History

First caretakers of the land

Honoring Indigenous Peoples

In fall 2021, the Emory Board of Trustees approved a Land Acknowledgment for Emory University recognizing the Muscogee (Creek) and other Indigenous nations expelled in the years before Emory’s founding. The work of Emory leaders, historians, and experts across the university, the statement builds upon years of work by students, faculty, and staff to recognize the legacy of Native American and Indigenous dispossession on the lands of Emory’s campuses.

See the Land Acknowledgment Statement
fall campus photo with multicolored leaves, red rooftops, and marble-clad buildings

“This statement is about accountability as much as it is about understanding our past. And my hope is that it will inspire powerful conversations on our campuses as well as action and engagement.”

— Emory President Gregory L. Fenves

Major Milestones

1836

The Georgia Methodist Conference receives a charter to establish a college in Oxford, Georgia—named after Bishop John Emory.

1917

Eléonore Raoul becomes the first woman to enroll at Emory when she matriculates at the law school. She will graduate in 1920.

1880

Emory's eighth president, Atticus Haygood, urges Southerners to broaden their thinking and embrace the dawn of the "New South."

1936

President Harvey Cox announces his plan for a $6M development program on December 10—exactly a century after Emory's founding.

1963

Emory's first African American students earn degrees, a year after the school brought a suit against Georgia to overturn integration laws.

1990

The university launches the Rollins School of Public Health, which begins a quick ascent to the top five among schools of public health.

1982

Former US President Jimmy Carter joins the faculty as a University Distinguished Professor and Emory establishes the Carter Center.

1998

His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama speaks at Commencement and establishes an Emory program in Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Dharamsala, India.

2002

Emory's Whitehead Research building is the first in the Southeast to be certified for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

2014–2015

Emory University Hospital successfully treats the first Ebola virus disease patients in the Western Hemisphere.

Share a Coke

The Million Dollar Letter

If you drink a Pepsi on Emory’s campus, people might say you have no school pride. And it’s all because of a now famous letter written in 1914 by Asa G. Candler, founder of The Coca-Cola Company, in which he offered $1 million to start a new Methodist university in Atlanta. That university became Emory, which was established in Atlanta after Emory College moved from Oxford, Georgia. Asa Candler's brother, Bishop Warren Candler, the 10th president of Emory College, was subsequently named chancellor of the new university.

asa candler and bishop warren candler