Untold Stories.
Unending Struggles.
Unlimited Possibilities.

In 1924, on a bend of the Cumberland River, the Black National Baptist Convention and the white Southern Baptist Convention did something no one expected: they built a school together. American Baptist College was designed to train Black ministers in the Jim Crow South. It became something else entirely.

John Lewis arrived on a free bus ride from Troy, Alabama given to him by Dr. King. CT Vivian and Bernard Lafayette came with hunger in their souls. Under the guidance of Reverend James Lawson, these students organized the Nashville sit-ins and wrote the blueprint for nonviolent direct action that would spread across the country. When Martin Luther King Jr. visited the campus, he said he came to learn.

Then the movement ended and the forgetting began. Funding collapsed. Key partnerships dissolved. A mother who had spent her career at the school worried on her deathbed that it would fold. Women who felt called to preach were told they didn’t belong in the pulpit. One of them stood up and said, “I belong where God puts me.”
 

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DATE: Thur, Oct 1, 2026

TIME:  6:00 PM – 7:10 PM CST

LOCATION:  R Milton and Denise Johnson Center, Belmont University