Shaw University - Bears
www.shawu.edu
118 East South St. Raleigh N.C. 27601 U.S.A. Phone. 919-546-8200
Shaw University, founded in 1865, is the first historically black college of the South. Shaw is a private, co-educational, liberal arts university affiliated with the Baptist Church. The University awards degrees at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
The primary mission of the University is teaching with the commitment to maintain excellence in research and academic programs that foster intellectual enhancement and technological skills.
Additionally, the University stresses character development, which includes religious, cultural, social, and ethical values. Ultimately, Shaw University endeavors to graduate students with demonstrated competencies in their chosen fields of study.
Shaw University is the oldest historically Black university in the South. Two colleges, one school, and ten departments constitute a variety of academic offerings that are geared toward today’s employment market.
The University offers 30 undergraduate majors and is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award the Associate, Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Three of its academic programs also have national accreditation. The
Shaw Divinity School is one of only a handful of divinity schools in the state of
North Carolina to earn full accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in the
United States. The kinesiotherapy program is accredited by the American Kinesiotherapy Association and the teacher education program is accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. The latter program is also approved by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
Elizabeth City State University - Vikings
www.ecsu.edu
1704 Weeksville Road, Elizabeth City, N.C. 27909, 252-335-3400Elizabeth City State University was founded on March 3, 1891, when House Bill 383 was enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly, establishing a normal school for the specific purpose of “teaching and training teachers of the colored race to teach in the common schools of North Carolina.” The bill was sponsored by Hugh Cale, an African American representative from Pasquotank County.
Between 1891 and 1928, curricula and resources were expanded under the leadership of Peter Wedderick Moore. Enrollment increased from 23 to 355 and the faculty from 2 to 15 members by the time Dr. Moore retired as President-Emeritus on July 1, 1928.
Under the leadership of John Henry Bias, the second president, who served from July 1, 1928 until his death on July 15, 1939, the institution was elevated from a two-year normal school to a four-year teachers college in 1937. The institution’s name was officially changed to
Elizabeth City State Teachers College on March 30, 1939, and the mission was expanded to include “the training of elementary school principals for rural and city schools.” The first bachelor of science degrees (in Elementary Education) were awarded in May 1939.
Bowie State University – Bulldogs
www.bowiestate.edu
14000 Jericho Park Rd Bowie MD 20715-9465 (301) 860-4000 or 1-877-77-BOWIE
Bowie State University is an outgrowth of the first school opened in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 9, 1865, by the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of Colored People, which was organized on
November 28, 1864, to engage in its self-appointed mission on a statewide basis. The first normal school classes sponsored by the Baltimore Association were held in the
African Baptist Church, located on the corner of Calvert and Saratoga streets. In 1868, with the aid of a grant from the Freedmen's Bureau, the Baltimore Association purchased
from the Society of Friends a building at Courtland and Saratoga streets for the relocation of its normal school until 1883, when it was reorganized solely as a normal school to
train Negro teachers.
The Baltimore Normal School had received occasional financial support from the city of Baltimore since 1870 and from the State since 1872. In 1871, it received a legacy from
the Nelson Wells Fund. This fund, established before Wells" death in February 1843, provided for the education of freed Negro children in the State of Maryland. On April 8, 1908, at the request of the Baltimore Normal School, which desired permanent status and funding as an institution for the education of Negro teachers, the State Legislature authorized its Board of Education to assume control of the school. The same law re-designated the institution as Normal School No. 3. Subsequently, it was relocated on a 187-acre tract in Prince George’s County, and by 1914 it was known as the Maryland Normal and Industrial School at Bowie. A two-year professional curriculum in teacher
education, which started in 1925, was expanded to a three-year program. In 1935, a four-year program for the training of elementary school teachers began, and the school was
renamed Maryland State Teachers College at Bowie. In 1951, with the approval of the State Board of Education, its governing body, Bowie State expanded its program to train teachers for junior high schools. Ten years later, permission was granted
to institute a teacher-training program for secondary education. In 1963, a liberal arts program was started and the name was changed to Bowie State College.
In 1970, Bowie State College was authorized to grant its first graduate degree, the Master of Education. A significant milestone in the development of graduate studies at Bowie State College was achieved with the Board of Trustees’ approval of the establishment of the Adler-Dreikurs Institute of Human Relations in 1975. On July 1, 1988, Bowie State College officially became Bowie State University, a change reflecting significant growth in the Institution’s programs, enrollment, and service to the area. On that same day, the University also became one of 11 constituent institutions of the newly-formed University System of Maryland.
Bowie State University, in 1995, won an 11-year, $27 million award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration/National Science Foundation to become one of only six national Model Institutions for Excellence in science, engineering, and mathematics.
Howard University - Bisons
Since early in its formative years, Howard University has collected materials documenting the historical experiences of people of African descent. General Oliver Otis Howard, the founder, for whom the institution was named and who was its third president, was an early supporter of the library's development. In April 1867, shortly after the university was chartered, a committee was established to select books for a library. Some of the first books were titles on Africa, and Howard donated several books and photographs related to Blacks. Many other individuals interested in supporting the new institution contributed books dealing with the abolitionist movement and the Civil War. Chief among these donations, and the university's most significant acquisition prior to the formal establishment of a special Black history collection, was the 1873 bequest of Lewis Tappan, a noted abolitionist who had organized the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and served as treasurer of the American Missionary Association. Tappan's Antislavery Collection consisted of more than 1,600 books, pamphlets, newspapers, letters, pictures, clippings, and periodicals. Later, this collection was augmented by sixty volumes donated by William Lavalette and some seventy bound newspapers and several scrapbooks donated by John Wesley Cromwell.
Despite these positive beginnings, the Black history collection grew slowly during the nineteenth century. However, the founding of organizations like the Bethel Literary and Historical Association (1881), the American Negro Historical Society (1897), the Negro Society for Historical Research (1912), and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (1915) was reflective of and stimulated a growing interest in studying and collecting sources for Black history. During this period, Howard University was a natural seedbed for the further development of the intellectual discipline of Black history and an obvious home for library materials to foster its study. The university's leading proponent of a separate research collection on Black history was Kelly Miller, a professor of mathematics and sociology (1890-1934) and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (1907-19). Envisioning a national "Negro Americana Museum and Library," Miller persuaded his good friend, the Reverend Jesse E. Moorland, to donate his wide-ranging private library on Black history to the university for this purpose
Virginia State University - Trojans
Virginia State University was founded on March 6, 1882, when the legislature passed a bill to charter the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. The bill was sponsored by Delegate Alfred W. Harris, a Black attorney whose offices were in Petersburg, but who lived in and represented Dinwiddie County in the General Assembly. A hostile lawsuit delayed opening day for nineteen months, until October 1, 1883. In 1902, the legislature revised the charter act to curtail the collegiate program and to change the name to Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute. In 1920, the land- grant program for Blacks was moved from a private school, Hampton Institute, where it had been since 1872, to Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute. In 1923 the college program was restored, and the name was changed to Virginia State College for Negroes in 1930. The two-year branch in Norfolk was added to the college in 1944; the Norfolk division became a four-year branch in 1956 and gained independence as Norfolk State College in 1969. Meanwhile, the parent school was renamed Virginia State College in 1946. Finally, the legislature passed a law in 1979 to provide the present name, Virginia State University.
In the first academic year, 1883-84, the University had 126 students and seven faculty (all of them Black), one building, 33 acres, a 200-book library, and a $20,000 budget. By the centennial year of 1982, the University was fully integrated, with a student body of nearly 5,000, a full-time faculty of about 250, a library containing 200,000 books and 360,000 microform and non-print items, a 236-acre campus and 416-acre farm, more than 50 buildings, including 15 dormitories and 16 classroom buildings, and a biennial budget of $31,000,000, exclusive of capital outlay.
The University is situated in Chesterfield County at Ettrick, on a bluff across the Appomattox River from the city of Petersburg. It is accessible via Interstate Highways 95 and 85, which meet in Petersburg. The University is only two and a half hours away from Washington, D.C. to the north, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area to the southwest, and Charlottesville to the northwest.
Virginia State University has a long history of outstanding faculty and administration. The first person to bear the title of President, John Mercer Langston, was one of the best-known blacks of his day. Until 1992, he was the only black ever elected to the United States Congress from Virginia (elected in 1888), and he was the great-uncle of the famed writer Langston Hughes. From 1888 to 1968, four presidents - James H. Johnston, John M. Gandy, Luther H. Foster, Robert P. DanielÑserved an average of 20 years, helping the school to overcome adversity and move forward. The next twenty years, 1968-1992, saw six more presidents Ñ James F. Tucker, Wendell P. Russell, Walker H. Quarles, Jr., Thomas M. Law, Wilbert Greenfield, and Wesley Cornelious McClure. On June 1, 1993, Eddie N. Moore, Jr., the former Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Virginia, became the twelfth President of Virginia State University.
Virginia Union University - Panthers
There were different challenges to be faced in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederate States; which had suffered extensive damage during the Evacuation Fire set when Southern troops had fled the city; and where much of the white population was opposed to everything that the ABHMS was trying to accomplish. Dr. J G. Binney, the first teacher sent out to open a school in Richmond, taught night classes to some 25 freedmen under adverse conditions from November 1865-July 1866 before giving up and leaving for Burma. However, on May 13, 1867, Dr. Nathaniel Colver an elderly, hard-bitten abolitionist who could not be intimidated by anyone arrived to resume the task. He had a great deal of trouble even finding suitable accommodations to rent, and was close to despair when he had a chance meeting with Mrs. Mary Ann Lumpkin, from whom he was able to rent a patch of land and buildings at 15th & Franklin Streets known as Lumpkin’s Jail or “The Devil’s Half Acre”. Mrs. Lumpkin was a former slave whose late husband, Robert Lumpkin, had been a slave-dealer and had run the property as a holding-pen and punishment/”breaking” center, which still contained whipping-posts. Living with Dr. Colver on the premises of the new school was the family of the Reverend James M. Holmes, another former slave who became pastor of First African Baptist Church. The support of Black ministers and community leaders proved to be crucial to the success of the school – of particular importance were Holmes; the Reverend Richard Wells of Ebenezer Baptist Church; and Pastor George Jackson from Halifax County, Virginia. After some initial misgivings and awkward moments the African-American Community of Richmond would adopt the fledgling institution as its own. Dr. Colver scheduled basic classes in Grammar, Arithmetic, Geography and Spelling/Reading as well as Biblical Knowledge during a six-hour day from 1867-68.
But Dr. Colver was over seventy, and in poor health and in 1868 handed over his burden as school principal to Dr. Charles Henry Corey, a former chaplain in the Union Army. In 1869 the ABHMS Board honored the departed headmaster by naming the School Colver Institute. Dr. Corey proved to be a dynamic leader and directed the school for 31 years, becoming revered by his students and earning the respect of the Richmond Community. In 1870, he succeeded in making the move from the rented facilities at Lumpkin’s Jail, which still held painful memories for many of the students, and purchased the former United States Hotel building at 19th & Main Street for $10,000. In 1876, the school was incorporated by the Virginia General Assembly under the name Richmond Institute, Dr. Corey taking charge officially as president, with the support of a Board of Trustees which included Holmes and Wells. The Institute was the first in the South to employ African-American teaching assistants and faculty and in 1876 was offering curricula which were preparatory (elementary), academic (pre-college) and theological. Enrollment grew steadily and among its earliest students Richmond Institute numbered it first foreign graduate, Samuel M. Harden of Lagos, Nigeria (1879) and its first female graduate, Maria E. Anderson (1882). An Alumni Association under the leadership of Charles J. Daniel (class of 1878) was organized in 1879.
The first Founders’ Day took place on February 11, 1899 with a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of present-day Kingsley Hall the first classes convened at Virginia Union University on October 4, 1899. Nine buildings in Virginia granite, some inlaid with Georgia pine, designed by architect John Coxhead of Buffalo New York in late-Victorian Romanesque Revival style gave the campus a distinctive, dignified atmosphere from the very beginning.
Norfolk State University – Spartans
Norfolk State College was founded in 1935. The College, brought to life in the midst of the Great Depression, provided a setting in which the youth of the region could give expressions to their hopes and aspirations. At this founding, it was named the Norfolk Unit of Virginia Union University. In 1942, the College became the independent Norfolk Polytechnic College, and two years later an Act of the Virginia Legislature mandated that it become a part of Virginia State College.
The College was able to pursue an expanded mission with even greater emphasis in 1956 when another Act of the Legislature enabled the institution to offer its first Bachelor's degree. The College was separated from Virginia State College and became fully independent in 1969. Subsequent legislative acts designated the institution as a university and authorized the granting of graduate degrees. In 1979, university status was attained.
Today, the University is proud to be one of the largest predominantly black institutions in the nation. Furthermore, it is committed to pursuing its vital role of serving the people of the Hampton Roads area.
Norfolk State University is a public, urban, comprehensive University offering programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Founded in 1935, Norfolk State University adheres to the traditional purpose of the Historically Black University and espouses the tradition of service to its students, its alumni, the academy, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world.
Winston Salem State University – Rams
Slater Industrial Academy, founded in 1892, began as a 20-foot by 40-foot one-room frame structure with a full basement on a 50-foot by 140-foot lot. Francis L. Atkins, the school’s first president, said he “remembered the building fondly because as a boy he had attended school there. Across the street from that building the school had a large frame house used as an office and girls’ dormitory. Male students lived at homes in the community. When Lamson Hall was built in 1896, the original building was used for the lower grades. In 1905, children enrolled in Slater’s lower grades transferred to a new school built by the county. Slater needed the original building no longer, and sold it to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church a few years later.”
Winston-Salem State University was founded as the Slater Industrial Academy on September 28, 1892. It began in a one-room frame structure with 25 pupils and one teacher. In 1895, the school was recognized by the state of North Carolina, and in 1897 it was chartered by the state as Slater Industrial Academy and State Normal School. In 1925, the N.C. General Assembly granted the school a new charter that extended its curriculum above high school, changed its name to Winston-Salem Teachers College, and empowered it under the State Board of Education to confer degrees. In 1963, its name was changed to Winston-Salem State College, and in 1969 it became Winston-Salem State University. In 1971, WSSU became one of the 16 constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina.
Hampton University- PiratesHampton University has embraced the principles of "Education for life" and "learning by doing," since its founding in 1868 during the days of Reconstruction. Originally opening its doors as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute to prepare promising young African-American men and women to lead and teach their newly-freed people, the University has continually sought to instill in its students the precepts of efficiency, character and service to society-standards that continue to remain both timeless and relevant.
Founded on the banks of the Virginia Peninsula by Brigadier General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the 29 year-old son of missionary parents, Hampton became an oasis of opportunity for the thousands of newly-freed people gathered behind Union lines. With the aid of the American Missionary Association, the school was established to train selected young men and women to "go out to teach and lead their people," and to build a viable industrial system on the strength of self-sufficiency, intelligent labor and solid moral character.
In 1878, Hampton established a formal education program or Native Americans, beginning the Institute's lasting commitment to serving a multicultural population. Hampton's historic Native American education program spanned more than forty years, with the last student graduating in 1923. Recent initiatives have attracted Native American students to renew their ties with Hampton.
In the early days, support for the Institute came from the Freedman's Bureau, Northern philanthropists and religious groups, with the first classroom building erected in 1870. The first baccalaureate degrees were awarded in 1922. Two years later, the school's name was changed to Hampton Institute, reflecting college-level accreditation. In 1984, Hampton's Board of Trustees formally adopted a university structure and changed the name to Hampton University, which today represents the unparalleled standard of excellence in American higher education.
St. Pauls College - Tigers
Lawrenceville, VA 23868
Founded in 1888 and affiliated with the Episcopal Church, Saint Paul’s College is a private, historically black, accredited, four-year coeducational liberal arts institution of higher learning located in the rolling hills of Brunswick County in Southern Virginia. Saint Paul’s offers baccalaureate degrees in the arts and sciences, teacher education, professional and pre-professional programs, continuing studies, adult education and our Single Parent Support System program on our beautiful 183-acre campus. The historic campus and architecture, on the National Register of Historic Places, provides a classic backdrop to a personalized education that provides opportunities for spiritual and scholarly development within a strong sense of community.
Saint Paul’s College provides an academic environment that promotes the vision of its founder and his Christian heritage to educate all students, especially the underserved, with educational, cultural, spiritual, and life-long learning experiences that will enable them to lead and to serve in today’s technology driven, global society.
With a student-teacher ratio of 17:1, its liberal arts, professional and pre-professional programs prepare students for careers and graduate studies in Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, Business, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences and provide opportunities for students to grow in mind, body and spirit with integrity, objectivity, resourcefulness, scholarship, and responsible citizenship.
The Saint Paul’s College experience is further shaped by volunteer service work in the community, intramural sports, student organization memberships, and cultural and social activities throughout the year that sustain a supportive, close-knit community creating friendships and ideas that will remain with you for a lifetime.
