Education of freed slaves begins in Union Army encampments during the Civil War. Later,
Northern religious societies send white and black missionaries to the South to start schools.

MID
LATE
1800s

Atlanta University's first classroom is an abandoned box car, Spelman's a church basement, and Tougaloo's a plantation. 

With $1.50 and 5 students, Mary McLeod-Bethune, a daughter of slaves, opens a vocational school, later to become Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Considered one of the great crusaders for black progress in the U. S., Dr. Bethune becomes advisor to four American presidents

1904

WWI-
WWII

Two generations of blacks now receive a college education. For the first time, many black colleges have black presidents.

Dr. Frederick D. Patterson, third president of Tuskegee Institute, writes an open letter to the presidents of other private black colleges urging them to "pool their small monies and make a united appeal to the national conscience." His letter is published in the weekly newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier.

JAN 30
1943

APR 25
1944

The United Negro College Fund, with 27 member colleges and universities is founded following a year of planning and development, its stated purpose "to aid the cause of higher education for members of the Negro people in the United States."

Dr. Patterson is the founder and William Trent becomes UNCF’s first executive director.

UNCF’s first campaign receives the support of many prominent Americans including FDR and John D. Rockefeller. UNCF raises $765,000, three times what the institutions had raised separately the previous year.

WWII

Enlistees from Tuskegee Institute and other black colleges are the first African-Americans to undergo training as combat fighter pilots. In the skies over Italy and Germany, they destroy over 260 enemy aircraft.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. graduates from Morehouse College.

1948

MAY 17
1954

In Brown vs. Board of Education the Supreme Court unanimously rules public school segregation unconstitutional.

This landmark ruling leads people to think there is no longer a need for historically black colleges. UNCF convinces donors that despite integration HBCUs are still uniquely qualified to educate blacks.