The Churn

A History of the Atlanta University Center, with sprinkles of #Freaknik…

Butter ATLSeptember 10, 2021

AUC Woodruff Library

Ah, college season in Atlanta. It’s back, and we didn’t even really know how much we missed the Atlanta University Center until those delivery vans and U-Haul trucks started popping up again in the West End.

For the record, there is no college life like HBCU life (no shade to PWIs). Whether or not you attended one, if you live in Atlanta there is no reasonable reason you should not know alllllll about the AUC.

Home to some of the most iconic Black colleges and universities in the history of the green and blue planet you happen to be spinning on right now, the AUC is a magical place. And since there’s all sorts of good stuff happening with HBCUs these days, here in ATL and beyond, we figured “Hey! It’s time for another onenadem Twitter threads!”

So we called our man Donovan Reynolds, a.k.a. Butter.ATL’s Twitter threadmaster, to conjure up the ancestral spirits and create us a tread about the AUC and its history. Here’s a note from him on what made him come up with today’s tweetstorm:

“Since school is back in for fall, I thought it would be a great time to explore the deep history of HBCUs in Atlanta, and I felt like this topic would work well because it’s relatable across generations and even across locations outside of our own city.”

Yes, Donovan, that is correct! And also, thank you for not leaving out #Freaknik.

And before y’all even start tripping, there’s certainly a mandatory need for recognition of some of the great individuals who’ve matriculated through these great institutions: Clark-Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and the Interdenominational Theological Seminary, or ITC.

But there’s also a need to recognize that the AUC invented one of history’s greatest parties of all time. After all, this is college we’re talking about, folks.

Click the tweet below and get yourself schooled on the brilliance of Atlanta’s irreplaceable collective of Black institutions of higher learning.