Historically black colleges and universities
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Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of serving African American students.[1] Most are in the Southern United States and were founded during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) following the American Civil War.[2] Their original purpose was to provide education for African Americans in an era when most colleges and universities in the United States did not allow Black students to enroll.[3][4]
During the Reconstruction era, most historically Black colleges were founded by Protestant religious organizations. This changed in 1890 with the U.S. Congress' passage of the Second Morrill Act, which required segregated Southern states to provide African Americans with public higher education schools in order to receive the Act's benefits. Separately, during the latter 20th century, either after expanding their inclusion of Black people and African Americans into their institutions or gaining the status of minority-serving institution, some institutions came to be called predominantly Black institutions (PBIs).[5]
For a century after the abolition of American slavery in 1865, almost all colleges and universities in the Southern United States prohibited all African Americans from attending as required by Jim Crow laws in the South, while institutions in other parts of the country regularly employed quotas to limit admission of Black people.[6][7][8][9] HBCUs were established to provide more opportunities to African Americans and are largely responsible for establishing and expanding the African-American middle class.[10][11] In the 1950s and 1960s, legally enforced racial segregation in education was generally outlawed throughout the South (and anywhere else in the United States), and other non-discrimination policies were adopted.
There are 101 HBCUs in the United States (of 121 institutions that existed during the 1930s),[12] representing three percent (3%) of the nation's colleges,[13] including public and private institutions.[14] 27 offer doctoral programs, 52 offer master's programs, 83 offer bachelor's degree programs, and 38 offer associate degrees.[15][16][17] HBCUs currently produce nearly 20% of all African American college graduates and 25% of African American STEM graduates.[18] Among the graduates of HBCUs are civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., United States Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, American film director Spike Lee, former United States vice president Kamala Harris and the late American mathematician Katherine Johnson.
- ^ 20 U.S. Code sec.1061, [1] Archived December 20, 2022, at the Wayback Machinehttps://USCode.house.gov For a compact overview of HBCU history, see Walter R. Allen, Joseph O. Jewell, Kimberly A. Griffin, & De'Sha S. Wolf, Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Honoring the Past, Engaging the Present, Touching the Future, 76 Journal of Negro Education, pp. 263–280 (2007).
- ^ Anderson, J.D. (1988). The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. University of North Carolina Press.
- ^ "White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities". U.S. Department of Education. April 11, 2008. Archived from the original on October 5, 2015. Retrieved April 23, 2008.
- ^ Wooten, Melissa E. (2016). In the face of inequality. State Univ of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-5690-4. OCLC 946968175.
- ^ Jones, Brandy. "Predominantly Black Institutions: Pathways to Black Student Educational Attainment" (PDF). Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
- ^ Harris, Leslie M. (March 26, 2015). "The Long, Ugly History of Racism at American Universities". The New Republic.
- ^ Marybeth Gasman, Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
- ^ Marybeth Gasman and Felecia Commodore (eds.), Opportunities and Challenges at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (New York: Palgrave Press, 2014). ISBN 978-1-349-50267-7
- ^ Favors, J. (2020). Shelter in a time of storm: How Black colleges fostered generations of leadership and activism. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-4833-0
- ^ "The story of historically black colleges in the US". BBC News. February 15, 2019.
- ^ "Despite Obstacles, Black Colleges Are Pipelines to the Middle Class, Study Finds. Here's Its List of the Best". The Chronicle of Higher Education. September 30, 2019. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
- ^ "Required Reading: what is a historically black college?". Student. January 21, 2019. Retrieved June 17, 2025.
- ^ "African Americans and College Education by the Numbers". UNCF. November 29, 2018. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
- ^ "A look at historically black colleges and universities as Howard turns 150". Pewresearch.org. February 28, 2017. Retrieved October 25, 2017.
- ^ "Historically Black Colleges and Universities – American School Search". American-school-search.com. Retrieved October 25, 2017.
- ^ Marybeth Gasman, The Changing Face of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Philadelphia: Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, University of Pennsylvania, 2013.
- ^ Casey Boland, Marybeth Gasman et al., Contemporary Public HBCUs: A Four State Comparison, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2014.
- ^ "The Tide That Binds: Learning from Experience at HBCU's". November 8, 2022.