Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates in the United Negro College Fund.
Seal of Wilberforce University
Daniel Alexander Payne in the early 1890s
Historically black colleges and universities
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 primarily serving African Americans. Most of these institutions were founded during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War and are concentrated in the Southern United States. They were primarily founded by Protestant religious groups, until the Second Morill Act of 1890 required educationally segregated states to provide African American, public higher-education schools in order to receive the Act's benefits.
Cheyney University of Pennsylvania was founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth, making it the oldest HBCU in the nation
President George H. W. Bush signs a new Executive Order on historically black colleges and universities in the White House Rose Garden, April 1989
North Carolina A&T State University is the nation's largest HBCU by enrollment.
Vice President and HBCU alumna Kamala Harris with students attending HBCUs