Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 119

American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, formally opened its doors for the training of Christian workers as the American Baptist Theological Seminary on September 14, 1924. The curriculum contained both degree programs for high school graduates and nondegree programs for training those who had no high school degree. In 1937 the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. agreed to share in the operations of the college. In 1971 it became a four-year graduate Bible college under the name American Baptist College. In 1996 the Southern Baptist Convention withdrew its involvement and turned over the assets to the board of trustees of American Baptist College. The college is not well endowed, but it enrolls passionately committed students who want to make an impact on humanity. This is evidenced in its graduates who participated in the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville: the Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., a divinity student at Vanderbilt University, organized nonviolence workshops where college students were trained; to these workshops were sent young, brilliant, idealistic students from the college by the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith Sr., a popular professor at the seminary and an activist in the Nashville community. Among the leaders of the non-violent sit-in movement in Nashville was the Reverend Bernard Lafayette, former president of American Baptist College.

Helen R. Houston