A&T-Greensboro, North Carolina: This mid to late 1890's historical photograph shows a young man -possibly a student- riding a horse on the early campus while a worker kneels along the roadside in front of him tending to a patch of ground. This is the early campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.

On March 9, 1891—The North Carolina General Assembly formally established the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race.

From 1890-1893 the college, which began with four teachers and 37 students in an annex of Shaw University in Raleigh, initially offered coeducational instruction in agriculture, English, horticulture, and mathematics. In 1892, the college’s Board of Trustees voted to move the institution to East Greensboro after a group of local citizens raised $11,000 (equivalent to nearly $315,000 in 2021) and donated 14 acres of land to provide the college a new home. The new campus was established in 1893 under the leadership of the college’s first president, John Oliver Crosby. The institution moved from Shaw to its permanent location in East Greensboro in 1893.

N.C. A&T State University was the second institution established nationally under The Second Morrill Act provided for land-grant universities and the first for Black People in North Carolina, in states that refused admission to Black people in their public whites only universities.

Source: F.D. Bluford Library Archives