There are 114 historically black colleges and universities in the United States today. These schools are termed “historically black” not just because they have high African-American enrollment, but because they admitted and educated black students before the landmark Supreme Court “Brown v. The Board of Education” case ended formal segregation in schools in 1964. Together, they have provided the intellectual challenge and supportive atmosphere that have given many African American leaders in government, business, and science their start.

The first HBCU was established in 1837 at the bequest of a Philadelphia Quaker, who sought educational access for students of African ancestry. Run by the Quakers for 66 years, the school moved from Philadelphia to Cheyney, Pennsylvania in 1903, and was purchased by the State of Pennsylvania. Since then, it has been known as Cheyney University.

Another early HBCU was Lincoln University, also founded in Pennsylvania. Originally called the Ashmun Institute when it opened in 1854, the school admitted black male students only until 1952, when women were allowed to attend. A leading light in the education of African American students, Lincoln turned out 20% of the nation’s black medical doctors and more than 10% of black lawyers in the U.S. between 1854 and 1954. It was also the first U.S. university to accept students from Africa, admitting 10 Liberian students in 1873. Both Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and author Langston Hughes graduated from Lincoln.

The first college dedicated to educating black women was Wilberforce University, founded in 1856 (just five years before the outbreak of the Civil War), in Wilberforce, Ohio. Wilberforce was the first higher education institute to be owned by African Americans, and is the oldest black liberal arts college in the country. It was a station on the Underground Railroad before abolition.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, and with it the horrendous practice of slavery, the U.S. suddenly had millions of uneducated, newly-freed African Americans. The urgent need for schools to feed all those hungry minds resulted in an explosion of HBCUs, with fourteen new schools created just in the five years between 1865 and 1870. Among them are some of the best known historically black colleges in the country: Howard University, in Washington D.C. (1867), which educated activist Stokely Carmichael, and awarded a law degree to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; the all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia (1867) whose alumni include Martin Luther King Jr., Surgeon General David Satcher, Spike Lee and Samuel L. Jackson; Fisk University in Nashville (1866), alma mater of W.E.B. DuBois and Mayor Marion Barry; and Dillard University in New Orleans (1869), which educated jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, and was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The next huge milestone in the development of historically black colleges was the foundation of Meharry Medical College in 1876. Established in Nashville, Tennessee, it was the first medical school devoted to educating black students including former slaves. The founders hoped that this would also increase access to medical care for under-served poor communities.

In 1881, 25-year old Booker T. Washington established Tuskegee University on a former plantation in Tuskegee, Alabama. By the time of Washington’s death 34 years later, the school had an endowment of more than $1.5 million. Tuskegee gained national fame during World War II for training black aviators, the so-called Tuskegee Airmen. Even today, both the Army and Air Force R.O.T.C. programs are active on campus. As of 2008, the U.S. News and National Report ranks Tuskegee number 6 among HBCUs.

The pace of founding HBCUs slowed somewhat around the turn of the 20th century, as the established schools gained prominence. The last two to be founded, both in 1912, were Tennessee State University in Nashville (Oprah Winfrey’s alma mater), and Xavier University in New Orleans, the only Roman Catholic HBCU.

The quality and foundational support of HBCUs has continued to increase over the decades. In 1996, Spelman College was ranked the number 1 liberal arts college in the South- a first for an HBCU!

For the past 170 years, historically black colleges and universities have been providing world-class education in the liberal arts, sciences, medicine, law, and other fields to African Americans, in a supportive and non-discriminatory atmosphere. While some northern colleges such as Bowdoin, Middlebury College, and Oberlin admitted the occasional exceptionally talented African American prior to 1837, it took the establishment of a system of HBCUs to guarantee all African Americans an equal opportunity to learn and excel.