Bates was founded in 1855 by Freewill Baptists, first as the Maine State Seminary and later as Bates College. The founders believed that all human potential should be developed, and opened Bates' doors not only to white men — the traditional College population of the era — but also to African Americans and women. Seeking to repudiate social hierarchy, they banned fraternities and sororities. Bates was exceptional in taking these positions at the time. However, the College's efforts at true equity, inclusion, and access were imperfect and were shaped from the beginning by U.S. social norms that promoted hierarchies of race and gender.

The College's origin story is complex. The founder and first president of Bates, the Rev. Oren Burbank Cheney, was an ardent abolitionist: He established Storer College in West Virginia for freed slaves, he traveled to the South to recruit formerly enslaved persons to attend Bates, and he worked with the Underground Railroad. He wrote of slavery, “We hate it — we abhor it, we loathe it — we detest and despise it as a giant sin against God, and an awful crime upon man.”

As he sought financial support for his growing institution, Cheney looked to the Boston-based entrepreneurs who had invested in Lewiston, including Benjamin Bates, for whom the new College was named in 1864. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Benjamin Bates had built his fortune in New England textile manufacturing. He established the Bates Manufacturing Company in Lewiston in 1852, accumulating wealth in the antebellum years from the labor of enslaved people who grew the cotton that was spun and woven in his mills.

Despite these and other contradictions, the pursuit of access and equality to and through education runs deep in the College's history and mission and animates current efforts to ensure that all members of the community are supported to thrive. The College is committed to inclusion and belonging, beginning with programs for prospective and admitted students and extending through initiatives to transform curricula in the sciences and humanities, teach in ways that support all students for success, and offer co-curricular programs that allow students to engage deeply with each other and with the compelling issues of our time.