Historically black colleges and universities

Cheyney University was founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth, making it the oldest HBCU in the nation

North Carolina A&T State University is the largest HBCU in the nation.

Vice President Kamala Harris with black students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Booker T. Washington, educator, orator, and advisor (Hampton)

W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist, historian, and activist (Fisk)

Thurgood Marshall, first Black Supreme Court justice (Lincoln, Howard)

Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the civil rights movement (Morehouse)

Toni Morrison, acclaimed novelist and Nobel laureate (Howard)

Jesse Jackson, minister and politician (North Carolina A&T)

Ruth Simmons, first African-American president in the Ivy League (Dillard)

Samuel L. Jackson, actor and film producer (Morehouse)

Oprah Winfrey, talk show host and media mogul (Tenn State)

Spike Lee, film director and producer (Morehouse)

Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (Howard)

Chadwick Boseman actor and playwright (Howard)

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community.

- Historically black colleges and universities

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Lincoln University (Pennsylvania)

alt=Civil rights activist James Farmer|James Farmer

alt=Fritz Pollard, posing with a football|Fritz Pollard

Lincoln University (LU) is a public state-related historically black university near Oxford, Pennsylvania.

Wilberforce University

Daniel Alexander Payne in the early 1890s

Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio.

Clark Atlanta University

Bust of W.E.B. DuBois by Ayokunle Odeleye at Clark Atlanta University

Clark Atlanta University (CAU or Clark Atlanta) is a private Methodist historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia.

Shaw University

Leonard Medical School (left) and adjoining hospital (right), c.1910

An ad for Shaw University from 1900, placed in a black-owned newspaper in Minnesota.

James E. Cheek Learning Resources Center

W. C. Strudwick (1884–1932) in Shaw University football uniform, future graduate from Leonard Medical School (class of 1912) and physician in Durham, NC

Willie E Gary, one of the richest lawyers in the world.

Gladys Knight, lead singer of Gladys Knight & the Pips

Angie Brooks, first African female President of the United Nations General Assembly.

Shaw University is a private Baptist historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Cheyney University of Pennsylvania

Cheyney University of Pennsylvania is a public historically black university in Cheyney, Pennsylvania.

Thurgood Marshall

American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991.

Henry Highland Garnet School (P.S. 103), where Marshall attended elementary school

Thurgood Marshall photographed in 1967 in the Oval Office

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (left) and Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler talk in Lawyers Mall, near a statue of Thurgood Marshall. (October 2007).

He attended Lincoln University, a historically black university in Pennsylvania.

Tuskegee University

Original campus buildings on the Miller plantation, 1882

The Oaks, Booker T. Washington's home on the Tuskegee campus, c. 1906

George Washington Carver (front row, center) poses with fellow faculty of Tuskegee Institute in this c. 1902 photograph taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston.

The Tuskegee University Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center

A view of the Tuskegee University campus – White Hall bell tower

College of Veterinary Medicine – Fredrick D Patterson Hall

College of Engineering – Luther H. Foster Hall has long been home to one of the nation's best engineering programs containing: Aerospace Science Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science Engineering, Mechanical and Military Science

Tuskegee University School of Nursing – Basil O'Connor Hall. Tuskegee Institute Training School of Nurses was registered with the State Board of Nursing in Alabama in September 1892 under the auspices of Tuskegee University's John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital. In 1948, the School began its baccalaureate program leading to the Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing. This program has the distinction of being the first Baccalaureate Nursing program in the State of Alabama.

Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science is home to one of only 2 NAAB-accredited, architecture professional degree programs in the state of Alabama. It is also home to one of the top Construction Science and Management degree programs in the nation.

Tuskegee University's historic Cleveland Leigh Abbott Memorial Alumni Stadium, completed 1924. The stadium was the first of its kind to be built at any HBCU in the south.

The Lifting the Veil of Ignorance statue of Booker T. Washington was designed by sculptor Charles Keck and unveiled on April 5, 1922. The statue depicts Dr. Washington lifting the veil of ignorance off his people, who had once been enslaved, by showing them the ways of a better life through education and skills.

James Henry Meriwether Henderson Hall is Tuskegee University's new Agricultural Life Science Teaching, Extension and Research Building. Henderson Hall provides labs for teaching introductory courses in animal, plant, soil, and environmental sciences as well as biology and chemistry.

Built in 1906 and completely renovated in 2013, Tompkins Hall serves as the primary student dining facility and student center. The building includes a ballroom, an auditorium, a game room, a retail restaurant, and a 24-hour student study with healthy food vending machines. It is home to the offices of the Student Government Association.

The Legacy Museum houses: The African collection (contains approximately 900 items), the antiques and miscellaneous items collection and The Lovette W. Harper Collection of African Art. Third Floor exhibition contains "The United States Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study in the Negro Male, Macon County, Alabama 1932-1972."

Booker T. Washington is laid to rest in the Tuskegee University Campus Cemetery. Many other notable university people are interred on the Tuskegee campus including: George Washington Carver, Cleveland L. Abbott, William L. Dawson, Luther Hilton Foster (4th president), Frederick D. Patterson (3rd president), many other Washington family members and others.

Tuskegee University provides on-campus apartment style living for students in the Commons Apartments located across the campus in three different locations

Margaret Murray Washington Hall is home to Office of Admission, University Bookstore and additional dining services for the students

"The Avenue" is one of the main pedestrian corridors on campus that is rarely open to vehicular traffic

Booker T. Washington Boulevard is the main drive into the campus of Tuskegee University

Tuskegee University's campus has a park like setting and features many large green areas

College of Veterinary Medicine Williams Bowie Hall

The Main Library, Hollis Burke Frissell now known as the Ford Motor Company Library/Learning Resource Center

Andrew F. Brimmer College of Business and Information Sciences

Daniel "Chappie" James Center -Tuskegee basketball pre-game warm-up

Daniel "Chappie" James Center basketball game

Tuskegee University campus partial view of the "Valley" and the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center

Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU) is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Sign for "colored" waiting room at a Greyhound bus terminal in Rome, Georgia, 1943. Throughout the South there were Jim Crow laws creating "de jure" legally required segregation

Racial segregation in the United States

Segregation of facilities and services such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation in the United States along racial lines.

"We Cater to White Trade Only" sign on a restaurant window in Lancaster, Ohio in 1938. Ohio, like most of the North and West did not have de jure statutory enforced segregation (Jim Crow laws), but in many places still had social segregation (de facto) in the early 20th century.

An African-American man drinking at a "colored" drinking fountain in a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City, 1939.

A black man goes into the "colored" entrance of a movie theater in Belzoni, Mississippi, 1939.

Although the ban on interracial marriage ended in California in 1948, entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. faced a backlash for his involvement with a white woman in 1957

A black military policeman on a motorcycle in front of the "colored" MP entrance during World War II

Negro section of keypunch operators at the U.S. Census Bureau

Founded by former Confederate soldiers after the Civil War (1861–1865), the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used violence and intimidation to prevent blacks from voting, holding political office and attending school

Stand in the Schoolhouse Door: Governor George Wallace attempts to block the enrollment of black students at the University of Alabama.

White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the Sojourner Truth housing project erected this sign. Detroit, 1942.

A sign posted above a bar that reads "No beer sold to Indians" (Native Americans). Birney, Montana, 1941.

Discrimination in a restaurant in Juneau, Alaska in 1908: "All White Help."

The Rex theater for colored people, Leland, Mississippi, 1937

Residential segregation in Milwaukee, the most segregated city in America according to the 2000 US Census. The cluster of blue dots represent black residents.

A "Colored School" in South Carolina, ca.1878

The American Missionary Association supported the development and establishment of several historically black colleges including Fisk University and Shaw University.

Douglas Wilder

American lawyer and politician who served as the 66th Governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994.

Wilder state senate campaign poster, 1969

Wilder worked his way through Virginia Union University, a historically black university, by waiting tables at hotels and shining shoes, graduating in 1951 with a degree in chemistry.

Land-grant university

Institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.

Painting of an early land-grant college (Kansas State University) from the Westward Expansion Corridor at the U.S. Capitol

Among the seventy colleges and universities which eventually evolved from the Morrill Acts are several of today's historically black colleges and universities.