Atlanta, Georgia · Founded 1867 · Maroon Tigers
“The House that built Black leaders — 159 years of turning young Black men into consequential men, from a church basement in Augusta to the center of the civil rights movement.”
February 16, 2021 — the first HBCU band ever to perform at an LA Kings game, and the first time 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' was played at a Kings game (arranged by Shaw and Sir Wick).
HBCU Gameday's 2016 inside look at House of Funk band camp with the Mahogany-N-Motion danceline — the definitive band documentary short.
The House of Funk's halftime performance vs. Miles College in Atlanta — classic home-game show footage.
House of Funk at the inaugural HBCU New York Football Classic vs. Howard at MetLife Stadium, in 4K.
Fan vlog of the 2025 HBCU NY Classic — House of Funk and Mahogany-N-Motion at MetLife, plus the 'Dear Old Morehouse' hymn.
House of Funk's halftime show at the Tuskegee–Morehouse Classic, posted by the band's own account (@morehouseband).
The other half of the classic — Tuskegee's band at the 2022 Morehouse-Tuskegee Classic in Birmingham.
The 2021 classic's OutKast-themed halftime show in Birmingham — a famous recent edition of the rivalry.
House of Funk halftime at the 2026 season-opening Natural State Kickoff Classic vs. Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Fifth-quarter band battle vs. UAPB's M4 at the 2026 Natural State Kickoff Classic.
House of Funk and Mahogany-N-Motion at the 2024 Chicago Football Classic.
2010 band footage — House of Funk ('Throw It Up') vs. Fort Valley State in a classic SIAC band matchup.
Civil rights leader; 'I Have a Dream'; Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Filmmaker — Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, School Daze (shot on campus)
Actor; one of the highest-grossing film stars in history
First Black mayor of Atlanta
U.S. Senator from Georgia; senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church
Civil rights leader, SNCC communications director, NAACP chairman
Two-time Olympic gold medalist, 400m hurdles; the only alumnus with Olympic gold
U.S. Surgeon General (1998–2002)
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (1989–1993)
Businessman (Godfather's Pizza CEO), 2012 presidential candidate
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security (2013–2017)
Congressman; White House senior advisor and director of public engagement
Long-serving U.S. Congressman from Georgia
Bank of America chairman; ninth president of Morehouse
Theologian, mystic, and mentor to King; dean at Howard and Boston University
Senior editor of Ebony and Jet; author of Before the Mayflower
Rapper; founder of Gang Starr
Grammy-winning Maroon 5 keyboardist and solo artist
Actor — Atlanta, Emmy nominee
Actor — BlacKkKlansman, Tenet
MLB first baseman; 1969 World Series MVP
Morehouse's first Rhodes Scholar (1994) — the first HBCU Rhodes Scholar
Actor — School Daze, Mo' Better Blues, New Jack City
Princeton professor and bestselling author on race and democracy
On February 14, 1867 — Valentine's Day, two years after the Civil War — the Augusta Institute opened in the basement of Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, the oldest independent Black church in the United States. Its founders were Rev. William Jefferson White, a formerly enslaved Black minister and cabinetmaker; Rev. Richard C. Coulter, a former slave from Atlanta; and Rev. Edmund Turney, an organizer of the National Theological Institute for educating freedmen in Washington, D.C. Backed by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, the school's mission was blunt and radical for Reconstruction: educate Black men, train ministers, and build leadership — because during Reconstruction the Black church was the center of political leadership, literacy, and community organization. White's half-brother, James E. Tate, was one of the founders of Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), tying the two schools' bloodlines together from the start.
The Rev. Joseph T. Robert, an anti-slavery Baptist minister from South Carolina and an 1828 graduate of Brown University, became the institute's first president, serving until 1884. Robert raised the money, taught the classes, and stabilized an institution that had almost nothing but a mission. He is the father of Brigadier General Henry Martyn Robert, author of Robert's Rules of Order — a small footnote that still surfaces in trivia rooms. His tenure proved the school could survive Reconstruction's collapse and keep its doors open. Robert Hall, the college's first residence hall, was named for him.
The institute moved from Augusta to Atlanta and changed its name to the Atlanta Baptist Seminary. The school acquired a four-acre campus in downtown Atlanta and began to grow beyond its ministry-only origins. The move put the school at the center of the South's largest Black city and its rising Black professional class. Samuel T. Graves became the second president in 1885, the same year the seminary relocated to its present West End location on land given by Baptist industrialist John D. Rockefeller. Graves Hall, built in the 1880s and once the tallest building in Atlanta, is named for him.
George Sale became the school's third president in 1890 and led the seminary through a decade of steady growth. Sale Hall, built to hold classrooms, was named for him and today houses the religion and philosophy departments. His tenure kept the school's academic footing solid through the hard economics of the 1890s South. The small auditorium on Sale Hall's second floor, the Chapel of the Inward Journey, was once used for religious and commencement proceedings. Today that chapel hosts recitals, pageants, and student government election debates.
The school was renamed Atlanta Baptist College, signaling its shift from a seminary into a full liberal arts college. The name change matched what was actually happening in the classrooms — the curriculum was widening beyond theology. In 1899, William E. Holmes, the school's first African-American faculty member, left to become the first president of Central City College in Macon, Georgia, a marker of how the school was now producing educators who led other institutions. The college kept growing its footprint and its ambitions. The old name would last sixteen more years.
John Hope became the first African-American president of the college and led it until 1931, driving growth in enrollment and academic stature. Hope deliberately envisioned an academically rigorous college that stood as the antithesis of Booker T. Washington's vision of agricultural and trade-focused education for Black Americans. He wanted Morehouse men trained to lead, think, and argue — not just to work. The school's debate team claims a 1906 founding, the same year Hope took office, which fits the culture he built. Hope Hall, originally the Science Building, is named for him.
Music professor Kemper Harreld founded the Morehouse College Glee Club in 1911, and it would become one of the most celebrated all-male collegiate choral ensembles in the world. The Glee Club later sang at Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral — King himself had sung in the club as an undergraduate — and at President Jimmy Carter's inauguration. It performed the National Anthem with Natalie Cole at Super Bowl XXVIII and sang at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics alongside Stevie Wonder, Gloria Estefan, and Trisha Yearwood. The club has appeared on the soundtracks of Spike Lee's School Daze, Miracle at St. Anna, and Red Hook Summer, and performs regularly with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Atlanta Baptist College was renamed Morehouse College in honor of the Rev. Henry Lyman Morehouse, corresponding secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, who had long organized Rockefeller money and the Society's support for the school. The renaming marked the school's full arrival as a liberal arts college with national backing. The name has carried ever since — 'the House,' as alumni call it. A century later the college would celebrate the 1913 renaming as one of its defining milestones. The choice of a white Baptist benefactor's name for a Black institution still tells the story of Reconstruction-era funding: Black vision, Northern missionary money.
Morehouse entered into a cooperative agreement with Clark College and Spelman College, an arrangement that later expanded into the Atlanta University Center consortium — today the largest and oldest consortium of historically Black colleges in the world. The AUC now includes Clark Atlanta University, Spelman, Morris Brown College, the Interdenominational Theological Center, and the Morehouse School of Medicine. The schools share the Robert W. Woodruff Library and allow cross-registration, so Morehouse men take classes across the street with Spelman women every day. The partnership defines daily life on the West End campus. It also created the shared social world — AUC homecomings, SpelHouse culture — that the schools are famous for.
Samuel H. Archer became the fifth president of the college in 1931 and chose the school colors — maroon and white — to reflect his own alma mater, Colgate University. Archer Hall, which holds the gym, swimming pool, and game room, is named for him. His presidency carried the college through the Great Depression, when Black colleges faced brutal financial pressure. Charles D. Hubert served as acting president from 1938 to 1940 between Archer and Benjamin Mays; Hubert Hall, a freshman dorm, is named for him. Archer's end year is not pinned down in the sources consulted.
The tradition of crowning Miss Maroon & White began in 1936, with Juanita Maxie Ponder of Spelman College winning the first crown. Each spring, Spelman and Clark Atlanta juniors compete through a formal campaign and pageant, and only Morehouse students vote on the winner — the young woman judged the ideal counterpart for a Morehouse Man. She and her two attendants serve as official Morehouse ambassadors for the year. It is the longest continuously active pageant title in the Atlanta University Center. The tradition captures the social bond between Morehouse and its sister school across the street.
Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays became president in 1940 and served until 1967, the most consequential presidency in the school's history. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bates College with graduate degrees from the University of Chicago, Mays was the mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. and presided over growth in international enrollment and the school's global academic reputation. He gave rise to what alumni call the 'Morehouse Mystique' — the idea that a Morehouse Man moves through the world with competence, confidence, and a duty to his people. Mays was also the founding advisor to Psi Chapter of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. His Tuesday-morning chapel speeches shaped generations of students; he is buried on campus in front of Graves Hall, where a statue of him stands over the graves of him and his wife, Sadie Gray Mays, with a time capsule set to open in May 2095.
Martin Luther King Jr. graduated from Morehouse in 1948 with a degree in sociology, entering at age 15 and leaving shaped by Benjamin Mays's chapel talks. King sang in the Glee Club as an undergraduate and wrote for the student newspaper, The Maroon Tiger. The college's 2013 sesquicentennial-year celebrations marked the 50th anniversary of his 'I Have a Dream' speech at the 1963 March on Washington and the 50th anniversary of his 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.' Today a bronze statue of King stands at the eastern portion of the main entrance plaza of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. Morehouse holds a 10,000-piece collection of King's original documents — the King Collection, valued by the Library of Congress at $28–30 million — purchased for $32 million by private Atlanta donors in 2006 when the family planned to auction it.
Through the 1960s, Morehouse students became deeply involved in the civil rights movement in Atlanta, marching, sitting in, and organizing alongside students from Spelman and the other AUC schools. The campus sat at the center of the Atlanta movement, and Mays's speeches gave students a moral framework for the work. Alumni of the era — Julian Bond among them — carried the school's name into the national movement's leadership. The decade cemented Morehouse's identity as a school that produces not just graduates but consequential men. The 'Morehouse Man' ideal was forged in this era: excellence in the classroom, courage in the streets.
Dr. Hugh M. Gloster became the seventh president in 1967 and served twenty years. In 1968, Morehouse became the third HBCU to establish a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Gloster launched a dual-degree engineering program with Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan, and Boston University. In 1975 he established the Morehouse School of Medicine — which became an independent institution, separate from the college, in 1981 (it is covered under its own profile, slug morehouse-med). Gloster is buried in the eastern lawn of the administration building that bears his name. The Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel, built in 1978, shares the Gloster name.
Alumnus Walter E. Massey became the ninth president in 1995, after Leroy Keith Jr.'s 1987–1994 tenure. Massey ran the school's largest-ever capital campaign to that point — a $105 million goal that closed at $120 million — and new buildings rose across campus while others were massively upgraded. The Walter E. Massey Leadership Center, completed in 2005, houses the Business Administration and Economics departments and is named for him. The Shirley A. Massey Executive Conference Center is named for his wife, the ninth president's first lady. Massey insisted on living on campus with his family to be visible to students, a gesture students still talk about.
Atlanta's 1996 Summer Olympics left a permanent mark on the campus. The 5,700-seat Franklin L. Forbes Arena was built for the Games and is now the main gym for Morehouse basketball, hosting the 2018 NCAA Division II South Region Championship and the 2018 McDonald's All American Dunk Contest. Brazeal Hall (built 1991) and Perdue Hall housed Olympic athletes during the Games. The arena is named for Frank Forbes, the former Morehouse athletic director and basketball coach. It has since hosted President Barack Obama and presidential hopefuls Stacey Abrams, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden.
In June 2006, Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin announced that private Atlanta donors had bought Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers for $32 million — a pre-auction bid that stopped the family's planned public auction. The 10,000-piece King Collection, including King's 1964 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, was valued by the Library of Congress at $28–30 million. Coca-Cola donated a $10 million land parcel to help build the civil rights museum project meant to house the documents for research and public access. That same year Morehouse graduated 540 men, the largest class in its history. The papers purchase was a statement about who gets to keep Black history.
On May 16, 2008, Joshua Packwood became the first white valedictorian to graduate in the school's 141-year history — a milestone covered nationally by CNN. That August, Morehouse welcomed 920 new students (770 freshmen and 150 transfers), one of the largest entering classes in school history. The moment tested and confirmed the school's identity: an institution founded for Black men, confident enough in its mission to honor excellence wherever it comes from. Packwood's achievement drew national conversation about what HBCUs are for. The school kept growing.
The Ray Charles Performing Arts Center and Aretha Robinson Music Academic Building — a 76,000-square-foot facility — was dedicated on September 29, 2010. The Emma & Joe Adams concert hall is named after Ray Charles's longtime manager and his wife; Joe Adams, president of the Ray Charles Foundation, played a major fundraising role in the building's construction. The center gave the music program, including the House of Funk and the Glee Club, a real home. It was the school's last major construction for over a decade. The building anchors the performing arts side of the campus.
Morehouse celebrated a stack of historic milestones in 2013: one hundred years since Atlanta Baptist College became Morehouse College, the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, the 50th anniversary of the 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' and the 25th anniversary of the 'A Candle in the Dark' Gala, the annual scholarship fundraiser honoring world leaders. In May, President Barack Obama delivered the 129th Commencement address — the first sitting president in 75 years to give a commencement speech in Georgia — and received an honorary Doctor of Laws. Presidents Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter also hold honorary doctorates from Morehouse after giving commencement speeches. The year was a full-throated claim on the school's place in American history.
At the 135th commencement ceremony in May 2019, billionaire Robert F. Smith — there to receive an honorary degree — stunned the graduating class by promising to pay off the student loan debt of every spring 2019 graduate, about $34 million including parent loans. It was one of the largest single donations from a living donor to an HBCU in history. The announcement, delivered live to graduates and their families, became a national story about student debt and Black wealth. A month earlier, in April 2019, the college had announced it would begin admitting transgender men in 2020. Oprah Winfrey, whose scholarship fund has supported more than 400 Morehouse men since 1990, added $13 million to the program that same year, bringing her total to $25 million.
In June 2020, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $40 million for scholarships — one of the largest single donations in HBCU history and the largest ever for Morehouse. A month later, MacKenzie Scott gave $20 million. The two gifts landed weeks apart and transformed the school's scholarship capacity; about 80% of Morehouse students receive financial aid. In February 2021 the school launched its online degree completion program for adult learners, and later that month its first online certificate course focused on athletics and social activism. In January 2022 Morehouse established the Black Men's Research Institute, the first research institute of its kind focused on cultural, economic, personal, and social outcomes for Black men. In February 2022 the college launched a $500 million capital campaign for scholarships, infrastructure, research, and faculty.
In September 2022, Morehouse met Howard at MetLife Stadium in the inaugural HBCU New York Football Classic, bringing HBCU football — and both bands, Howard's 'Showtime' and Morehouse's 'House of Funk' — to the New York metro area on CNBC. The House of Funk played a 'zero quarter' set before kickoff, battled Howard's band at halftime, and played postgame. The classic put the Maroon Tigers on a national stage in the country's biggest media market. It was the kind of exposure the school's founders could not have imagined from a church basement. The classic has continued with Morehouse as a regular feature.
In July 2025, Dr. F. DuBois Bowman '92 — a biostatistician, dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, member of the National Academy of Medicine, and Omega Psi Phi brother — became the 13th president, succeeding David A. Thomas (2018–2025). Bowman, a two-time Morehouse parent and Bennie Trailblazer Award recipient, returned as a homecoming: 'the honor of a lifetime,' he called it. His arrival coincided with the school's first major construction in over two decades: a five-story, 324-bed, 88,000-square-foot residence hall broken ground during the 158th anniversary weekend, part of the Campus of the Future capital campaign. The college also closed financing on a first-ever $147 million co-ed housing facility with Spelman College (305 units, 793 beds, opening fall 2028) and announced a new campus center. In fall 2025 the school named its sixth Rhodes Scholar — the most of any HBCU — and Morehouse won four SIAC championships and the SIAC Men's Commissioner's Cup.
The series began in 1902; the classic format in Columbus, Georgia dates to 1936 — the 2019 meeting was the 84th. Played at A.J. McClung Memorial Stadium in Columbus, it is one of the oldest Black college football rivalries in the country. The 2026 edition kicks off October 3 in Montgomery, Alabama, on ESPN+. The House of Funk and Tuskegee's Marching Crimson Pipers turn halftime into its own event — the 2021 classic featured an OutKast-themed show.
The rivalry dates to 1900 — Maroon Tigers vs. Panthers, two AUC schools sharing the same few blocks of Atlanta. Long played as the Big Cat Classic; the 2025 edition was a 48–45 Morehouse loss, the highest-scoring game in rivalry history (93 combined points), with Morehouse's QB setting every major single-season passing record in the school book. In 2026 the matchup becomes the inaugural ATL Labor Day Classic at B.T. Harvey Stadium on September 5, launched by Morehouse alumni Jerry Freeman and DeVonn Baker (Kappa Alpha Psi line brothers, class of 1991) through 91 Sixty Seven Sports & Entertainment — a full weekend of Yard Fest, fan zones, and live entertainment aimed at making it a permanent HBCU calendar fixture.
Since 2022, Morehouse has met Howard at MetLife Stadium in the HBCU New York Football Classic — MEAC vs. SIAC in the New York metro area, televised on CNBC. The bands are half the show: Howard's 'Showtime' and the House of Funk play a pregame 'zero quarter,' battle at halftime, and play postgame. The 2025 edition drew alumni vloggers, Mahogany-N-Motion, and the 'Dear Old Morehouse' hymn at MetLife. A newer rivalry, but the band battle gives it real heat.
🥁 House of Funk Marching Band · since 1950
The House of Funk — roughly 110 members, historically a volunteer organization — is known for halftime shows that fuse rap, pop, swing, and traditional marching literature with innovative drill. The band played Super Bowl XXVIII, the Today Show, Atlanta Falcons home games, the 2013 NCAA Men's National Championship halftime show, and a national Capital One commercial with alumnus Samuel L. Jackson. On February 16, 2021, the band became the first HBCU band to perform at an LA Kings hockey game — and the first to have 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' played at a Kings game. The band marches with Spelman's Maroon Mystique color guard and its own danceline, Mahogany-N-Motion. Founding date and pre-2014 directors are not verified in the sources consulted.
Director of bands since 2014 — marching, concert, and jazz bands, plus trombone, euphonium, orchestration, and history of jazz. Detroit native, acclaimed composer (Symphonic Suite No.1 won the Columbia Summer Winds competition), trombonist who has performed with Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, Kid Rock, and Martha Reeves, and arranger for Pharoahe Monch and Young RJ. Carries the House of Funk's national profile: Super Bowl-era legacy shows, the LA Kings game, and the HBCU New York Football Classic.
Morehouse is fraternities only — it's an all-male college, so no sorority chapters. About three percent of students are active in the NPHC (per Wikipedia). The Greek scene is real but smaller than the school's class-brotherhood identity: the Glee Club, the Maroon Tiger band, and the 'Morehouse Man' network carry the culture. Omega Psi Phi's Psi chapter (chartered April 7, 1922) remains the yard's deepest Greek root, with Benjamin Mays as founding advisor. Kappa Alpha Psi's 1991 Morehouse line produced Jerry Freeman and DeVonn Baker, the alumni behind the ATL Labor Day Classic.
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A first-ever $147 million co-educational residential facility serving both Morehouse and Spelman students, financed through Radnor Property Group and the Madrone Community Development Foundation with bonds issued by the Development Authority of Fulton County. The 450,000-square-foot building at 850 West End Avenue — directly across from B.T. Harvey Stadium — holds 305 apartment-style units with 793 beds, a 24-hour staffed lobby, fitness center, rooftop terrace, dog run, and central green space. One of the largest collaborative investments in Atlanta University Center history; students move in fall 2028.
Five-story, 324-bed, 88,000-square-foot residence hall with green spaces, lounges, technology rooms, and labs, broken ground during the 158th anniversary weekend under President David A. Thomas. Part of the Campus of the Future capital campaign; the college earmarked $170 million of its $500 million campaign for the project. The school's first new construction since the Ray Charles Center in 2010. A new campus center is also in the plan.
76,000-square-foot performing arts center and music academic building dedicated September 29, 2010. The Emma & Joe Adams concert hall is named for Ray Charles's longtime manager and his wife; Adams, president of the Ray Charles Foundation, drove the fundraising. Gave the House of Funk and the Glee Club a real home.
Completed in 2005 and named for the ninth president. Houses the Business Administration and Economics departments, the Bonner Office of Community Service, a 500-seat auditorium, and an executive conference center.
Apartment, studio, and suite dwellings built in 2003 and renamed in spring 2006 for Otis Moss Jr., class of 1956, former chair of the board of trustees.
The chemistry building, named for board chairman Charles E. Merrill Jr., underwent a renovation in the 2000s that doubled its size. Its new corridor is the John Hopps Technology Tower, housing Computer Science and the IT office.
5,700-seat arena built for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, now the main gym for Morehouse basketball and a year-round events venue. Named for former athletic director and basketball coach Frank Forbes. Hosted the 2018 NCAA Division II South Region Championship and the 2018 McDonald's All American Dunk Contest, plus President Obama, Stacey Abrams, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden.
Residence hall built around the 1996 Summer Olympics; housed Olympic athletes during the Games.
Dormitory built in 1991 that housed athletes during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Originally for upperclassmen, now a freshman dorm.
Erected in 1987 and known as 'Bio-Chem' — built for the Biology and Chemistry departments, now holding Biology. Named for distinguished science professors Samuel M. Nabrit, Frederick Mapp, and Henry McBay.
9,000-seat stadium built in 1983 — at the time, the largest on-campus stadium at any private HBCU in the nation. The track is named for Edwin Moses, the only alumnus to win an Olympic gold medal.
Built in 1978 as the new auditorium and administration building, replacing Sale and Harkness halls. Home to the Gandhi–King–Ikeda Reconciliation Institute. A bronze statue of King stands at the eastern end of the entrance plaza; an obelisk honoring theologian Howard Thurman — holding his and his wife's remains — stands at the western end.
Historic faculty include Kemper Harreld (founded the Glee Club, 1911), sociologist E. Franklin Frazier (Black Bourgeoisie), chemist Henry Cecil McBay (Norton and Herty prizes), and historian Alton Hornsby Jr. (42 years on faculty). The Maroon Tiger student newspaper, founded 1898 as The Athenaeum, counts Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Dent, Lerone Bennett Jr., and Vann R. Newkirk II among contributors.
Biostatistician and former University of Michigan public health dean; took office July 15, 2025.
Leads the House of Funk, concert bands, and jazz band since 2014; composer and trombonist.
Leading the Glee Club since 1987 — nearly four decades shaping one of the world's most celebrated all-male choirs.
Religion professor and Fulbright Scholar; founded the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Community Builders Prize.
Former NFL receiver; second-year coach in 2025 when QB records fell in the Big Cat Classic. Brad Sherrod takes over for 2026.
About 2,250 students, 70% from outside Georgia, roughly 60% living on campus across 10 residence halls — and about 80% on financial aid. Daily life runs on the AUC: cross-registration with Spelman and Clark Atlanta, shared library, shared social world. The campus culture is brotherhood-forward — orientation leaders, the Glee Club, the House of Funk, and the Maroon Tiger network carry more weight than Greek life. The dress code and the Five Wells give the place a deliberate, old-school formality that students either love or argue about. SpelHouse homecoming is one of Black college culture's signature weekends.