Atlanta — Heidi Struve and her father, Larry Struve, had some time on their hands after attending a field hockey match on the campus of Morris Brown College during the Olympic Games in Atlanta. The Reno NV duo spotted an Olympic Arts Festival sign pointing to an exhibit on “The History of the Atlanta University Center” in the college’s Fountain Hall and decided to venture inside.
“I knew nothing about what the Atlanta University Center was and we had a while before the next event, so we went in,” Struve said.
His daughter said she had known about Morehouse, “But I didn’t know what the Center was or anything about the other schools.”
After spending about half an hour reading the history of the six colleges that make up the AUC and poring over photos in the exhibit, the Struves, who are white, say they have a better understanding of the AUC.
“I was not aware of the efforts to fund and staff schools for Blacks after the Civil War,” Struve said. “This exhibit has been very informative…I feel like I know a lot more about Black colleges now.”
This is the type of response that the curators of the exhibit on “The History of the Atlanta University Center” were looking for from visitors when the exhibit was designed. Exhibit curator and former Atlanta University graduate Louise Willingham said, “We wanted to reach those who don’t know what the AUC is.”
The exhibit on the six AUC schools was funded by a $10,000 grant from the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, and is part of the Olympics’ African-American Culture: An American Experience series. There are 12,000 students enrolled at the AUC consortium schools — Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University (CAU), Morris Brown College, Morehouse, the Morehouse School of Medicine, and the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC).
