The first great expansion in Black higher education came after the American Civil War during Reconstruction. A period of incredible growth for American colleges and universities came after the Civil War and before World War I. Higher education spread mainly through institutions financed by public taxes, particularly the land-grant colleges established by the U. S. Congress through the Morrill Act of 1862. These land-grant institutions, tied with a growing system of state colleges, marked the surfacing of a unique style of American higher education. They were publicly supported institutions of higher learning serving a broader range of students, plus providing the cultural, economic, and political interests of various local and state communities.
Born into slavery, William Hooper Councill founded one of the nation's first HBCUs, Alabama A&M University. Negotiating the racial politics of Reconstruction and the dawn of Jim Crow was dangerous work. Councill was a peer of Booker T. Washington's and is remembered for his accommodating stance toward whites. His complicated story helps us understand the times he lived in and the legacy of HBCUs.
Between 1910 and the mid-1920s, more than sixty black students from the South bravely traveled north to Ferris Institute, a small, mostly white school in Big Rapids, Michigan. They came to enroll in college programs and college preparatory courses—and to escape if only temporarily, the daily and ubiquitous indignities suffered under the Jim Crow racial hierarchy. They excelled in their studies and became accomplished in their professional fields. Many went on to both ignite and help lead the explosive civil rights movement. Very few people know their stories—until now.
Several black schools were established by Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, and Baptist churches in the postwar era. Raleigh Institute (modern Shaw University), opened in 1865 as the South's first black institution of higher learning. Other important church-supported African American schools dating from this era include Biddle Memorial Institute (modern Johnson C. Smith University) in Charlotte (1867), Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute (modern Saint Augustine's University) in Raleigh (1867), Bennett Seminary (modern Bennett College) in Greensboro (1873), and Zion Wesley Institute (modern Livingstone College) in Salisbury (1879) (Encyclopedia of North Carolina ).
The end of Civil War hostilities marked the first true wave of HBCU openings. However, this wave also came at a time when Southern States were rapidly advancing segregationist agendas. Even as the now slave-less Confederate states returned reluctantly to the Union, they reacted to their new situation by introducing Jim Crow laws. These laws were aimed explicitly at keeping recently freed black southerners segregated from white southerners and their institutions, including places of employment, eating establishments, public bathrooms, drinking fountains, lodging, healthcare facilities and places of higher learning.
Whites who came South to educate emancipated slaves were surprised to learn that schools were mostly staffed and run by Black people (Anderson, 1988). Lacking state funding, early HBCUs relied on assistance from Missionary societies and Philanthropists to operate their schools, e.g., American Missionary Association, Disciples of Christ, and African Methodist Episcopal Church (Jewell, 2007). The “power of the purse” enabled Whites to exercise control over curriculum and educational goals for Black schools. Some HBCUs maintained classical liberal arts curricula, but the majority were forced to teach rudimentary skills related to etiquette and dress, common labor, and religious education (Allen & Mack, 2020).
References
Allen, W.R., Audrey, D., Mack, C. (2020). Hidden in Plain Sight: Historically Black Colleges and Universities in America, Quaderni di Sociologia, 83- LXIV | 25-46.