Maury County students attending Tennessee State University this fall have a new scholarship opportunity.
The scholarship has been created by the African American Heritage Society of Maury County and an anonymous donor to highlight the work of two distinguished Columbia educational leaders: Edmund and John H. Kelly, who made an impact on Black history dating back to the 1800s.
The Edmund and John H. Kelly Scholarship at TSU will provide up to $10,000 for the 2025-26 academic year.
Students applying to TSU for the scholarship will write a brief essay connecting one of the men’s lives and values to their own experience growing up in Maury County.
The scholarship is listed at https://tnstate.academicworks.com/opportunities/21724. For more information contact Ms. Tiffany Baker, tbaker02@tnstate.edu.
“After considering the contributions of the many people who called Maury County home or who briefly passed this way, Edmund and John H. Kelly, were selected because they consistently fought to make Maury County a better place to live,” JoAnn McClellan, AAHSMC president, said.
Rev. Edmund Kelly, 1818-1894
Rev. Edmund Kelly was one of the first African Americans ordained in state of Tennessee. He was the co-founder and first minister of the Mt. Lebanon Missionary Baptist Church.
In 1847, his owner gave him permission to leave the state because she was having financial difficulties. For this privilege, he paid his owner $10 per month with money he earned working as an evangelist. In 1851, Kelly purchased the freedom of his wife and their four children and settled in New Bedford, MA.
In 1863, Kelly was with a delegation of African American ministers who met with President Lincoln to get permission to cross the union lines to minister to the formerly enslaved. Kelly believed that the formerly enslaved should join the fight for their freedom.
He wrote, “I sincerely trust the colored people will never wait to be drafted, but volunteer to a man…while the white people hazard their civil and political rights, the colored people lose both and their freedoms besides.” Kelly’s son, William, fought with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, joining the 180,000 formerly enslaved men, who fought with the United States Colored Troops, including more than 400 from Maury County.
Kelly became famous because he proved that regular church-going African Americans, with little education, could become knowledgeable about the Bible. In 1866, he published, “Open Questions,” at his expense, for use in Sunday Schools and Bible Classes.
After the contentious election in 1876, laws were implemented to remove the political and economic gains made by the formerly enslaved during reconstruction. Kelly published the “Appeal to Lovers of Freedom, Righteous Progress, and Christianity. Kelly wrote, “… select and vote for such men only as are willing to guarantee to the colored people all of the rights embodied in the amendments; such being the result of the war.”
Considered one of the greatest organizers of his day, Kelly traveled extensively, preaching and organizing churches in Connecticut, Massachusetts Virginia, and Rhode Island in the late 1860s; then back in Maury County in 1872 to organize the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church and School in Spring Hill, Tenn.
John H. Kelly, educator and community leader
John Henry Kelly founded the first public school for African Americans in Maury County. Born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Kelly finished school at an early age and began the study of law with the view of making this his life’s work. While visiting his family in Columbia, he discovered the need for teachers and decided to work to educate the African American students.
First, he and partner Frank Wigfall acquired the former orphan asylum for three years for school purposes. In 1880, supporters of the public-school concept, gathered “friends of the cause” to discuss the school situation in Columbia.
The discussion resulted in an ordinance to provide common school education for both Black and white children. The committee secured a building for the white children and developed a plan to fund and build a structure for the Black children.
The Board of Mayor and Aldermen purchased two acres to build the new school. In 1885, an agent representing the school went to the North to raise funds to assist in the building of the new school.
In addition, the school closed for 10 months, and those funds were used to assist in the building of the school. In 1886, the Colored Public School at College Hill, later named College Hill School, opened with Kelly serving as the first principal.
The next challenge was finding African American teachers. In 1896, Kelly established the Maury County Colored Teachers’ Institute. Each summer, 85 to 100 new or inexperienced teachers attended a two-week session. The superintendent of schools placed the students who passed the “certification” examination in city and county schools.
In 1913, fifty years after the emancipation and almost a 40-year career in education, Kelly wrote, “The past is secure, but of the future, who can tell? It is only in the bosom of the great God above who knows what the future shall be. We will not give up, not surrender a foot of the vantage ground of freedom.”
In the 1920s, Kelly, with the local business owners and community leaders, turned their attention to healthcare. American hospitals gave African American health professionals virtually no opportunity to practice or be trained and excluded African American patients. Responding to this situation, African American leaders began “making a place for themselves” by establishing African American controlled hospitals.
Established in 1923, the Maury County Colored Hospital evolved out of a critical need to provide medical care for African Americans in Maury and surrounding counties.
The Maury County Colored Hospital remained in good standing with the Tennessee State Medical Board until it closed in 1954 when Maury County Regional Hospital opened with the promise to create a 30-bed wing for African Americans
