Tuskegee University entrance gates

Tuskegee University, as it is called today, began as the Normal School for Colored Teachers at Tuskegee in 1881 after the Alabama Legislature passed a bill to create it. Though renowned speaker and educator Booker T. Washington is associated with its founding, he was not behind the school’s inception. That honor goes to former slave Lewis Adams. He worked with a local white politician, guaranteeing the man the black vote in exchange for his passing a bill to create the school should he be elected. The man was elected, and he followed through on his promise. Adams then teamed up with former slave owner George Campbell, and together they set out to make the school a reality. One of their first orders of duty was to hire an educator to run the school, and thus they brought Washington in as the first president. He was teaching at the Hampton Institute in Virginia at the time.

The first classes were taught on the grounds of a church, but Washington, who had a knack for fundraising, soon had enough money for the purchase of a hundred acres of land that is today the center of the Tuskegee campus. Washington felt the best form of education for his students—initially all future teachers themselves—would be practical skills, and so the school focused on modern farming methods, construction, tinsmithing, carpentry, bricklaying, domestic service, and other industrial subjects. Once these were mastered, the students could go out into the community and teach these skills to the former slaves who were now mainly farmers and blue-collar laborers.

Washington, a segregationist, set out to recruit only the brightest minds in the black community. He accepted segregation as a way of life and had no problem with it as long as whites allowed blacks to educate themselves, to prosper economically, and to get fair treatment in the courts. Although his most famous recruit would be botanist George Washington Carver, he brought many great black educators to the school, including the first black man to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in architecture, Robert Taylor.

Students and teachers constructed the first brick building in 1884 using bricks made on the campus. By 1906, the school—now the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School—had 156 faculty members and nearly 1,600 students. Its real estate holdings had increased to over 2,000 acres with the help of millionaire philanthropists from around the United States, including John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, all admirers of Booker T. Washington and his efforts at Tuskegee.

In addition to education, the school was instrumental in building the first black Veterans Administration hospital and in the creation of what would become known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Tuskegee Institute (the school’s name beginning in 1937) had been running a Civilian Pilot Training program since 1939. Once the United States entered the war with Germany, the U. S. Air Corps, then a division of the Army, was looking for ways to train pilots. Tuskegee Institute was given a federal contract to start a program for black military pilots. Ground school was conducted at the Institute, and once passing this part of the training, cadets went on to get primary flight instruction at Moton Field, a new air field named after Robert Moton, the second president of Tuskegee. The field was built on Tuskegee Institute property with the help of its students between 1940 and 1942.

Today, the official name of the school is Tuskegee University; the name changed in 1985 after the school reorganized its programs. There are five Colleges and two Schools of study within Tuskegee University. These include The College of Agriculture, Environment, and Nutrition Sciences; The College of Arts and Sciences; The Brimmer College of Business and Information Science; The College of Engineering; The College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health; The Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science; and The School of Education. The College of Veterinary Medicine was established in 1944, and it is the only veterinary program at a Historically Black University to offer a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.

In 1974, the U. S. Congress authorized the creation of Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site (the school still went by Institute at the time). Tuskegee University is now the only college that is part of the National Park system. The National Park Service owns the George Washington Carver Museum and Booker T. Washington’s home, The Oaks, while the university continues to operate on its own. Visitors to the park are welcome to tour the campus, where eighteen original buildings remain, all built between 1889 and 1940. In addition, the school cemetery is the final resting place for both Washington and Carver.

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