The early beginnings of historically Black colleges and universities date to the post-American Civil War period, when institutions were established to provide educational opportunities for African Americans who had been enslaved. African Americans were largely uneducated and excluded from learning opportunities. Formerly enslaved individuals were excluded from enrolling in white learning institutions, and with the support of Northern missionaries and federal policies during the Reconstruction era, most HBCUs were established throughout the southern and eastern regions. Further, with the help of the Freedman’s Bureau and several churches, colleges and universities opened, providing countless African Americans the opportunity to learn. Most early African American institutions educated students in basic fundamental education, such as English and math, and significant industrial education. HBCUs allowed newly educated African Americans to experience and comprehend the world through a different lens; it also allowed the illiterate a chance at a better life
. The founding of two members, Lincoln University and Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, predate the
American Civil War. The remaining members were founded in the late 19th century except for
Xavier University of Louisiana, which was founded in 1915 by Saint
Katharine Drexel. During the relevant time period, these institutions upheld a tradition of academic excellence. In 1952, Fisk was the first historically black institution to charter a chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa. Morehouse continues to be the top baccalaureate-origin institutions of black men who earned doctoral degrees. Howard continually leads all universities in producing the highest number of black
doctorate recipients and has the highest endowment of any HBCU in the nation. Spelman College has consistently been recognized as one of the top ten women's college in the nation.
George Washington Carver conducted many of his noteworthy peanut experiments while a professor at Tuskegee. Similarly, the largest percentage of African-Americans holding graduate and professional degrees, attended these colleges as undergraduates. From 1897 – 1909,
W.E.B. Du Bois conducted the Atlanta University Studies, a “systematic, social-scientific inquiries into the condition and lives of African Americans” and penned
The Souls of Black Folk (1903) “perhaps the most influential work of his generation on the African American experience” during his first term as a professor of economics, history and sociology at what was at the time Atlanta University (now
Clark Atlanta). Dubois left Atlanta University in 1909, the same year that he co-founded the
NAACP and returned to Atlanta University in 1934, where he published his last major work,
Black Reconstruction in America (1935) and remained until his retirement in 1944.
Current status Prior to the 1960s, all majority-white southern colleges and universities excluded people of color. During that era, a handful of black elite schools attracted the best African-American students and faculty. However, since the 1960s, these institutions have had great difficulty in competing with
Ivy League and other historically white colleges for top students and faculty
Morehouse College drew national publicity in 2008, when its valedictorian,
Joshua Packwood, a white student, explained that he opted to attend Morehouse, when he had received full scholarship offers from both Morehouse and
Columbia University. The relative size of the institutions and their respective endowments also affect each school's relative ability to provide elite instruction. For example,
Cornell University's freshman class included 371 black and multiracial students, which is more than the freshman class of Dillard. From 1999 to 2007, Ivy League colleges launched initiatives to make higher education more affordable, to the point that students from low income families can graduate debt-free. The
University of Pennsylvania has expanded its financial aid program to the point that all students qualifying for financial aid can graduate debt-free. The
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education notes that the significant increase in financial aid by Harvard and other Ivy League schools will make it difficult for other schools to compete for top African-American students. A study of the average wages of alumni conducted by
Roland G. Fryer Jr. and
Michael Greenstone, found that between the 1970s and the 1990s, "there is a wage penalty" in attending a HBCU over those attending historically white colleges, "resulting in a 20% decline in the relative wages of HBCU graduates between the two decades." Unlike the Ivy League, the main focus of the Black Ivy League has been on undergraduate education. However, Howard University has several graduate-level professional programs, including a medical school, and Morehouse at one time had its own medical school, which has since become the independent
Morehouse School of Medicine. There are two other historically black medical schools not affiliated with Black Ivy League-identified colleges, located in Nashville, Tennessee, and Los Angeles, California. , these four medical schools "reportedly account[ed] for more than half of all Black medical school graduates" in the United States. Tuskegee has had a School of Veterinary Medicine since the 1930s and began awarding PhDs in the 1980s. Regarding
extension and outreach, many of the HBCUs which are not in the Black Ivy League are land grant universities, founded in response to the Second
Morrill Act of 1890. As a result, those institutions receive annual federal and state appropriations to conduct extension activities, which are not available to the Black Ivy League schools, except for Tuskegee University, which began to receive Cooperative Extension funding in 1972. However, the Black Ivy League schools have received Part B federal aid under the
Higher Education Act of 1965 as HBCUs. ==See also==