The Morris Brown Colored College (its original name) was founded on January 5, 1881, by African Americans affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States. It was named to honor the denomination's second bishop, Morris Brown, originally from Charleston, South Carolina.

After the end of the American Civil war, the AME Church sent numerous missionaries to the South to found new churches. They planted many new AME congregations in Georgia and other states, where hundreds of thousands of freedmen joined this independent black denomination.

On January 5, 1881, the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church passed a resolution to establish an educational institution in Atlanta for the moral, spiritual, and intellectual growth of Negro boys and girls. The school chartered and opened October 15, 1885, with 107 students and nine teachers. Morris Brown was the first educational institution in Georgia to be owned and operated entirely by African Americans.[5] By 1898 the school had 14 faculty, 422 students, and 18 graduates.[6] For more than a century, the college enrolled many students from poor backgrounds, large numbers of whom returned to their hometowns as teachers, as education was a mission of high priority.

Fountain Hall, originally known as Stone Hall when occupied by Atlanta University, was completed in 1882. After Atlanta University consolidated its facilities, it leased the building to Morris Brown College, which renamed it as Fountain Hall. It is closely associated with the history of Morris Brown College and has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.[7]

Morris Brown College's Herndon Stadium was the site of the field hockey competitions during the 1996 Summer Olympics. The stadium is designed to seat 15,000 spectators.[3] In 1950, the President of Georgia Tech and civil rights lecturer Blake R Van Leer delivered the commencement address. Van Leer would later be involved in a local battle against a racist Governor at the time.[8]

Clark College was founded in 1869 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, which later became the United Methodist Church as the nation's first four-year liberal arts college to serve the primarily African-American student population. Originally named Clark University, the school was chartered and incorporated in 1877. It first offered instruction at the postsecondary level in 1879, and awarded its first degree (baccalaureate) in 1880. It became Clark College in 1940.[25][26] It was named for Bishop Davis Wasgatt Clark, who was the first President of the Freedman's Aid Society and became Bishop in 1864. A sparsely furnished room in Clark Chapel, a Methodist Episcopal church in Atlanta's Summerhill section, housed the first Clark College class. In 1871, the school relocated to a new site on the newly purchased Whitehall and McDaniel Street property. In 1877, the School was chartered as Clark University.

Clark College merged with Atlanta University on July 1, 1988 to form Clark Atlanta University.

Alonzo Herndon Stadium, named for Alonzo Herndon, is an abandoned 15,011-seat stadium on the campus of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is the only two-sided stadium in the Atlanta University Center. It is one block over from the locally known Herndon Home, and sits above the MARTA East-West rail line.

The stadium opened in 1948. It is the largest stadium at an institution in the Atlanta University Center, and the only with stands on both sides.[1]

In addition to sports, the stadium hosted concerts. Ray Charles recorded a live album at the stadium.[1]

During the 1996 Summer Olympics, Herndon Stadium hosted field hockey. It was expanded and renovated ahead of the games. The stadium was the home to the former Georgia Mustangs and the former Atlanta Beat women's soccer club of the WUSA league, the latter of whom played there from 2001 until 2003.[1]

Due to the college's financial hardships, the stadium was sold to the City of Atlanta in 2014.[2] However, due to a land-use agreement with other members of the Atlanta University Center and historic property deeds, ownership of the stadium was given to Clark Atlanta University by court order. The school is planning to restore the stadium.[1]

As of 2024, the stadium sits in a state of disrepair, gutted by vandals and covered in graffiti and trash.[3] Because of this, it was used as the stand-in for the demolished Fairfield Stadium in Huntington, West Virginia during the filming of the 2006 movie We Are Marshall,[1][3] and also featured in the 2024 movie Civil War, standing in as a United Nations relief center.

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