By Killian Baarlaer
For three generations throughout the 20th century, Juanita White’s family attended different schools on the grounds that would eventually become the home of Simmons College of Kentucky — unaware, like many in the city, of its ties to one of Louisville’s most famous families.
But in 2007, White, a historian and lifelong Louisville resident, made a shocking discovery alongside her late cousin, LaVerne Dunning: those same grounds had once belonged to Samuel Churchill, the same man whose family name is etched on Churchill Downs, and his former mansion on the property had served as the home of Kentucky’s first historically Black college.
“We started doing deed searches. We looked at who owned it and then went to look at the deed, and then you track back … and the backtracks led to Samuel Churchill,” White said.
White and her cousin dubbed the project “The Big House Become the Schoolhouse” and presented their findings at various meetings and conferences for historical organizations over the years.
The findings have never been widely published, however, leaving recent generations of Simmons College students unaware of the Churchill connection, though that could soon change as school officials work to bridge the gap between past and present.
‘The Big House Becomes the School House’
Simmons College’s relationship with its main campus at Seventh and Kentucky streets is one marked by change.
In the early 1900s, White’s grandfather attended Simmons College when it was known as State University. In 1930, the institution sold the property amid the financial turmoil of the Great Depression, and Louisville Municipal College, a segregated branch of the University of Louisville for Black students that her mother attended, took its place.
In 1952, Mary B. Talbert Elementary School moved to the property from portable classrooms at Eighth and Kentucky streets. White, who was one of the young students who walked the halls of the school during that time, recalls when part of the land was also used as a public park and recreation center.
But the fact that the land she walked on as an elementary student once belonged to Churchill was one she did not learn until the researchers asked the question: “What was this property before it became what it is now?”
Unknown connection surfaces more than a century later
Churchill was a farmer, state legislator, father and slaveholder who owned an extensive amount of land in Jefferson County in the early to mid-1800s. At one point, his primary estate spanned hundreds of acres from Preston Street just south of Eastern Parkway to the current location of Churchill Downs, according to archives at the University of Louisville.
While he spent much of his life living in a Georgian home near where Preston Street and Eastern Parkway meet today, Churchill moved to a mansion just south of downtown Louisville on the corner of Seventh and Kentucky streets sometime after his wife, Abigail Churchill, died in 1854, according to archived newspaper reports and a city directory.
Census records from 1860 show Churchill held 22 enslaved people while living in the mansion. He died three years later in 1863, the same year that former President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Roughly 16 years after his death, a group of formerly enslaved people from the General Association of Colored Baptists in Kentucky established the Kentucky Normal and Theological Institute on Churchill’s former property.
How Simmons College was founded in a former slaveholder’s home
Churchill left his property at Seventh and Kentucky streets to his daughter Julia Churchill Blackburn — wife of Luke Blackburn, who later became Kentucky’s 28th governor.
Jefferson County property records show two of Julia’s brothers, Samuel B. and William Henry Churchill, parceled the land into multiple lots to prepare it for sale on her behalf in 1865.
One lot of the many created was designated as “Mansion House Lot C” — the lot that the General Association of Colored Baptists in Kentucky purchased in 1879, according to deed records.
Minutes from the association’s annual meeting in 1879 and school catalogues from the following years offer a window into the bygone mansion, describing a “handsome” brick house at the center of the plot.
Black people from Kentucky and beyond gained access to a liberal arts education inside the mansion, with the late 1800s and early 1900s marking a prosperous era for the school.
An emphasis was placed on training students in religion and theology, as securing the ministry’s future was a chief object for the General Association of Colored Baptists in Kentucky. Enrollment rose quickly and offerings gradually expanded to include the study of medicine, law and education.
All of it came against the backdrop of a post-Reconstruction Era America, a period when racial tensions brewed following the ratification of constitutional amendments that abolished slavery, granted birthright citizenship and gave Black men voting rights.
Simmons College was among many other colleges aimed at the education and social progress of Black people emerging at the time — and people were flocking to them, said Jelani Favors, a history professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University who has researched and written extensively on HBCUs.
Simmons College was what Favors refers to in his work as a “shelter in a time of storm.”
“This is an era where white terrorism and Jim Crow policies are becoming more deeply entrenched into American society, so establishing and creating Black colleges in the midst of all that became paramount in the freedom dreams of Black people,” Favors said. “Certainly, the racial and political storms of the 1870s and 1880s, 1890s were very, very severe.”
The beginnings of Churchill Downs
During the same years that members of the General Association of Colored Baptists in Kentucky were laying the groundwork for the creation of Kentucky’s first HBCU, the Churchill family was marking the beginnings of a lasting legacy.
One specific piece of land in Samuel Churchill’s estate eventually fell into the hands of Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., the grandson of William Clark of the storied Lewis and Clark expedition on his father’s side and the grandson of Samuel Churchill on his mother’s side.
In 1872, Clark was approached by a group of horse breeders who wanted to reinvigorate the then-fading local horse racing business, according to the “The Encyclopedia of Louisville.”
While Clark himself did not have a background in horse racing or management, his wealth and his family’s standing in the horse racing industry made him an apt person to consult for the pursuit, “The Encyclopedia of Louisville” notes.
He ultimately built a track on 80 acres of land leased from his uncles John and William Henry Churchill — acreage they inherited from their father, according to the Filson Historical Society — and named the track in their honor.
In 1875, Aristides became the first horse to cross the Kentucky Derby finish line, and the race has been run at Churchill Downs each year since.
While Churchill Downs was in its nascent phase of becoming a horse racing and gambling powerhouse, Simmons College remained devoted to its mission.
Its growth trajectory continued into the 1920s. By fall 1922, enrollment at Simmons College surpassed 500 students, and the campus had grown to include four buildings by the 1926-27 academic year, according to an archived Courier Journal report.
But the university could not ward off headwinds from the Great Depression, which forced school officials to sell the property to the University of Louisville in 1930 for the establishment of Louisville Municipal College. According to the report “A Century of Negro Education in Louisville, Kentucky” by George Wilson, the mansion — which was then in use as an administrative building — was razed.
Louisville Municipal College closed in 1951, and the property went on to change forms several times in the following decades.
A renaissance for Simmons College
Though Simmons College spent decades apart from its original campus, a change of fortune struck the school in the 2000s when it was reunited with its original campus.
St. Stephen Baptist Church purchased the campus in 1997, and its pastor, the Rev. Kevin Cosby, became president of Simmons College in 2005. After some time at the helm, he realized the unique possibilities at his fingertips.
“As I tell people, the president and the pastor got together to see if we could get that property back from St. Stephen Baptist Church to Simmons College of Kentucky, and that’s what happened,” Cosby said. “It’s one of the most improbable stories of any college in American history.”
While Churchill’s mansion no longer stands, its history remains important all the same, Cosby said, giving a glimpse into the origin story of a university that has continually defied the odds. Now, Cosby hopes the connection could lead to a new partnership to help the campus expand.
Cosby said he would like to see Churchill Downs Inc. acknowledge the school’s history and contribute to its future. The university has enjoyed a spree of growth in recent years, with steadily rising enrollment, a new dorm building and the acquisition of a building in west Louisville.
Cosby wants to add a new athletic center to the list of recent accomplishments following a proposal in 2021 for Churchill Downs Inc. to help the university finance one named after Isaac Burns Murphy, one of horse racing’s most prolific jockeys and the son of a former slave. The facility would fill a gap for the school, which currently does not have an on-campus gymnasium.
A Churchill Downs Inc. spokesperson said the next step would be for Simmons College officials to submit a written proposal, which the company has not received. Cosby said the university plans to advance the conversation with the company.
“[Churchill Downs Inc.] has seen the vision, but now we want them to really consider some provisions and to partner with us,” Cosby said. “After all, it was the enslaved and the enslavers who partnered together to help give birth to Churchill Downs. So, let’s partner together now to make sure that we all prosper together.”
Simmons College will still pursue plans to build the athletic center, regardless of whether it receives backing from Churchill Downs Inc., Cosby said. Simmons College officials are actively planning the development, though a timeline for its completion is unclear, he said.
In what Cosby called a “providential coincidence,” the center is slated to be built on the university’s main campus, “almost exactly to the same spot that Samuel Churchill’s mansion was.”