HBCU Firsts

Federal law defines a historically Black college or university as one established before 1964 whose principal mission was, and is, the education of Black Americans. Behind that dry definition lies nearly two centuries of institution-building: Quaker bequests and church missions before the Civil War, freedmen’s schools and land-grant colleges after it, and a long campaign for accreditation, research standing, and public support in the twentieth century.

The milestones below trace that history. Many HBCUs describe themselves as “first” in a particular sense—first founded, first to grant degrees, first owned and operated by African Americans, first in a given region—and those distinctions are real but narrow. Each entry states the claim as precisely as the sources allow and names the institution that makes it.

1. 1837 A $10,000 bequest from the Quaker philanthropist Richard Humphreys founded the African Institute, soon renamed the Institute for Colored Youth, on 25 February 1837, to train Black students as teachers. Its successor, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, calls itself the nation’s first HBCU; by founding date it is the oldest. It moved to George Cheyney’s farm in 1902. Source
2. 1854 Pennsylvania chartered the Ashmun Institute on 29 April 1854 “for the scientific, classical and theological education of colored youth.” Renamed Lincoln University on 4 April 1866 in honor of Abraham Lincoln, it describes itself as the nation’s first degree-granting HBCU. Langston Hughes graduated in 1929 and Thurgood Marshall in 1930. Source
3. 1863 Daniel Alexander Payne, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, persuaded the church to purchase Wilberforce University in Ohio, which had opened in 1856 and closed during the Civil War. Payne became its president, one of the first African Americans to head an American college, and Wilberforce describes itself as the oldest private HBCU owned and operated by African Americans. Source
4. 1865 The American Baptist Home Mission Society founded the Raleigh Theological Institute, now Shaw University, in North Carolina. Shaw describes itself as the first HBCU in the American South; other institutions also trace their origins to 1865. Source
5. 1866 Soldiers of the 62nd United States Colored Infantry, whose pay averaged $13 a month, raised $5,000 to found a school in Jefferson City, Missouri, and the 65th Colored Infantry added $1,400. Lincoln Institute was formally established on 14 January 1866 and opened on 17 September 1866 with two students. It is now Lincoln University of Missouri. Source
6. 1866 Fisk held its first classes in Nashville on 9 January 1866, sponsored by the American Missionary Association, and was incorporated as Fisk University on 22 August 1867. Its first students ranged in age from seven to seventy. Source
7. 1867 On 2 March 1867, President Andrew Johnson signed the charter, passed by the 39th Congress, incorporating Howard University in Washington, D.C. It was named for General Oliver O. Howard, commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Its medical department began classes on 9 November 1868. Source
8. 1871 Mississippi founded Alcorn University, now Alcorn State University, on the former campus of Oakland College. Hiram R. Revels left the U.S. Senate to become its first president. Alcorn describes itself as the oldest public historically Black land-grant institution in the United States. Source
9. 1871 On 6 October 1871, a small group of Fisk students set out from Nashville on a concert tour to raise money for their debt-ridden school. The Fisk Jubilee Singers introduced spirituals to audiences across the United States and Europe, and their earnings built Jubilee Hall (1876), which Fisk describes as the South’s first permanent structure built for the education of Black students. Source
10. 1876 The Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church organized a medical department at Central Tennessee College in Nashville, the origin of Meharry Medical College, under its founder and first president, George Whipple Hubbard. Dental and pharmacy departments followed in 1886 and 1889, and Meharry received a separate charter on 13 October 1915. Source
11. 1881 Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles opened the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary on 11 April 1881 in the basement of Atlanta’s Friendship Baptist Church. Renamed Spelman Seminary in 1884 and Spelman College in 1924, it is described by the New Georgia Encyclopedia as the nation’s oldest historically Black college for women. Source
12. 1881 Booker T. Washington opened the Tuskegee Normal School in Alabama on 4 July 1881 with no land, no buildings, and a state appropriation of $2,000 a year for salaries. The school, later Tuskegee Institute, grew under his leadership, and George Washington Carver joined its faculty in 1896. Source
13. 1890 The Second Morrill Act, signed on 30 August 1890, barred federal land-grant funds from states that excluded Black students from their land-grant colleges unless they designated or established a separate college for Black students. The act produced the group now known as the 1890 land-grant universities. Source
14. 1896 The Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina, now South Carolina State University, opened with former Congressman Thomas E. Miller as its first president. Miller, a Lincoln University graduate, had helped establish the college. See Black Americans in Congress. Source
15. 1904 In October 1904, Mary McLeod Bethune opened the Daytona Educational and Industrial Institute, a school for Black girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. It later merged with the Cookman Institute and became Bethune-Cookman. Source
16. 1908 Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority was founded on 15 January 1908 in Miner Hall at Howard University by a group of Howard women students. Source
17. 1925 Xavier University of Louisiana, founded as a high school in 1915 by Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, added a four-year college program in 1925. It describes itself as the only historically Black Catholic university in the United States. Source
18. 1930 Fisk University became the first African American institution accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Fisk was also the first such institution placed on the approved lists of the Association of American Universities (1933) and the American Association of University Women (1948). Source
19. 1941 In July 1941 the first class of cadets began flight training for the Army Air Corps at Tuskegee Institute, which provided primary instruction at Moton Field. The Tuskegee Airmen became the first African American military pilots in the United States armed forces. Source
20. 1944 Answering a 1943 appeal by Frederick D. Patterson, president of Tuskegee Institute, for private Black colleges to pool their fundraising, the United Negro College Fund was founded in 1944 with 27 member colleges. Source
21. 1960 Over Easter weekend 1960, student sit-in leaders from across the South met at Shaw University in Raleigh at a conference organized by Shaw alumna Ella Baker. The meeting founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Source
22. 1980 On 8 August 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12232, directing federal agencies to “overcome the effects of discriminatory treatment” and strengthen the capacity of historically Black colleges and universities. Source
23. 2025 In February 2025, Howard University received the Carnegie Classification’s highest research designation, R1, the first HBCU to do so. Source

Sources

1. 20 U.S.C. § 1061 (definition of “part B institution”), Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Link
2. Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, “The First HBCU.” Link
3. Lincoln University, “History.” Link
4. Fisk University, “Fisk University History.” Link
5. Shaw University, “History.” Link
6. Alcorn State University, “The History of Alcorn State University.” Link
7. Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, “REVELS, Hiram Rhodes.” Link

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