A college or university founded before 1964 whose principal mission was, and is, the education of Black Americans, as defined in federal law.
“Historically Black college or university” is a legal category as well as a tradition. Under the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, federal law defines an HBCU as “any historically Black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of Black Americans,” and that is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting agency or making reasonable progress toward accreditation (20 U.S.C. Section 1061). The definition appears in Title III, Part B, which directs federal institutional aid to these schools. The 1964 cutoff matters: the category describes institutions built when segregation or outright exclusion shut Black students out of most of American higher education, not every college that enrolls many Black students today.
The oldest HBCUs predate emancipation. Cheyney University of Pennsylvania traces its founding to 1837; Lincoln University in Pennsylvania was founded in 1854 as Ashmun Institute; and Wilberforce University in Ohio, founded in 1856, came under the control of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1863. The great wave followed the Civil War, as missionary societies, Black churches, and the Freedmen’s Bureau built schools across the South; Fisk was founded in Nashville in 1866 by the American Missionary Association and the Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission, and Howard in Washington in 1867. The Second Morrill Act of 1890 required states that barred Black students from their land-grant colleges to establish separate land-grant institutions for them, producing the public “1890 universities.” Founders ranged from Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee to Mary McLeod Bethune at Bethune-Cookman.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 99 HBCUs in 2022 — 50 public and 49 private nonprofit — in 19 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, enrolling about 289,000 students. Non-Black students made up 24 percent of that enrollment, up from 15 percent in 1976. Many other HBCUs have closed or merged over the past century and a half; our lost HBCUs directory records them, and HBCU firsts traces the graduates who broke barriers.
See also: Talented Tenth, Freedmen’s Bureau, Reconstruction, Brown v. Board of Education, Sit-In
Sources
- 20 U.S.C. Section 1061, Definitions (Higher Education Act of 1965, Title III, Part B, as amended). Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Link
- National Center for Education Statistics, “Fast Facts: Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Link
- Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, “Council of 1890 Universities.” Link
- Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, “Who We Are.” Link
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