Spelman College and Morehouse College today announced the presentation of the Colleges’ 97th Annual Christmas Carol Concert, a continuation of the institutions’ holiday tradition providing an evening filled with song and festive cheer. Provided at no cost to the public, the three-night concert event will begin on Friday, Dec. 1 at 7:30 p.m. at Morehouse College’s Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. The concert will continue at Spelman College’s Sisters Chapel on Saturday, Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m. and culminate in a final performance at Morehouse on Sunday, Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. The doors will open one hour before each event. The concerts will be accessible via livestream through both institutions’ YouTube channels.
“This year‘s Christmas Carol Concert is special because it is a part of the Glee Club’s Road to 100 year — a year of planning and preparing to celebrate our 100th anniversary,” said Kevin Johnson, director of the Spelman College Glee Club. “Follow us on social media and get excited with us. This year’s concert is gonna be awesome!"
The Christmas Carol Concert is historically the start of the holiday season for the Atlanta community through celebration and song. Both Glee Clubs will perform an array of traditional carols and contemporary-style interpretations of various holiday music to set the spirit of the season.
"The Morehouse College Glee Club is excited to continue the Christmas Carol Concert in its 97th year as we know many people begin their Christmas celebrations with us,” said David Morrow, director of the Morehouse College Glee Club. “We will sing some old favorites like ‘Mary Had a Baby’ and the beloved ‘Betelehemu’ along with a few surprises as well. There is something in this concert that everyone will enjoy!"
Established in December 1927, the concert concept stemmed from the two Colleges’ presidents at the time — Spelman’s Florence Matilda Read and Morehouse’s John Hope. The first concert was held in Spelman’s Sisters Chapel and has since grown with its audience into a three-night event, usually held in person, at Morehouse’s Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel to usher in the holiday season.
For more information on these events and the Morehouse College performances, please visit the 97th Annual Christmas Carol Concert page.
About Spelman College
Founded in 1881, Spelman College is a leading liberal arts college widely recognized as the global leader in the education of women of African descent. Located in Atlanta, the College’s picturesque campus is home to 2,100 students. Spelman is the country's leading producer of Black women who complete Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The College’s status is confirmed by the U.S. News & World Report, which ranked Spelman No. 51 among all liberal arts colleges, No. 19 for undergraduate teaching, No. 5 for social mobility among liberal arts colleges, and No. 1 for the 16th year among historically Black colleges and universities. The Wall Street Journal has ranked the College No. 3, nationally, in terms of student satisfaction. Recent initiatives include a designation by the Department of Defense as a Center of Excellence for Minority Women in STEM, a Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute, the first endowed queer studies chair at an HBCU and a program to increase the number of Black women Ph.D.s in economics. New majors and minors have been added, including documentary filmmaking and photography, data science, refugee studies and gaming. Collaborations have been also established with MIT’s Media Lab, the Broad Institute and the Army Research Lab for artificial intelligence and machine learning, among others.
Outstanding alumnae include Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, former Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Rosalind Brewer, political leader Stacey Abrams, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa D. Cook, former Acting Surgeon General and Spelman’s first alumna president Audrey Forbes Manley, Harvard University professor and former Dean Evelynn Hammonds, actress and producer Latanya Richardson Jackson, global bioinformatics geneticist Janina Jeff and authors Pearl Cleage and Tayari Jones.
To learn more, please visit spelman.edu and @spelmancollege on social media.
About Morehouse College
Morehouse College is the only historically Black college dedicated to educating men. Founded in 1867, Morehouse is a private, liberal arts institution and the nation’s top producer of Black men who go on to receive doctorates and the top producer of Rhodes Scholars among HBCUs. The College was named to the list of U.S. institutions that produced the most Fulbright Scholars in 2019-2020. As the epicenter for thought leadership on civil rights, Morehouse is committed to helping the nation address the inequities caused by institutional racism, which has created social and economic disparities for people of African descent. Prominent Morehouse alumni include: Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. Surgeon General; Shelton “Spike” Lee, award- winning American filmmaker; Maynard H. Jackson, the first African American mayor of Atlanta; and Jeh Johnson, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security; Louis W. Sullivan, former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and founding dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine; Bakari Sellers, attorney and CNN political analyst; Randall Woodfin, elected as the youngest mayor of Birmingham in 120 years; and Senator Raphael Warnock. Morehouse currently has more than 18,000 alumni in 14 countries. For more information, visit: morehouse.edu.
