The first black school ever founded was in 1837. Established by Richard Humphreys, a Quaker who came to Philadelphia as an immigrant in 1764, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania started as the "Institute for Colored Youth." The next college opened in 1851 in the District of Columbia as "Ashmun Institute," and later, University of the District of Columbia. Each subsequent year, another black educational facility opened with Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856 and Harris-Stowe State University in Missouri in 1857. In a segregated world, just following the Civil War, these schools provided education to the black community when there was no other institution to do so. Eventually the movement flowed to the South, opening Atlanta University in 1865 and Clark College in 1869 in Georgia as well as dozens more in every southern state.
The early 1900s continued to see the establishment of black schools in several states. Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina in 1908 and Tennessee State University in 1912, as well as Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas in 1912 all opened their doors to black students. As World War I began, no new schools established between 1916 and 1921, but the already established schools continued their commitments to the black communities, expanding their programs and offering higher education programs, such as Bethune-Cookman, which started in Daytona Beach as an all-girls training school. However, in 1923, it became a co-ed high school, and with the involvement of the United Methodist Church, the school evolved into a junior college by 1931 with approved full accreditation as a higher learning institution. In the same time period, the Harlem Renaissance movement in New York City began a spotlight on black education and culture, which disproved common theories that blacks did not posses the same intelligence as whites, strengthening their fight to educate and facilitate learning in their community.
At the end of World War II, as the focus drew back on problems within the United States the racial climate grew stormy. Segregation became a hot topic in every part of local community life but especially in the school system. Blacks demanded the same opportunities as whites for education. As the civil rights era began, leaders in the black community such as Martin Luther King, Jr, and Booker T. Washington published articles and spoke to the public about integrating schools, and in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in a lawsuit entitled Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. As forced integration began, there was a strong resistance. In 1957, Arkansas' governor used the National Guard to block entrance of nine black students into Little Rock High School.
In 1965, the Higher Education Act defined historically black colleges and universities as any black college of university established prior to 1964 whose principal mission is to educate black Americans and has received accreditation and recognition by the Secretary of Education. During this time, black colleges integrated but also maintained a commitment to the education in their own communities, as most colleges continued to be segregated. However, the movement continued and multiple new black colleges formed during this period, including Mississippi Valley State University, Shelton State Community College and Southern University at Shreveport. In 1980, Jimmy Carter established the historically black colleges and universities initiative. This initiative included all of the colleges founded for blacks in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina.
In 2010, President Obama renewed the White House Initiative, whose mission states, "To strengthen the capacity of Historically Black Colleges and Universities to provide excellence in education." Clark Atlanta University, which combined from Atlanta University and Clark College in 1983, is one of the largest black colleges in the South and received classification from the Carnegie Foundation as a "Research University - High Research Activity," only of four HBCUs to receive such a distinction. Black colleges today that started out as one schoolhouse with a few books have turned into four-year universities with a variety of programs and degrees, continuing to expand and excel in their communities.