“God created that hill for the site of a college.”
--Anson West, co-founder of Birmingham College
In the waning days of 1917, two Alabama Methodist colleges were struggling.
In the southern town of Greensboro, Southern University—still working to rebuild to its antebellum glory—was depleted as young men departed for the trenches of World War I. In the fast-growing city of Birmingham, Birmingham College, which opened in 1898 with four teachers and 77 students, faced the same problem. The Methodist conferences overseeing the schools had one solution: to merge the two schools. And thus, in the spring of 1918, Birmingham-Southern College was born.