Spelman Seminary Founded as First HBCU for Black Women

Spelman Seminary — later Spelman College — was founded on April 11, 1881 in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta by Sophia Packard and Harriet Giles with support from formerly enslaved women. It became the first college in the United States established specifically to provide higher education for Black women, and remains the most prestigious historically Black women's college in the country.