Roger Williams University

The school began in 1864 as classes for Black Baptist preachers in the home of Daniel Phillips, a white missionary from Massachusetts. In 1869 its board tried to buy the former Union Fort Gillem, but Fisk's officials got the land and built Jubilee Hall there. After mysterious fires in January and May 1905 the American Baptist Home Mission Society closed the school. Black Baptist leaders raised money to reopen it in 1908 on Whites Creek Pike, with John W. Johnson, a graduate, as its first Black president. It merged with Howe Institute in Memphis in 1929.

What the plaque says

Roger Williams University The Nashville Institute, renamed Roger Williams University, was located on a 28 acre campus next to Hillsboro Pike from 1874 to 1905. It was the largest of the Baptist schools for African-Americans, influencing many important educators and leaders. The main building, which was destroyed by two fires in 1905, stood at the top of the knoll.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 1.5 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.8 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.9 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Ryman Auditorium — 1.9 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.

More markers nearby

• Hillsboro Theatre — 0.2 mi
• Ward- Belmont College — 0.5 mi
• Vanderbilt Memorial Gymnasium — 0.5 mi
• William Edmondson Studio and Home Site — 0.6 mi