The Nashville Christian Institute was an African-American K-12 Church of Christ school for boarding and day students in existence from 1940-1967. It closed in 1967 when NCI board president A. C. Pullias, who was also president of David Lipscomb College at the time, transferred the school's assets to Lipscomb to fund scholarships for African-American students there. Civil Rights attorney Fred Gray, an NCI alumnus, along with other representatives of the school, sued Lipscomb unsuccessfully for the return of those assets, and Lipscomb's archives acquired many of the records in this collection as a result. In 2024, Beaman Library sought the help of the NCI Alumni Association in identifying and describing the items in this collection so that they could be published online as a lasting memorial to the school. With their collaboration, almost all of the photos and other documents from Lipscomb's archives have been identified. The NCI Alumni Association also donated their personal recollections, "The House on 24th Avenue," to the collection to represent their perspectives as students. Beaman Library thanks the NCI community for their invaluable contributions to this collection.

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Browse the Nashville Christian Institute Collections:

Correspondence and School Documents

Legal Documents

NCI Board Meeting Minutes

Photographs

The House on 24th Avenue