Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts womens college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta.[2] Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the fourth historically black female institution of higher education to receive its collegiate charter in 1924. (Two schools were strictly seminaries and one was originally coeducational.) Therefore, Spelman College holds the distinction of being Americas first, and thereby oldest, private, liberal arts historically black colleges for women.[2]

Spelman is ranked among the nations top liberal arts colleges and #1 among historically black colleges in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. The college is also ranked among the top 50 four-year colleges and universities for producing Fulbright and Truman Scholars, and was ranked the second largest producer of African-American college graduates who attend medical school. Spelman ranks #1 among baccalaureate origin institutions of African-American women who earned science, engineering, and mathematics doctoral degrees.[6] [7] Forbes ranks Spelman among the nations top ten womens colleges. The Princeton Review ranks Spelman among the Best 373 Colleges and Universities in America.[8] [9]

Spelman is the alma mater of thousands of notable Americans including the first African-American COO of Starbucks and CEO of Sams Club Rosalind Brewer, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker; former Dean of Harvard College Evelynn M. Hammonds, activist and Childrens Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, musician, activist & historian Bernice Johnson Reagon (who also founded Sweet Honey in the Rock), writer Pearl Cleage, TV personality Rolanda Watts, Opera star Mattiwilda Dobbs, actors LaTanya Richardson, Adrienne-Joi Johnson, Keshia Knight Pulliam and many other luminaries in the arts, education, sciences, business, and the armed forces.

In 2013, Spelman College decided to drop varsity athletics and leave the