CFL's Stampeders and Blue Bombers and the UFL's Las Vegas Locos.
Five-star 'next Randy Moss' recruit at Florida State who starred for Concordia-Selma in 2009–2010 after stops at FSU and UTEP; went on to the Omaha Nighthawks, Calgary Stampeders, and Ottawa Redblacks.
Professional football player; listed among Concordia College Alabama's notable alumni.
Class of 2014 graduate from Sudan who earned two bachelor's degrees — in Business and in Education — in a single commencement; emblem of the school's late-era international student body.
First cadet in the CCA Army ROTC program to accept an Army ROTC college scholarship — a $25,000, 2.5-year award presented by Marion Military Institute's Lt. Col. Greg Wall.
Not one name but the school's truest alumni legacy: 'Most of the pastors went through here,' as McNair Ramsey put it — African-American Lutheran pastors and schoolteachers across the South who trace their calling to Rosa Young's school in Selma.
In 1919, African-American Lutheran congregations across Alabama petitioned the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America for money to open a high school and college that would train church workers. Jim Crow Alabama gave Black children almost no path to an education, and these congregations decided to build one themselves. That petition — not a boardroom, not a wealthy donor — is the real birth certificate of the school.
On November 13, 1922, the first classes of Rosa Young's new school met in a rented cottage at 521 First Avenue in Selma. The concept was initiated by Rosa J. Young, an African-American educator widely remembered as the mother of Black Lutheranism in Alabama. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod sent the Rev. Nils Jules Bakke, a Norwegian-American missionary, to assess the situation; he backed the school, became its first leader, and taught Christian morals and biblical studies. At the founding it had fewer than ten students, two professors, and one staff member.
The Synodical Conference bought 13 acres in northeast Selma for the Alabama Luther College, and a recitation hall — now Bakke Hall — plus a dormitory were built for $36,000 and opened in 1925. The first buildings on the present campus were dedicated September 20, 1925. Those two 1920s buildings would outlast the college itself and land on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage. For a school that started in a borrowed cottage, putting up real buildings in three years was a statement of intent.
The Great Depression hit the little school hard, and the college was forced to close, leaving only the high school, renamed the Alabama Lutheran Academy. It is a testament to how thin the margins always were — one bad economy away from disappearing, over and over. Eventually the college reopened, and the school took the name Alabama Lutheran Academy and College.
During the presidency of the Rev. Edward A. Westcott Sr. (1934–1945), the school again ran into financial and other difficulties and was reduced to high school status. The institution spent this era shrinking and surviving rather than growing. It would take the postwar presidency to rebuild it as a college again.
Under the Rev. Dr. Walter H. Ellwanger (1945–1963), the school returned to being a two-year degree-granting college. His 18-year run gave the institution the longest stretch of stability it had known. Ellwanger's own son, Joseph Ellwanger, would later become a Lutheran pastor in Birmingham and a foot soldier of the 1965 voting-rights movement.
Rosa J. Young, the woman who had driven the school into existence, served as a professor at Concordia from 1946 to 1961. By then she was a legend — the teacher who had planted some 30 schools and helped start 35 congregations across Alabama's Black Belt. Students in those years were taught by the very woman whose 1909 valedictorian speech had declared that to serve was a divine privilege.
In May 1961, Concordia Theological Seminary awarded Rosa Young an honorary doctorate at its commencement service. She was both the first woman and the first African-American to be honored in that way by the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. She retired from the college that same year. It was a fitting capstone for a woman who had never married and had given her entire adult life to Black education.
Rosa J. Young died on June 30, 1971, at the age of 81, and was buried near Christ Lutheran Church in Rosebud, Alabama — in front of the first church she had helped plant — in accordance with her final wishes. Her classroom at Concordia became the seed of the Dr. Rosa J. Young Historical Museum. Her legacy, as the Lutheran Forum later put it, lived on in dozens of second-generation Black LCMS pastors whose roots traced back to the backwoods of Alabama and the college in Selma.
The Rev. Dr. Julius Jenkins became president of Concordia in 1980, beginning a 27-year tenure that would transform the institution. He came from tiny Pine Apple, Alabama, and had grown up poor — he told the Lutheran Witness that his background gave him understanding of Concordia students, many from families earning under $15,000 a year. His mission was blunt: make college accessible and affordable. 'Nobody will graduate from this institution owing a penny,' he said.
On July 1, 1981, the name Alabama Lutheran Academy and College was officially changed to Concordia College, styled Concordia College Alabama. The new name put the school fully into the Concordia University System family of ten LCMS colleges. It marked the end of the 'Academy' identity the school had carried since the Depression.
The college earned accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, a milestone that put its degrees on solid institutional footing. Accreditation would become the school's lifeline — and later its nightmare — as SACS scrutiny repeatedly forced the college to confront its finances.
In 1994, SACS granted Concordia accreditation as a baccalaureate degree-granting institution, completing the long climb from high school to junior college to four-year college. The transformation Jenkins had promised was now official on paper. The school offered five academic divisions with more than 45 majors, with early childhood and elementary education its most sought-after programs.
On June 19, 1997, Bakke Hall and the original Dormitory — the two buildings erected in 1925 for $36,000 — were added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage. The campus's oldest buildings were now officially historic. It was a rare moment of the state honoring what the little Lutheran college had built.
By the mid-2000s, Jenkins had presided over an extraordinary run: enrollment quadrupled from about 200 to more than 900, and two development appeals brought in $19 million — $5 million more than their combined goals — for land acquisition, new buildings, equipment, scholarships, and the school's endowment. His leadership also established the college's first-ever endowment, and a third campaign, 'Expanding the Circle,' aimed at $12 million more. Some 350 guests gathered in May 2005 to honor his 25 years as president, with the LCMS first vice president comparing him to Dr. Martin Luther King.
The college fielded a football team for the first time in 2005, joining its USCAA Independent lineup of baseball, basketball, soccer, softball, track, golf, and volleyball. For a school that had always been about church workers and teachers, football was a bold new identity play. The Hornets played eleven seasons before the money ran out.
Dr. Julius Jenkins retired on July 31, 2007, after 27 years as president — widely admired as an administrator, fundraiser, and recruiter. The Rev. Dr. McNair Ramsey, a former CCA student and administrator, stepped in as interim president. The transition cracked the school's foundation: SACS placed Concordia on probation, citing more than 30 instances of noncompliance with accrediting standards, enrollment nosedived, and a deficit approaching $1 million accumulated.
The Rev. Dr. Tilahun M. Mendedo, a 38-year-old Ethiopian-born pastor from Mobile and Ph.D. in missiology, accepted the call as president and began work January 1, 2010. That same year Concordia acquired the grounds and buildings of the adjacent United Methodist Children's Home, expanding the campus from 22 acres to 57 and adding housing and historic buildings. It was the biggest physical expansion in school history — and, in hindsight, the last.
On June 23, 2011, SACS reaffirmed Concordia's accreditation and removed the 'probation' status it had carried for roughly two years. President Mendedo credited a rebuilt fundraising policy, restructured learning-outcome documentation, and strengthened administrative services. Alumni who had gathered for their annual banquet erupted in cheers when the news was announced. The reprieve bought the school seven more years.
On September 1, 2012, Concordia-Selma traveled to Rice-Totten Stadium in Itta Bena and beat NCAA Division I-FCS Mississippi Valley State 20–19 in front of 3,092 fans — the first time the Hornets had ever defeated the Delta Devils. A 15-yard touchdown strike from Keith Ray to Jeremy Morris, a 36-yard blocked-punt return for a score by Demarcus Heath, and a 15-play, 75-yard fourth-quarter drive sealed it, with an interception at 49 seconds ending Valley's last chance. It remains the signature athletic moment in school history. The same year the college celebrated its 90th anniversary with a homecoming parade, football game, and tailgating on November 3.
The week of September 22, 2014, the LCMS filmed 'The First Rosa,' a docudrama about Rosa J. Young, in and around Rosebud and Selma — including on the Concordia campus where Young had taught. The film premiered June 4–5, 2015, during the LCMS Southern District convention, on the very grounds where Young spent the last 15 years of her career. A complimentary DVD was later sent to every LCMS congregation in America, carrying the Selma story nationwide.
From March 1–8, 2015, the college hosted its third annual Civil Rights Symposium, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches — with a gospel concert by the CCA choir, a drama team production, a screening of Disney's 'Selma, Lord, Selma,' and former Alabama Lutheran Academy students sharing their 'Recollections of '65.' That December, the board voted to end football: the program cost more than $500,000 a year in travel, equipment, and expenses. The roughly 80 scholarship players were allowed to finish their college careers on scholarship if they kept their grades up — the same month Stillman College also killed its football program.
Dr. James E. Lyons — a veteran who had led Bowie State, Jackson State, and Cal State Dominguez Hills — became interim president and chief transition officer in May 2017, after Tilahun Mendedo's resignation. Fall enrollment stood at just 445 students, more than 90 percent Black and more than 90 percent Pell-eligible. The school's 2017 commencement was livestreamed, a small digital trace of a college running out of time.
In February 2018, the college announced it would close at the end of the spring semester after a multi-year effort to stay open. The LCMS said 'with great sadness' that since July 2006, CCA alone had received more than 44 percent of the total subsidy given to all ten Concordia University System campuses — some $5.2 million over the past decade from the Synod — yet could not achieve sustainable financial performance. Officials said they needed a cash infusion of $8 million they could not find, and that raising tuition on their overwhelmingly low-income students was not an option. About 400 students and 100 employees were affected.
After three days of celebration and remembrance — including a Legacy/Candlelight service on April 27 where students released balloons in thanksgiving for 96 years — the 147 members of the final graduating class received their diplomas on April 28, 2018, in the Julius and Mary Jenkins Center. It was the school's 92nd and final commencement. Among the graduates: a 70-year-old woman, students from African countries, and Linzell Tucker, who led the choir. The college organized a transfer fair with 41 colleges and universities so every student who was 'ready, willing and able' could continue elsewhere.
After the closure, the Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis retrieved and cataloged the school's documents and artifacts: several boxes of student records, an interview with Dr. Rosa Young, the academic mace, trophies won by the women's basketball team, and a hand-carved chess set used by students in the Learning Resource Center. The boxes included early-20th-century records from Immanuel Lutheran College in Greensboro, N.C., which Concordia-Selma had taken in when Immanuel closed in 1961. The paper memory of the school now lives in Missouri.
On January 3, 2019, Dr. Paul J. Kim, a Korean minister, signed paperwork to purchase the campus. He announced plans to open a 'mission retreat center' modeled on Yoido Full Gospel Church's Prayer Mountain in Korea, and a 'contemporary music university' within two years. The 57-acre campus that Rosa Young's dream built — 96 years of classes, choirs, bands, and graduations — passed into new hands.
unverified: no named rivalry game could be confirmed. Concordia-Selma competed as a USCAA Independent with no conference foes; its football schedule ran through one-off opponents — Mississippi Valley State (the famous 2012 upset), Bethel, Southern Virginia, Fort Valley State, Virginia-Lynchburg. No published source documents a recurring rivalry, named or otherwise, including with cross-town Selma University.
🥁 Magnificent Marching Hornet Band
The Magnificent Marching Hornet Band was one of the school's signature traditions: skilled choreography, unique uniforms, and a high-step marching style, with percussion carried on straps rather than front-centered carriers so the drummers could dance as they played — pure HBCU style. The band marched the 2018 Mardi Gras parade in the school's final semester and once faced off against Alabama State's Mighty Marching Hornets in a battle of the bands. The Concordia Choir was the other pillar of campus arts, performing both classical pieces and African-American gospel hymns.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
No Greek-letter organizations; no published records of fraternities or sororities at Concordia College Alabama (closed 2018) could be found — checked the Encyclopedia of Alabama, LCMS Reporter archive, school catalogs, and all nine Divine Nine national rosters. A small, church-run college of 400–650 students, its student life centered on chapel, choir, and the band rather than Greek life.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
A recitation hall (now Bakke Hall) and a dormitory were erected for $36,000 and opened in 1925, with the first buildings on the present campus dedicated September 20, 1925. They replaced the rented cottage on First Avenue and gave the school a permanent home in northeast Selma.
On June 19, 1997, Bakke Hall and the original Dormitory were added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage. The 1925 buildings that launched the campus were officially recognized as historic — 72 years after they went up.
Two development appeals under Julius Jenkins brought in $19 million — $5 million beyond their combined goals — funding land acquisition, new buildings and equipment, scholarships, and the school's first endowment. A third campaign, 'Expanding the Circle,' aimed at $12 million more for endowment, scholarships, technology, and capital improvements.
Concordia acquired the grounds and buildings of the adjacent United Methodist Children's Home, expanding the campus from 22 acres to 57 and adding housing and historic buildings. It was the largest physical expansion in school history — and the last.
A one-room museum to Dr. Rosa J. Young was maintained in the classroom where she actually taught religion as a faculty member. Gracie Hollins — who had worked at the college for over 41 years and knew Young personally — became its part-time volunteer curator in 2010. The museum held photos, proclamations, letters, and an original copy of Young's 1930 autobiography, 'Light in the Dark Belt.'
The residence hall where Rosa Young herself lived in an apartment during her later years on campus. Gracie Hollins, then in her early twenties and just starting her career, remembered sitting on a bench outside with the tiny, formidable educator, who called her 'Cuz.' Construction year not verified in published sources.
The campus center named for President Julius Jenkins and his wife, which hosted the school's 92nd and final commencement on April 28, 2018 — 147 graduates receiving the last diplomas Concordia would ever award. Construction year not verified in published sources.
The campus learning hub whose hand-carved chess set and timer — used regularly by students — were recovered by the Concordia Historical Institute after the closure, along with the academic mace and women's basketball trophies. Construction year not verified in published sources.
Concordia's Army ROTC was a satellite program of Marion Military Institute with more than 25 cadets. At closure the college employed about 100 people; interim president James Lyons praised faculty and staff who 'have gone into their own pockets when they've needed to' and 'taken in students and worked with them as their own children.'
Worked at Concordia for over 41 years in various positions; knew Rosa Young personally when Young lived in Rosa Young Hall. Took over as the museum's part-time volunteer curator in 2010.
Ran the school's freshman support programs through the accreditation battles; recalled the alumni banquet erupting in cheers when SACS lifted probation in 2011.
Led the academic processional as College Marshal at the 88th commencement in 2014, carrying the college's colors for a class that included students from Haiti, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
Administered the oath of office when Cadet Malashia Chandler became the first CCA ROTC cadet to accept an Army ROTC college scholarship, and presented her $25,000/2.5-year award.
Concordia-Selma felt less like a typical college and more like a mission that happened to grant degrees. Students were mostly low-income Black Southerners — over 90 percent Pell-eligible at the end — plus international students from Haiti, Ethiopia, Sudan, and a dozen countries. Chapel was non-negotiable, the choir and band were the social center of campus, and the whole school sat in the middle of Selma, where the 1965 marches happened, which made civil-rights remembrance a living part of campus life rather than a history lesson.