Concordia College Alabama

Concordia College Alabama is a college of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, located in Selma, Alabama. It is the only historically black college among the ten colleges and universities in the Concordia University System.HistoryIn 1919 African-American Lutheran congregations in Alabama petitioned the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America for funds to open a high school and college to train church workers. The school opened in 1922 in a rented cottage, and the Synodical Conference soon purchased in northeast Selma, Alabama as the site of the Alabama Luther College. A recitation hall (now named Bakke Hall) and a dormitory were erected at a cost of $36,000 and opened in 1925.The college was forced to close during the Great Depression and the remaining high school was renamed the Alabama Lutheran Academy. Eventually the college was reopened, resulting in the name Alabama Lutheran Academy and College. In 1981 the name was changed to Concordia College Alabama, and in 1994 it gained accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as a bachelor's degree-granting institution.CampusConcordia College's Bakke Hall and the Dormitory, completed in 1928, were both added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on June 19, 1997.