In the early 1930s, Morris Brown College was in financial trouble and was forced to give up its property at Houston and Boulevard. Since its affiliation with Spelman and Morehouse, Atlanta University was no longer using several of its original buildings. So In 1932, Bishop W. A. Fountain, former college president and then Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and his son, W. A. Fountain, Jr., President of Morris Brown, negotiated for the college to become part of the university system and lease some of the vacant buildings on the old campus.