Explore Our History.

Christian Brothers College was founded in 1871 by members of the Institute of the Brothers of Christian Schools, an international Roman Catholic religious teaching congregation.

The Memphis clergy, determined to establish Catholic education in Memphis, envisioned not only elementary and secondary education but college education too.

The closing of the Memphis Female College on Adams Avenue made the property available for a new school. The first president, Brother Maurelian Sheel, came from Pass Christian, Mississippi, along with three other Brothers displaced by the Great Chicago Fire. The new college on Adams Avenue was dedicated on Sunday, November 19, 1871. It opened its doors with four Christian Brothers and 87 students.

The initial decades in Memphis were a struggle for Christian Brothers College. Recovery from the Civil War and Reconstruction was tedious, and yellow fever and financial difficulties plagued the city and the Brothers’ community.

Brother Maurelian served as President for 33 years, during which time the college functioned as a combined elementary school, high school, and college, granting both high school diplomas as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

World War I strained the Saint Louis District of the Christian Brothers, which governed the Memphis college and another in St. Louis. With so many young men away serving in the military, the District could not support two colleges. In June 1915, Christian Brothers College awarded its last college degrees for several decades.

Students in 1922.

Groundbreaking of New Campus on Parkway

In 1939, a joint public fundraising drive with St. Agnes Academy was initiated with a goal of the then-enormous sum of $250,000. When the drive successfully managed to almost double the goal by raising $452,000, CBC purchased a plot of land in the suburbs on East Parkway. On June 9, 1939, the Brothers laid the cornerstone of a three-story building on the new property and eleven months later held the dedication ceremony for what would come to be called Kenrick Hall. Battersby Hall was constructed soon afterward.

First Junior College Class

St. Joseph Hall in 1955.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, student enrollment grew, as did the Christian Brothers Community. New housing, classrooms, administrative buildings, and the De La Salle Gymnasium were built during this period.

Original Bell Tower in 1958.

The original bell tower, erected in 1958, was a project of the CBC Mothers’ Club. Brother Lambert Thomas designed it and dedicated it to “all the deceased mothers of Christian Brothers’ students.”

Stritch Hall (now called Lambert Hall) constructed.

Christian Brothers High School groundbreaking on Walnut Grove. Bishop Durick of Nashville wielded the shovel. (Others seen in the picture are (L-R): Brother J. Stephen O’Malley, Brother Terence McLaughlin, Reverend Joseph Wesley, Brother J. Alfred Moroni, Lawrence Guidi, and Edward Barry.)

In 1961, Brother President Lambert Thomas Matthews wrote that the school was operating at full capacity. “It is quite obvious that there is a need for a new high school,” he wrote. “…[T]here is not sufficient room here to house a college the size that CBC is tending to become, and a high school of 1,000 students.”

In September 1961, a 27-acre plot of land on Walnut Grove Road was purchased. Christian Brothers High School did not open its separate doors until 1965, but in the meantime, it had made a different sort of history. Christian Brothers College had been quietly and peacefully integrated since 1960 when Ernest Donohue transferred from LeMoyne-Owen College, but no secondary school in Memphis, public or private, had been integrated prior to 1963. In August 1963, Brother President Terence McLaughlin accepted the application of Jesse Turner Jr. and made CBHS the first racially integrated high school in the city. Turner graduated as co-salutatorian of the Class of 1967.

In 1970, spurred partially by the imminent closure of nearby all-female Siena College (formerly St. Agnes College, affiliated with St. Agnes Academy), women were accepted as students for the first time at Christian Brothers College—which had been all-male for 99 years. Today, the student population of CBU is half female.

First MBAs in 1989.

Christian Brothers College (CBC) became Christian Brothers University (CBU).

Bell Tower Renovation in 1992.

Lady Buccaneers won NCAA DII National Women’s Soccer Championship.

• 2017. Master of Science in Computer Information Systems established.
• 2019. Center for Community Engagement began.
• 2019. Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation began.
• 2021. Master of Science in Data Science established.