Born: 1828, United States
Died: 12 November 1909
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Hattie
The following is shared from The New Georgia Encyclopedia, which allows the use of protected materials for noncommercial educational purposes.
Spelman College’s history began on April 11, 1881. With the help of Frank Quarles, pastor of Atlanta’s Friendship Baptist Church, Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles, schoolteachers and Baptist missionaries from New England, started a school in the church’s basement. The school was supported by the Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society and named the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary. With $100 from the First Baptist Church of Medford, Massachusetts, the founders embarked on a noble mission—providing quality education to Black women and girls. Ten women, some of whom were formerly enslaved, and one young girl, eager to acquire basic educational skills, constituted the first student body. The basement soon overflowed, and it became imperative to move to larger and more suitable quarters.
Through the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller, whom Packard and Giles met at a church conference in Cleveland, Ohio, the school was able to relocate from its basement quarters to a nine-acre site once used as army barracks by Union troops during the Civil War. In 1884 the school expressed its gratitude for Rockefeller’s generosity by changing the name of the school to Spelman Seminary in honor of the parents of his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller. The school was legally organized with a charter and a board of trustees in 1888 under the presidency of Packard.
In 1891 Harriet Giles succeeded Sophia Packard and served as president of Spelman for eighteen years. During her tenure the school enrolled 800 students, employed 30 teachers, and owned property valued at $90,000. Curricular offerings expanded to include high school and college programs of instruction, teacher training, missionary training, and nurses’ training. The seminary conferred its first high school diplomas in 1887 and its first college degrees in 1901. Giles’s death on November 12, 1909, marked the end of the era of the founders.
Spelman College has grown from its roots as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary to become one of the nation’s prominent institutions of higher learning in the liberal arts tradition. Spelman’s steadfast commitment to preparing Black women for service and leadership is evident in the more than six generations of Spelman women who have reached the highest levels of academic, community, and professional achievement. Notable among the alumnae are Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund; Ruth A. Davis, director general of the U.S. Foreign Service; Aurelia Brazeal, U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia; physicians Virginia Davis Floyd and Deborah Prothrow-Stith; writers Pearl Cleage and Tina McElroy Ansa; actress LaTanya Richardson; artist Varnette Honeywood; opera singer Mattiwilda Dobbs; and singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the Grammy Award–winning a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock.