Establishment Knoxville College is rooted in a mission school established in
Knoxville in 1864 by R. J. Creswell of the United Presbyterian Church to educate the city's free Black and formerly enslaved people. This school initially met in the
First Baptist Church building (which at the time was located on
Gay Street) before moving to a permanent facility in East Knoxville in 1866. In the 1870s, the church's Freedmen's Mission, which had established mission schools for freed slaves across the South, decided to refocus its efforts on building a larger, better-equipped school in Knoxville, in part due to stiff competition from other denominations in Nashville. The school's first building, McKee Hall, named for O.S. McKee, was completed in 1876, and the school opened in December of that year.
John Schouller McCulloch was named the school's first principal and Eliza B. Wallace was named the school's principal of female students. The new school was primarily a
normal school, which trained teachers, but also operated an academy for the education of local children. In 1877, the school was designated a college by the state, to the surprise of McCulloch, as few of the school's students were ready for a college-level curriculum.
Medical department (1895–1900) There were no medical schools for African Americans prior to the
American Civil War, which lasted to 1865. Knoxville College had an early medical department for black students, open from 1895 until 1900. After the department closure, the city of Knoxville organized as a replacement black medical school in winter 1900, named the
Knoxville Medical College; which was led by the
city physician,
Henry Morgan Green.
Early 20th-century growth In 1901, Knoxville College finally received a charter from the State of Tennessee. The building, which is no longer standing, was constructed with the help of Knoxville College students. During
World War I, Knoxville College students helped raise money for
liberty bonds and the
Red Cross. The school's charter was amended in 1962 to allow the admission of white students. However, Judson soon left and the college continued to struggle. On June 9, 2014, the
Environmental Protection Agency seized control of the long-shuttered A.K. Stewart Science Hall to conduct an emergency clean-up of toxic chemicals that the college had improperly stored in laboratories; In early 2015 state accreditation for the college was withdrawn, further complicating the college's already strained finances. In April 2015, the school announced it was suspending classes for the Fall 2015 term in hopes of reorganizing. Enrollment had dwindled to just 11 students, and the college was struggling to pay back a $4.5 million loan from 2003 and more than $425,000 to the federal government for the Stewart Science Hall cleanup. In May 2015, the school announced classes would resume in the Fall 2016 term. In May 2016, the
Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation recommended the college become a state
Superfund site due to ongoing contamination concerns from the Stewart Science Hall. In September 2016, the City of Knoxville demanded that Knoxville College make repairs to fourteen of its buildings within 90 days or face condemnation. City crews subsequently boarded up the buildings. The
Knoxville Fire Department responded to between four and five fires at abandoned buildings on campus in 2016, and estimated that since the buildings began falling into disuse after 1997, they had responded to twenty or thirty such fires there. , most of the campus sits abandoned, in an advanced state of disrepair. Most buildings are open to vagrants and vandals. This has caused severe damage to the buildings. The former college center has been set on fire twice. Since early 2018, the college administrative offices are back on campus again, occupying the college Annex which is next to McMillan Chapel. Plans have been made to renovate McMillan Chapel and the Alumni Library. In 2023, Knoxville College's Vice President Dasha Lundy has been on a team working in collaboration with the University of Tennessee, Morris Brown College in Atlanta and other schools, to regain their accreditation by 2024 which is Knoxville College’s main priority now. In August 2024, the college applied for accreditation with the
Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. ==Campus==