Four Baptist institutions merged over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries to form Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (CRCDS) as it exists today. Its earliest roots are in the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution (later Colgate Theological Seminary), which began in Hamilton, New York, in the early 1820s under the auspices of the New York Baptist Union for Ministerial Education. Soap and candle magnate William Colgate, a devout Baptist, was an influential trustee in the Union for Ministerial Education and took an active role in financing and championing Hamilton Institution.[1] Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution later evolved in part into Colgate University.
The present-day seminary's second heritage institution, the Rochester Theological Seminary, was formed in 1850 at the founding of the University of Rochester by a group from Colgate Theological Seminary who sought a more urban educational setting. Women were accepted, enrolled, and graduated as regular students beginning in 1920.[2] The remainder of the Hamilton seminary had moved to Rochester by 1928, when the two seminaries merged to become Colgate Rochester Divinity School and moved to the 1100 South Goodman Street campus in Rochester.
Persuaded by student advocacy and protest throughout 1968 and 1969—namely by the school's Black Student Caucus—Colgate Rochester Divinity School hired more African-American professors to join the school's overwhelmingly white faculty, increased course offerings in African-American religious and cultural studies, and formally established the Martin Luther King Jr. Program of Black Church Studies in 1969. It was one of the first such programs instituted at a predominantly white seminary or divinity school in the U.S.[3][4]
1970–present: Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School
The last significant institutional merger took place in 1970, when Crozer Theological Seminary moved from Upland, Pennsylvania to merge with Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and form Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York.
Joanna P. Moore (1832–1916), Baptist missionary to freed African Americans in the Reconstruction eraSouth; graduated from Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago
Wyatt Tee Walker, Co-founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (1957), Executive Dir. SCLC (1960–1964); Senior Pastor, Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem (1967–2004)
Frederick B. Williams, Canon and Rector of Church of the Intercession, Harlem (1972–2005); Founder of Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement
Gayraud Wilmore (1921–2020), ethicist, historian, theologian, and civil rights leader known for scholarly contributions in the history of African American church and religious experience and black theology
Notable alumni/faculty
Notable individuals who both graduated from and served on the faculty of the school:
^Tyson, John R. (2019). School of Prophets: A Bicentennial History of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press. pp. 14–15.
^Tyson, John R. (2019). School of Prophets: A Bicentennial History of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press. pp. 216–223.
^Baldwin, Lewis V. (2016). "Black Church Studies as an Academic Interest and Initiative". In Duncan, Carol B.; Pollard, Alton B. (eds.). The Black Church Studies Reader. Palgrave MacMillan. pp. 32–33. ISBN9781137534552.
Tyson, John R. School of Prophets: A Bicentennial History of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2019. OCLC1096217155 (all editions)
