Southern University at New Orleans

History

SUNO was authorized by Act 28 of the Extraordinary Session of the Louisiana Legislature on September 4, 1956, as a branch of Southern University — established at a moment when Louisiana, like other Southern states, was actively expanding segregated public higher education in response to the political pressure created by Brown v. Board of Education. The campus opened its doors on September 21, 1959, on a seventeen-acre site in Pontchartrain Park, with 158 freshmen, one building, and a faculty of fifteen.

Pontchartrain Park itself is part of SUNO's story. Built in the early 1950s and integrated into the city's Black middle-class residential geography, the subdivision was one of the first planned communities in the Jim Crow South developed specifically for Black homeowners with single-family homes, a golf course, and parks. SUNO has been the principal anchor institution for that community since it opened.

Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. The SUNO campus, in low-lying eastern New Orleans, sustained severe flooding and was effectively destroyed. The university operated out of trailers for years while it rebuilt, and the storm's long shadow — including the partial population loss in eastern New Orleans and a subsequent state proposal to merge SUNO with the University of New Orleans, which was successfully defeated — has shaped every enrollment, facilities, and political question the university has faced in the two decades since.

Notable Alumni

A representative selection from SUNO's roster of civil rights leaders, legal scholars, and Louisiana public officials.

Significance

SUNO is the only public four-year HBCU located inside the city of New Orleans — a city whose Black professional class, civic infrastructure, and cultural production are central to American history but whose Black-serving higher education capacity has historically been concentrated in private institutions (Dillard, Xavier of Louisiana) rather than public ones. SUNO is the principal public access point for Black students seeking a four-year degree in the city without leaving it.

The university's School of Social Work is the only CSWE-accredited HBCU social work program in Louisiana and a major pipeline for Black social workers serving the Gulf South.

Joseph Bouie Jr. became SUNO’s tenth chancellor effective August 1, 2025, returning to a post he first held from 2000 to 2002. A former Louisiana state legislator and longtime university administrator, Bouie assumed leadership of an institution still managing the demographic and fiscal aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with fall 2025 enrollment of roughly 2,550.

Source notes: Institutional founding and history from Southern University at New Orleans (suno.edu) and the Southern University System (sus.edu). Hurricane Katrina recovery context from public Louisiana Board of Regents records. Leadership and enrollment from Southern University at New Orleans (suno.edu, 2025). Notable alumni biographical details from SUNO's alumni record and contemporaneous published sources.