Walden University (Tennessee)

It was founded in 1865 by missionaries from the Northern United States on behalf of the Methodist Church to serve freedmen.

Known as Central Tennessee College from 1865 to 1900, Walden University provided education and professional training to African Americans until 1925.

After the state established a public elementary school in Nashville, in 1867 the Methodists chartered Central Tennessee College for freedmen.

The college was part of a first generation of such institutions across the South to educate freedmen and to teach teachers and ministers, fields that were closely aligned as callings.

It was founded and supported financially by Samuel Meharry and his four brothers, Scots-Irish immigrants who became successful businessmen and philanthropists.

[3] Expansion continued in the 1880s, when the college added departments of law, pharmacy (also the first in the South for African Americans), dentistry and industrial arts.

In addition, in response to lynchings and disfranchisement, many ambitious African Americans left Nashville and other southern areas in the Great Migration to northern cities for work and more freedom.