As part of their efforts to expand comprehension of English, Quakers and religious missionaries established one-room schoolhouses to educate freed Blacks. So runaways and freedmen seeking an education had to travel north. And private contributions have become tougher to secure.

Although these institutions are still the higher education link for most poor and low-income Blacks, federal and state support has gotten shakier in the past century. Yet HBCUs have been chronically misunderstood and under financed since their founding in the 1800s. So was actress Taraji Henson, who starred in the film, author Alice Walker, filmmaker Spike Lee, and musician Lionel Richie. All four of the math and computer scientists portrayed in the movie Hidden Figures were HBCU graduates. broke the color line at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and went on to be a pioneer in cardiac surgery. David Satcher, another Morehouse alumnus, worked his way up to become U.S. Alabama State University graduate Fred Gray is a legal legend who represented Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., himself a Morehouse College graduate.

The list of individual achievements is endless.

Although they only make up three percent of the nation’s four-year-colleges, the 101 institutions of higher education have been credited with educating more than 50 percent of the nation’s Black doctors and dentists until the 1960s. Now vice president of the United States, Harris is part of a long tradition of distinguished HBCU alumni.

Famous hbcu graduates