The story
Nineteenth century
Emory College was founded in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia, by the Methodist Episcopal Church. The college was named in honor of the departed Methodist bishop John Emory. Ignatius Alphonso Few was the college's first president. In 1854, the Atlanta Medical College, a forerunner of Emory University School of Medicine, was founded. On April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began. Emory College was closed in November 1861 and all of its students enlisted on the Confederate side. In late 1863 the war reached Georgia and the college was used as hospital and later a headquarters for the Union Army. The university produced many officers who served in the war, including General George Thomas Anderson (1846C) who fought in nearly every major battle in the eastern theater. Thirty-five Emory students lost their lives and much of the campus was destroyed during the war.
In 1880, Atticus Greene Haygood, Emory College President, delivered a speech expressing gratitude for the end of slavery in the United States, which captured the attention of George I. Seney, a New York banker. Seney gave Emory College $5,000 to repay its debts, $50,000 for construction, and $75,000 to establish a new endowment. In the 1880s, the technology department was launched by Isaac Stiles Hopkins, a polymath professor at Emory College. Hopkins became the first president of the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1888. Emory University's first international student, Yun Chi-ho, graduated in 1893. Yun became an important political activist in Korea.
Twentieth century
On August 16, 1906, the Wesley Memorial Hospital and Training School for Nurses, later renamed the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, was established. In 1914, the Candler School of Theology was established. In 1915, Emory College relocated to Druid Hills and was rechartered as Emory University after accepting a land grant from Asa Griggs Candler, founder of The Coca-Cola Company and brother of commissioned chair Warren Akin Candler Based on large donations from the Candler, Woodruff, and Goizueta families, Emory University is colloquially referred to as "Coca-Cola University". Emory University School of Law was established in 1916.
First and Second World Wars
In 1917, the United States joined the First World War, and Emory University responded by organizing a medical unit composed of faculty and alumni of the medical school. The unit, which became known as Emory Unit, Base Hospital 43, served in Loir-et-Cher, France, from July 1918 to January 1919. During the Second World War, the Emory Unit was mobilized once again and served in the North African campaign and Europe. Emory's contributions to the war effort were recognized by christening a ship, M.S. Emory Victory, which served during World War II and the Korean War.
In the 1940s, Emory University students, alumni, and faculty served in the Asia-Pacific War and European theater of World War II. Lieutenant Commander James L. Starnes, a graduate of Emory Law, was the navigator of the battleship USS Missouri and served as officer of the deck during the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. Bobby Jones, the golfer, served during the Battle of Normandy. Alfred A. Weinstein, a professor of surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, was a prisoner of war of the Empire of Japan between 1942 and 1945. His memoir, Barbed Wire Surgeon, is considered one of the finest accounts concerning allied prisoners under Japanese captivity and highlights the abuses of the war criminal Mutsuhiro Watanabe. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who graduated from the Candler School of Theology in 1940 and is portrayed in John Hersey's Hiroshima, was able to organize the Hiroshima Maidens reconstructive surgery program based on the associations he made while studying in the United States. Tatsumasa Shirakawa, a Japanese student at the Candler School of Theology, was placed under arrest temporarily until Dean Henry Burton Trimble negotiated his release. Emory helped the nation prepare for war by participating in the V-12 Navy College Training Program and Army Specialized Training Program, programs designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy and United States Army. The Candler School of Theology trained men for military chaplaincy. During the war, university enrollment boasted two military students for every one civilian.
Women's and civil rights movements
The women's movement and civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s in the United States profoundly shaped the future of Emory University. Formerly an all-male school, Emory officially became a coeducational institution in 1953. Although it had previously admitted women under limited circumstances, the university had never before had a policy through which they could enroll in large numbers and as resident students. In 1959, sororities first appeared on campus. In 1962, in the midst of the civil rights movement, Emory embraced the initiative to end racial restrictions when it asked the courts to declare portions of the Georgia statutes unconstitutional. Previously, Georgia law denied tax-exempt status to private universities with racially integrated student bodies. The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled in Emory's favor and Emory officially became racially integrated. Marvin S. Arrington Sr. was Emory University's first, full-time African American student and graduated from Emory University School of Law in 1967.
In 1971, Emory established one of the nation's first African-American studies programs and the first of its kind in the Southeastern United States. Emory's diversity and academic reputation continued to flourish under the leadership of the university's fifth president, James T. Laney. In addition to leading universities in the Southeastern United States in the promotion of racial equality, Laney and many of the school's faculty and administrators were outspoken advocates of global human rights and thus were openly opposed to the military dictatorship in South Korea (1961–1987). On March 30, 1983, Laney's friend Kim Dae-jung, while in political exile in the United States, presented a speech on human rights and democracy at Emory University and accepted an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Kim would go on to play a major role in ending authoritarianism in South Korea, served as the eighth president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his successful implementation of the Sunshine Policy. Laney would later serve as United States Ambassador to South Korea and Emory graduate school, founded in 1919, was named in his honor in 2009.
In 2005, the university presented the President Medal, a rare award conferred only on individuals whose impact on the world has enhanced the dominion of peace or has enlarged the range of cultural achievement, to Civil Rights Movement activist Rosa Parks. The award is one of the highest honors presented by Emory.
Read the full text
In 2014, at Emory's 169th Commencement, John Lewis, the only living "Big Six" leader of the civil rights movement, delivered the keynote address and received an honorary doctor of laws degree. In 2015, Emory University School of Law received a $1.5 million donation to help establish a John Lewis Chair in Civil Rights and Social Justice. The gift, given anonymously, funds a professorship which will enable Emory Law to conduct a national search for a scholar with an established academic profile of distinction and a demonstrated desire to promote the rule of law through the study of civil rights. The law school has committed to raise an additional $500,000 to fund the chair fully.
Expansion and modernization
In November 1979, Emory University experienced a historical shift when Robert Winship Woodruff and George Waldo Woodruff donated $105 million worth of Coca-Cola stock to the institution. At that time, this was the largest single gift ever made to any institution of higher education in the United States.
Twenty-first century
The latest additions to the Atlanta Campus include buildings for cancer research, biomedical research, scientific computation, mathematics and science, vaccine research, and the performing arts.
Prior to 2018, the campus was in an unincorporated area, statistically counted in the Druid Hills census-designated place. In 2016 the university stated that it intended to petition to be annexed into the City of Atlanta; in 2017 the university leadership formally submitted its petition. The City of Atlanta annexed Emory's campus effective January 1, 2018, a part of its largest annexation within a period of 65 years; the Atlanta City Council voted to do so the prior December.
Gregory L. Fenves, formerly the president of the University of Texas at Austin, became Emory University's 21st president in August 2020.
The Gaza war sparked demonstrations around the U.S., including at Emory. On April 25, 2024, during a pro-Palestinian protest, immediately subsequent to each objecting to the police presence, police detained both philosophy chair Noëlle McAfee and arrested economics professor Caroline Fohlin, who was later charged with battery, following her battering by police. The College of Arts and Science adopted a motion the following day for a college faculty no-confidence vote for Greg Fenves, president of the university, with an electronic vote organized for the following week.
From Wikipedia’s article on Emory University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5