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 serving African American students. Most are in the Southern United States and were founded during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) following the American Civil War.Anderson, J.D. (1988). The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. University of North Carolina Press. Their original purpose was to provide education for African Americans in an era when most colleges and universities in the United States did not allow black students to enroll.
During the Reconstruction era, most historically Black colleges were founded by Protestant religious organizations. This changed in 1890 with the U.S. Congress' passage of the Second Morrill Act, which required segregated Southern states to provide African Americans with public higher education schools in order to receive the Act's benefits. Separately, during the late 20th century, either after expanding their inclusion of Black people and African Americans into their institutions or gaining the status of minority-serving institution, some institutions came to be called predominantly black institutions (PBIs).
For a century after the abolition of American slavery in 1865, almost all colleges and universities in the Southern United States prohibited all African Americans from attending as required by Jim Crow laws in the South, while institutions in other parts of the country regularly employed quotas to limit admission of Black people.Marybeth Gasman, Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).Marybeth Gasman and Felecia Commodore (eds.), Opportunities and Challenges at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (New York: Palgrave Press, 2014). Favors, J. (2020). Shelter in a time of storm: How Black colleges fostered generations of leadership and activism. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press. HBCUs were established to provide more opportunities to African Americans and are largely responsible for establishing and expanding the African-American middle class. In the 1950s and 1960s, legally enforced racial segregation in education was generally outlawed throughout the South (and anywhere else in the United States), and other non-discrimination policies were adopted.
There are 107 HBCUs in the United States (of 121 institutions that existed during the 1930s), representing three percent (3%) of the nation's colleges, including public and private institutions. 27 offer doctoral programs, 52 offer master's programs, 83 offer bachelor's degree programs, and 38 offer associate degrees.Marybeth Gasman, The Changing Face of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Philadelphia: Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, University of Pennsylvania, 2013. Casey Boland, Marybeth Gasman et al., Contemporary Public HBCUs: A Four State Comparison, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2014. HBCUs currently produce nearly 20% of all African American college graduates and 25% of African American STEM graduates. Among the graduates of HBCUs are civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., United States Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, American film director Spike Lee, former United States vice president Kamala Harris and the late American mathematician Katherine Johnson.
History
Medical schools Following the release of the Flexner Report, "five of the seven Black medical schools in the United States were forced to close, leaving only Howard and Meharry."
Private institutions HBCUs established prior to the American Civil War include Cheyney University of Pennsylvania in 1837,For detail of the university's early history from its origins as the Institute for Colored Youth, see Milton M. James, The Institute for Colored Youth, 21 Negro History Bulletin p. 83 (1958) Avery College in 1849, University of the District of Columbia (then known as Miner School for Colored Girls) in 1851, Lincoln University PA in 1854,Initially chartered as the Ashmun Institute, it changed its name in 1866. It was the first degree-granting HBCU. See Lincoln University, . See also Andrew E. Murray, The Founding of Lincoln University, 51 Journal of Presbyterian History p. 392 (1973). and Wilberforce University in 1856.Originally proposed as Ohio African University, the founders changed the name to Wilberforce University, to honor the English abolitionist William Wilberforce, before its corporate charter was granted. Frederick Alphonso McGinnis, A History and Interpretation of Wilberforce University p. 33 (1941). See also Charles Killian, Wilberforce University: The Reality of Bishop Payne's Dream, 34 Negro History Bulletin p. 83 (1971).Marybeth Gasman, Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
HBCUs were controversial in their early years. At the 1847 National Convention of Colored People and Their Friends, the famed Black orators Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and Alexander Crummell debated the need for such institutions, with Crummell arguing that HBCUs were necessary to provide freedom from discrimination, and Douglass and Garnet arguing that self-segregation would harm the Black community. A majority of the convention voted that HBCUs should be supported.
Most HBCUs were established in the South after the American Civil War, often with the assistance of religious missionary organizations based in the North, especially the American Missionary Association. The Freedmen's Bureau played a major role in financing the new schools.Robert C. Lieberman, "The Freedmen's Bureau and the politics of institutional structure." Social Science History 18.3 (1994): 405–437.Ronald E. Butchart, "Freedmen's education during reconstruction." New Georgia Encyclopedia 13 (2016): 4–13 online.
Atlanta University – now Clark Atlanta University – was founded on September 19, 1865, as the first HBCU in the Southern United States. Atlanta University was the first graduate institution to award degrees to African Americans in the nation and the first to award bachelor's degrees to African Americans in the South; Clark College (1869) was the nation's first four-year liberal arts college to serve African-American students. The two consolidated in 1988 to form Clark Atlanta University. Shaw University, founded December 1, 1865, was the second HBCU to be established in the South. The year 1865 also saw the foundation of Storer College (1865–1955) in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. Storer's former campus and buildings have since been incorporated into Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
Some of these universities eventually became public universities with assistance from the government.
Public institutions In 1862,(7 U.S.C. § 301 et seq.) the federal government's Morrill Act provided for land grant colleges in each state. Educational institutions established under the Morrill Act in the North and West were open to Black Americans. But 17 states, almost all in the South, required their post-Civil war systems to be segregated and excluded Black students from their land grant colleges. In the 1870s, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina each assigned one African American college land-grant status: Alcorn University, Hampton Institute, and Claflin University, respectively.John W. Davis, The Negro Land-Grant College, 2 Journal of Negro Education p. 312 (1933). In response, Congress passed the second Morrill Act of 1890, also known as the Agricultural College Act of 1890, requiring states to establish a separate land grant college for Black students if they were being excluded from the existing land grant college. Many of the HBCUs were founded by states to satisfy the Second Morrill Act.See generally, John W. Davis, The Negro Land-Grant College, 2 Journal of Negro Education (1933). These land grant schools continue to receive annual federal funding for their research, extension, and outreach activities.
Predominantly Black Institution Predominantly Black Institution (PBI) is a distinct U.S. Department of Education classification under the Minority Serving Institution category. There is a strict, codified definition for eligibility of PBI classification, including having an enrollment of undergraduate students that is at least 40% Black American students and a population of undergraduate students of which not less than 50% of the undergraduate students enrolled at the institution are low-income individuals or first-generation college students. While PBIs are, by definition, not HBCUs, these institutions share a common affinities like Divine Nine organizations and membership in associations like the United Negro College Fund.
Sports In the 1920s and 1930s, historically Black colleges developed a strong interest in athletics. Sports were expanding rapidly at state universities, but very few Black stars were recruited there. Race newspapers hailed athletic success as a demonstration of racial progress. Black schools hired coaches, recruited and featured stellar athletes, and set up their own leagues.
Jewish refugees In the 1930s, many Jewish intellectuals fleeing Europe after the rise of Hitler and anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany following Hitler's elevation to power emigrated to the United States and found work teaching in historically Black colleges. In particular, 1933 was a challenging year for many Jewish academics who tried to escape increasingly oppressive Nazi policies, particularly after legislation was passed stripping them of their positions at universities. Jews looking outside of Germany could not find work in other European countries because of calamities like the Spanish Civil War and general antisemitism in Europe. In the US, they hoped to continue their academic careers, but barring a scant few (see Jewish quota in U.S. institutions), found little acceptance in elite institutions in Depression-era America, which also had their own undercurrent of antisemitism.Marybeth Gasman, "Scylla and Charybdis: Navigating the Waters of Academic Freedom at Fisk University during Charles S. Johnson's Administration (1946–1956)", American Educational Research Journal 36, no. 4 (1999): 739–58.
As a result of these phenomena, more than two-thirds of the faculty hired at many HBCUs from 1933 to 1945 had come to the United States to escape from Nazi Germany. HBCUs believed the Jewish professors were valuable faculty that would help strengthen their institutions' credibility. HBCUs had a firm belief in diversity and giving opportunity no matter the race, religion, or country of origin. HBCUs were open to Jews because of their ideas of equal learning spaces. They sought to create an environment where all people felt welcome to study, including women.
World War II HBCUs made substantial contributions to the US war effort. One example is Tuskegee University in Alabama, where the Tuskegee Airmen trained and attended classes.Philo Hutcheson, Marybeth Gasman, and Kijua Sanders-McMurtry, "Race and Equality in the Academy: Rethinking Higher Education Actors and the Struggle for Equality in the Post-World War II Period", Journal of Higher Education 82, no. 2 (2011): 121–53
Florida's Black junior colleges