Higher education for blacks evolved in the shadow of slavery. Cheyney (1837), Lincoln (1854) and Wilberforce (1856) paved the way. During and after Reconstruction, the federal government, major philanthropies, and blacks combined to found black institutions of higher learning. Virginia Union University started in a former slave jail, Atlanta University in a train car, and Spelman College in a church basement. Mary McLeod Bethune founded Bethune-Cookman College with $1.50 and dumped furniture. Today there are, in nineteen states, Washington, DC, and US Virgin Islands, 106 private and public HBCUs. Alumni include W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Toni Morrison.

Racial integration will define their future. Constituting 3 percent of US colleges and universities, they yield 25 percent of bachelor's degrees earned by blacks. Enrollment increased by 45 percent between 1976 and 2011, from 223,000 to 324,000. They enroll 16.4 percent of 1.4 million black collegians today and are more diverse than white schools. At HBCUs 11 percent of college and 31 percent of graduate and professional students are white. At white-majority schools 6 percent of college and 4 percent of graduate and professional students are black. Kentucky State and Lincoln, Bluefield State and West Virginia State are now more than half white. Immigrants comprise 6 percent of HBCU students. Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans comprise 2 percent of HBCU students.