Samford University
Samford University is a private Christian university in Homewood, Alabama, United States. Homewood is an inner-suburb of Birmingham. Samford was founded by Baptists in 1841 as Howard College and located until 1887 in Marion, Alabama. It is governed by an independent board of trustees, which requires board members to be Baptists.
In fall 2025, the university enrolled 6,324 students from 44 states, 1 U.S. territory, and 16 other countries, marking the 17th consecutive record-setting year for enrollment.
History
19th century
In 1841, Samford University was founded as Howard College in Marion, Alabama. It was named for the eighteenth-century English philanthropist John Howard. Some of the land was donated by the Reverend James H. DeVotie, who served on the school's board of trustees for fifteen years and as its president for two years. The first financial gift, $4,000, was given by Julia Tarrant Barron and both she and her son also gave land to establish the college. The university also honors the Reverend Milo P. Jewett and Edwin D. King as founders. King and Barron derived much of their wealth, with which they supported the college, from the people they enslaved. The university was established after the Alabama Baptist State Convention decided to build a school for men in Perry County, Alabama. The college's first nine students began studies in January 1842 with a traditional curriculum of language, literature and sciences. In those early years, the graduation addresses of several distinguished speakers were published, including those by Thomas G. Keen of Mobile, Joseph Walters Taylor, Noah K. Davis and Samuel Sterling Sherman. In October 1854, a fire destroyed all of the college's property, including its only building. While the college was still recovering from the fire, the Civil War began. Howard College was converted to a military hospital by the Confederate government in 1863. During this time, the college's remaining faculty offered basic instruction to soldiers recovering at the hospital. For a short period after the war, federal troops occupied the college and sheltered freed slaves on its campus.In 1865, the college reopened. Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, an attorney, former US Congressman and Confederate military officer, served as president from 1865 to 1868. He was committed to the cause of broader education, and supported expansion of normal school training.
In 1887, Howard College's board of trustees accepted an offer of land from the East Lake Land Company owned by Robert Jemison, Sr. and relocated the institution to the newly developing community of East Lake, six miles from the center of Birmingham, Alabama. Faculty who remained in Marion formed Marion Military Institute on the old campus. MMI continues to operate in Marion.
20th century
In 1913, the college became fully and permanently coeducational. Howard College added its School of Music in 1914 and School of Education and Journalism the following year. The college introduced its Department of Pharmacy in 1927. At the time, it was the only program of its kind in the Southeastern United States. During World War II, Howard College hosted a V-12 Navy College Training Program, allowing enlisted sailors to earn college degrees while receiving military training.After the war, the number of veterans attending the college under the GI Bill boosted enrollment beyond capacity. The college moved to Shades Valley, adjacent to the one-time Edgewood Lake in Homewood, Alabama. Construction on the new campus began in 1955. It opened in 1957. In 1961, the college acquired Cumberland School of Law, one of the nation's oldest law schools.
In addition to the law school, Howard College added a new school of business and reorganized to achieve university status in 1965. Since the name "Howard University" was already in use by a school in Washington, D.C., Howard College was renamed as "Samford University" in honor of Frank Park Samford, a longtime trustee of the school. In 1973, the university acquired Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing. Samford University established a study center in 1984 for students to study abroad in the South Kensington district of London, England.
On September 21, 1989, a Samford University professor, William Lee Slagle, fatally stabbed one of his debating team students and escaped. Slagle was finally captured six months later.
In 1994, Samford's board of trustees voted to allow the board to elect its own members. This gave the university formal independence from the Alabama Baptist State Convention, but until 2017 convention leaders retained ex officio seats on the board, were consulted on trustee selection, and the new trustees were presented to the convention for affirmation. Convention leaders are still invited to the board's meetings. The university's corporate expression of faith commitment remains The Statement of the Baptist Faith and Message of 1963, without amendment.
Civil rights
As a private, segregated institution, Samford University was to some degree insulated from the activities of leaders and protesters of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and early 1960s. The officers of the Samford Student Government Association challenged a segregated concert held on campus by the Birmingham Symphony by inviting as guests the student government officers of nearby Miles College, a historically black school.Segregation by private universities was outlawed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Initially, the school's leaders declined to express their commitment to desegregation. For example, the university declined to apply for the NDEA Student Loan Program for 1965-66 because it would have to affirm desegregation. Cumberland School of Law faced the greatest immediate risk of losing accreditation. In 1967, it admitted Samford's first black student, Audrey Lattimore Gaston. The entire university proceeded with desegregation. In the fall of 1969 Elizabeth Sloan Ragland became the first African American student to live on campus. On June 1, 2020, the university announced the installation of a memorial honoring "the sacrifices of many African Americans for the mission and vision of Samford University even in days when their efforts were invisible or barely acknowledged." It specifically named Gaston and an enslaved servant named Harry who died while saving students from the 1854 fire. A public dedication of the memorial was held on February 15, 2022. In 2021, the university announced the creation of a "a four-year cohort experience for leaders among Samford’s multicultural student body" and named it Ragland Scholars n honor of Ragland. In 2024, the university announced a new residence hall would be named in honor of Gaston. In late 2025, Samford closed the Office of Student Success and Diversity which had offered key support for the Ragland Scholars.
21st century
was appointed president of the university in 2006. That year, the Jane Hollock Brock Recital Hall was dedicated as part of the university’s fine arts complex. A new soccer and track facility opened in 2011, part of a decade-long expansion of new athletics facilities that included a tennis center, a basketball arena, a football field house and a softball stadium. For the 2016–17 academic year, the economic and fiscal impacts of the university on Alabama were $424.8 million, 2,424 jobs, $16.1 million in state income and sales taxes, and $6 million in local sales tax. In 2013, the university established a new College of Health Sciences, including the existing Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing and McWhorter School of Pharmacy, and the newly created School of Health Professions and School of Public Health. The dean of the nursing school, Nena Sanders, was named vice-provost of the new college, and after her retirement in 2020 the nursing school was renamed the Moffett & Sanders School of Nursing. In 2013, the university announced the construction of a new facility to house Brock School of Business. In 2014, the West Village residence complex opened. That December, the university purchased the adjacent headquarters of Southern Progress, a subsidiary of Time, Inc. It subsequently named these buildings the home of the College of Health Sciences.The university ended its financial connection with the Alabama Baptist State Convention in July 2017 when the trustees announced they would no longer accept funds from the convention. Later that year Samford and the state convention agreed that Samford would no longer present its slate of trustees to the convention for affirmation and that convention officers would no longer have an ex officio position on the board. This ended key aspects of Samford's formal connection to the state convention that had existed for decades. Still, by the trustees’ own rule, all trustees must be members of Baptist churches and 75% must be from Alabama. Samford is a collaborative partner of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
In August 2020, Westmoreland announced he would retire on June 30, 2021. On March 10, 2021, it was announced that he will be succeeded by Whitworth University president Beck A. Taylor. Taylor took office on July 1, 2021.
In May 2022, the university received a $100 million gift from the estate of alumnus Marvin Mann. This was the largest single-donor gift ever made to a higher education institution in Alabama.
LGBTQ rights
Samford has been involved in several well publicized incidents in which the university rejected LGBTQ+ students' requests to form student organizations or refused to work with Christian groups that were LGBTQ+ affirming. In 2017, President Westmoreland rejected Samford Together, an organization that sought to create a space for students to discuss topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “in an open-minded and accepting environment,” even though the organization had been approved by both the Student Government Association and the faculty. SAFE Samford coordinated a letter writing campaign in support of Samford Together and published these letters on its website. SAFE Samford was founded in 2011.Similar actions occurred again in 2022. In late August, Samford administration “uninvited” representatives of Episcopalian and Presbyterian campus ministries from a campus event because these ministries were affirming of LGBTQ+ individuals. In justifying the move, Vice President of Student Affairs Phil Kimrey stated, “Throughout its history, the university has consistently subscribed to and practiced biblically orthodox beliefs," and "the university has a responsibility to formally partner with ministry organizations that share our beliefs.” On-campus protests against the change included a silent vigil outside a university-wide worship service on September 20. SAFE Samford again coordinated a letter writing campaign. On September 30, President Beck Taylor stated more explicitly in a video message that "we decided to limit Samford’s formal ministry partnerships to churches and to organizations that support Samford’s traditional view of human sexuality and marriage." This ended Samford’s nearly thirty-year relationship with Birmingham Episcopal Campus Ministries. In October, Taylor declined university recognition to a chapter of OUTLaw at Samford's Cumberland School of Law. OUTLaw is a national organization supporting LGBTQ+ law students.
As of 2023, an off-campus student group, Samford Prism, had been formed to support LGBTQ+ students. SAFE Samford also continues to advocate on behalf of students.