140th Founder’s Day Celebration
Back to the Old Landmark “No matter how far you go, every now and then, you ought to return home.” By Shaneesa N. Ashford
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ith those words, the Rev. Raphael Warnock ’91 ushered in the 2007 Founder’s Day celebration by leading a church service at Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta. More than 100 members of the Morehouse community, including faculty, staff and students, made the pilgrimage, which occurs every five years, to the place where the Morehouse story began 140 years ago. It was the homecoming for men who Warnock classified as “carpenter’s sons.” Speaking on the topic “Carpenters and Coffin Makers,” Warnock compared Morehouse’s beginnings to those of Jesus, who returned home to find his people in awe of the knowledge and power he acquired. Morehouse men, he implied, were the sons of a carpenter, Morehouse’s founder William Jefferson White. White, a cabinetmaker and Baptist preacher, was a proponent for the rights of blacks, having served as president of the Georgia Equal Rights League, an organization devoted to acquiring voting rights for blacks. He joined with a former slave, MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE
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the Rev. Richard C. Coulter, and an educator, the Rev. Edmund Turney, in creating Augusta Institute, which would eventually become Morehouse College. Warnock, pastor of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said that from those beginnings come thousands of men who have succeeded in every arena. “We’ve come to Augusta because the men of Morehouse have sat at the table of humanity, have been engaged in the public square and have asked the nation pressing questions – questions that strike at the heart of a nation that claims to be under God,” Warnock said. “We’ve come to Augusta to ask - is this not the carpenter’s son?” Leaving the service, the Morehouse men continued to honor White by placing a wreath at his gravesite. They also visited Augusta’s Tabernacle Baptist Church, which was founded by Augusta Institute alumnus the Rev. Charles T. Walker, and Harmony Baptist Church, which was founded by White. Men who have transcended the conditions of their founding