Established at the end of 1866 in Washington, D.C., Howard University was originally going to be a theological seminary for African-American theologians. The driving force behind the school was the congregation of the First Congregational Society. Named for a former Union general, Oliver O. Howard, the school was soon altered to become a university. Its charter was approved by an act of Congress and signed by President Andrew Johnson in 1867. A year later, Howard University had Colleges of Liberal Arts and Medicine. Dr. Mordecai Wyatt Johnson was its first black president; he assumed the presidency in 1926. Since 2008, Dr. Sidney A. Ribeau has served as the president of Howard University. The university currently has more than 10,000 students in more than 120 areas of study for undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. More black Ph.D.'s graduate from Howard University than from any other university in the country.
On September 17, 1861, Mary Peake, a free African-American, taught a class to 20 students who were living at Grand Contraband Camp near Fort Hampton, Virginia. Located off the Chesapeake Bay, the camp was established by Union General Benjamin Butler. Under his decree, any escaping slave who could reach the Union lines was considered contraband and was not returned to the Confederate South. Although teaching blacks was forbidden, Miss Peake's actions under an oak tree were the start of Hampton University. Under the same oak tree, the first southern reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves, was read in 1863. That same year, the Butler School for Negro Children was established, where reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and grammar and work skills were taught. By 1868, the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute opened with the goal not only to teach self-sufficiency, but also to build character. In 1872, its most famous alumnus, Booker T. Washington, was admitted. Washington became a famous orator and civil rights leader in addition to being the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
The university has always been at the center of the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the school.
Today, Hampton University has more than 5,000 students enrolled in a variety of schools, from nursing and pharmacy, to engineering and technology, to journalism.
Atlanta's private liberal arts college for black women began in 1881, in the basement of the Friendship Baptist Church, by New England schoolteachers. What began with 11 eager students has now expanded to more than 2,100 students spread over a campus that has 25 buildings. Among them are Sisters Chapel, Rockefeller Hall and the Camille O. Hanks Cosby Academic Center. Mrs. Cosby and her husband, comedian Bill Cosby, each have doctorate degrees and pledged $20 million to Spelman in the mid-1990s.
In 1884, Spelman received its name from the anti-slavery parents of one of the first educators at the school. Among current Bachelor of Arts programs are child development, comparative women's studies, drama, economics, mathematics, music, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology and anthropology. Spelman shares its resources with other area black universities to form the largest consortium of such schools in the world. At present, 80 percent of Spelman's faculty have a Ph.D or an equivalent degree.
Tuskegee University was founded by an act of the Alabama Senate, so it was fitting that its founding date was July 4, 1881. The pride of Hampton University, then called Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, the famed educator Dr. Booker T. Washington was the first teacher at Tuskegee. Tuskegee was formed through the efforts of an ex-slaveholder, George Foster, and an ex-slave, Lewis Adams. Foster was looking for the black vote, and Adams wanted a school. When Washington arrived, the school consisted of a single shanty. By the time of his death in 1915, the university had moved to its current location--a 100-acre abandoned plantation.
George Washington Carver was the preeminent scientist of the school's faculty. His work with agricultural techniques, especially peanuts, taught crop rotation and self-sufficiency to the tenant farmers and those who owed their own land.
Tuskegee gained its university status in 1985 and is the only U.S. college or university campus to be a national historic site. Nearly 3,000 students now attend the school. Close to 80 percent of African-American veterinarians are graduates of Tuskegee. America's first four-star general, Daniel "Chappie" James, was a Tuskegee alum, and the school continues to educate more black officer candidates than any other school in the country.
The United Negro College Fund began at Tuskegee, and the university's National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care is one of the most respected facilities in the world.