This will give Atlanta three rather important colleges, since she already has the technical branch of the University of Georgia, the main establishment of which located at Athens, Georgia, is one of the oldest state universities in the country, having been founded in 1801. (The University of Tennessee is the oldest state university in the South.  It was founded in 1794.  The University of Pennsylvania, dating from 1740, is the oldest of all state universities.  Harvard, founded in 1636, was the first college established in the country; and the only other American colleges which survive from the seventeenth century are William and Mary, at Williamsburg, Virginia, established in 1693, and St. John’s College, at Annapolis, dating from 1696.)

There is a tendency in some parts of the South to use the terms “college” and “university” loosely.  Some schools for white persons, doing little if anything more than grammar and high-school work, are called “colleges,” and negro institutions doing similar work are sometimes grandiloquently termed “universities.”

Atlanta has thirteen public schools for negroes, but no public high school for them.  There are, however, six large private educational institutions for negroes in the city, doing high-school, college, or graduate work, making Atlanta a great colored educational center.  Of these, Atlanta University, a non-sectarian co-educational college with a white president (Mr. Edward T. Ware, whose father came from New England and founded the institution in 1867), is, I believe, the oldest and largest.  It is very highly spoken of.  Atlanta and Clark Universities are the only two colored colleges in Atlanta listed in the “World Almanac’s” table of American universities and colleges.  Clark also has a white man as president.

Spelman Seminary, a Baptist institution for colored girls, has a white woman president, and is partially supported by Rockefeller money.  Morehouse College, for boys, has a colored president, an able man, is of similar denomination and is also partially supported by Rockefeller funds.  Spelman and Morehouse are run separately, excepting in college work, on which they combine.  Both are said to be excellent.  Morris Brown University is not a university at all, but does grammar and high-school work.  It is officered and supported by colored people, all churches of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination subscribing funds for its maintenance.  Gammon Theological Seminary is, I am informed, the one adequately endowed educational establishment for negroes in Atlanta.  It would, of course, be a splendid thing if the best of these schools and colleges could be combined.