The First and the Last: A Confluence of Factors Leading to the Integration of Carver School of Missions and Social Work, 1955

Abstract

The Carver School of Missions and Social Work, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, was an all-female social work program that eventually became the first seminary-affiliated social work program accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. This article examines Carver’s efforts towards racial integration during the late 1950s, which was a time of heightened racial tensions across the United States. This article is informed by a series of oral histories of the two African American women who integrated Carver in 1955.