History
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.
“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.”
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.
