08/28/2026
A Bronx Tale: Two Cities. One Purpose.
Atlanta and New York. Morris Brown College and Metropolitan College of New York. Two institutions with distinct histories, coming together in the Bronx around a shared belief that education can open doors and create opportunity.
On August 28, we commemorate the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic I Have a Dream speech.
Less than a year later, in 1964, Audrey Cohen founded the Women’s Talent Corps, which would become Metropolitan College of New York. Supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, it was a response to the times, built on a bold idea: education could create a pathway to economic opportunity for people too often left behind.
The dream called for change. The country was responding. MCNY was part of that response.
Morris Brown College’s story began generations earlier. Founded in Atlanta in 1881 by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, this historic HBCU was created by African Americans to educate African Americans when access to higher education was largely denied.
Now, those histories meet in the Bronx.
Dr. Charles J. Gibbs, MCNY’s seventh and first African American president, and Morris Brown College President Dr. Kevin James signed a Memorandum of Understanding, bringing MCNY and Morris Brown together as partners in higher education.
Dr. Gibbs and Dr. James also joined the Bronx community for the investiture of Dr. Larry D. Johnson Jr. as President of Bronx Community College, with Dr. James delivering the invocation.
MCNY congratulates President Johnson and celebrates this new chapter for Bronx Community College and the borough we are proud to call home.
And that brings the story back to the Bronx. A borough built by people who know the value of opportunity. A place where education can change the direction of a life, a family and a community.
More than six decades after the March on Washington, Atlanta and New York meet in the Bronx with work still to do and a shared purpose to move it forward through education.
A Bronx Tale. Two Cities. One Purpose.
