The Balck Ivies, Howard, Morehouse, & Spelman

There has been a lot of talk about the Ivies in the blogshpere, so I thought I would be proud and speak of the black ivies. Yes there are such things in the black community as Ivy League Universities that are not Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Most of you will have heard of the universities that I am about to speak of. While students of all races are welcomed at these universities, they are still predominately black. While there are other notable black universities, such as Grambling, and Hampton University, the three outlined in this post are the more prevalent.



I chose this photo to show the diversity at Howard University. Howard was established by a charter in 1867, and much of its early funding came from endowment, private benefaction, and tuition. An annual congressional appropriation administered by the Secretary of the Interior funded the school. From its outset it, was nonsectarian and open to both sexes and all races. Howard has graduate schools of, Pharmacy, Law, Medicine, dentistry, and divinity, in addition to the undergraduate program. For its dedication to professionalism and its coveted education, Howard has been nicknamed "the Black Harvard."

Notable Alumni: Actor Ossie Davis Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall Roberta Flack Debbie Allen

Morehouse College is a private, all-male, historically black college located in Atlanta, Georgia. It is one of four remaining traditional men's colleges in the United States. 1867, two years after the end of the civil war, the Augusta Institute was founded by William Jefferson White, an Augusta Baptist minister and cabinetmaker. With the support of Rev. C Coulter a former slave from Augusta Georgia. In 1879, the institute moved to the basement of the Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta and changed it's name to Atlanta Baptist Seminary. Later the seminary gained a four acre campus in downtown Atlanta in 1885. Dr. John Hope became the first Afro-American president in 1906 and lead the institutions growth in size and academic stature.

Notable Alumni: Dr. Martin Luther King, JR. Spike Lee U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses Congressman Sanford Bishop Samuel L Jackson

1881, founded as Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary by Sophia B. Packard and Herriet E Giles.
School opens April 11th, in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church, the Rev. Frank Quarles, pastor. 1884, the name changes to Spelman Seminary in honor of Mrs. Laura Spelman Rockefeller and her parents Harvey Buel and Lucy Henry Spelman, longtime activist in the antislavery movement.

Notable Alumni:
KEISHA KNIGHT-PULLIAM (C’2001) – Actress; Played the role of Rudy Huxtable on the ‘80s television hit, The Cosby Show.

STEPHANIE SCOTT (C’98) – Associate Beauty Editor for ESSENCE magazine.

LAURIE CUMBO (C’97) – Founder and Director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art (MoCADA), Brooklyn, New York 's first and only museum with a focus on the art, culture and history of African Americans and the African Diaspora; ESSENCE magazine referred to her as a "one-woman art world tour de force" in a February 2001 profile.
GERTRUDE FISHER ANDERSON (High School, 1912) - Started the Nanette Candy Company in Birmingham, AL in 1933. Before closing the business in 1954, the company made over $100,000 yearly and produced 800 to 1,000 pounds of candy daily. Nanette Candies was known nationally and articles about the business appeared in Ebony, Crisis, Journal of Negro Business, and the Journal of Negro History.