Langston University

History

Langston University was established by the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature on March 12, 1897, as the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University. Its founding flowed directly from the Second Morrill Act of 1890, which required states and territories operating segregated public higher education to maintain a separate land-grant institution for Black students if they were excluded from existing land-grants. Oklahoma's land-grant for white students, Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State), had been founded in 1890; Langston completed the racially separate system mandated by federal law.

The university was located in the all-Black town of Langston, one of more than fifty Black townships established in Oklahoma Territory between the late 1880s and statehood in 1907. Both the town and the university take their name from John Mercer Langston (1829–1897), an attorney, the first dean of Howard University's School of Law, and the first Black member of Congress from Virginia. The school was renamed Langston University in 1941.

Langston's curriculum has expanded substantially beyond its original agricultural and normal-school mandate. The university operates branch campuses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa and grants degrees from the associate through the doctoral level, including a Doctor of Physical Therapy and a Doctor of Education. In March 2025, the institution was designated a Carnegie Research College and University — a meaningful elevation of its research classification.

Langston also occupies a distinctive place in U.S. Supreme Court history. Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (1948) — in which Ada Lois Sipuel won the right to attend the University of Oklahoma College of Law despite the existence of a segregated alternative — sat directly atop the segregated infrastructure that Langston was built to maintain, and was an early bellwether of the legal logic that would culminate in Brown v. Board of Education.

In the 2026–27 academic year Langston expanded its executive leadership under President Dr. Ruth Ray Jackson, naming three new vice presidents — Diana Lasswell for institutional advancement, Lindsey Hunter for strategic enrollment management, and Dr. R. Mark Rasor for fiscal and administrative affairs — and beginning work on a new long-term strategic plan to succeed the framework that expires in 2027. Jackson, who describes Langston as both Oklahoma’s only HBCU and the state’s second-largest land-grant institution, also introduced a campus-wide “Lead Boldly” initiative, distributing a thousand copies of Robert F. Smith’s book on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership principles across the university’s three campuses.

Notable Alumni and Faculty

A representative selection.

Significance

Langston is the only HBCU west of Texas — a geographic distinction that matters more than it first appears. The 1890 land-grant system was designed for the South, and Langston represents one of only a handful of points at which it extended into the trans-Mississippi West. The university's location in an all-Black founding township also ties it directly to the broader history of Black self-government and town-building in Oklahoma Territory, a movement that has no clear parallel in the rest of the country.

The recent Carnegie research designation reflects steady institutional growth and signals that Langston is increasingly understood as a research institution and not solely as a teaching college — an important shift for an HBCU of its size and history. The classification rests on measurable output: Langston reported roughly $10.5 million in research and development expenditures in fiscal year 2023, well above the $2.5 million average for the Research College and University category and above the $5 million threshold that defines R2 doctoral institutions. Its research portfolio is anchored by the E. (Kika) de la Garza American Institute for Goat Research — an internationally recognized center — alongside programs in horticulture and agronomy, aquaculture, biotechnology, and rural economic development.

Source notes: Founding and naming history from Langston University, the Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, and the African American Registry. Accreditation status from the Higher Learning Commission. Carnegie classification announced March 2025. Discrepancies noted in the corrections log.