The Story of North Carolina A&T

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University traces its long and storied history to March 9, 1891, when it was founded as the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race in Raleigh, N.C. The college was the first public institution of higher learning from African Americans in North Carolina, as well as the second campus created nationally under the Morrill Act of 1890, which provided for land-grant institutions for Black students in states that would not admit those students to its other public colleges.

The new college was initially housed in an annex of Shaw University where its first 37 students and four faculty members brought the fledgling school to life in the fall of 1891. However, a group of Greensboro leaders offered $11,000 and 14 acres of land to relocate the institution, and in 1892, the college’s Board of Trustees accepted the offer. John Oliver Crosby, the college’s first president, was elected on May 25, 1892, and the new Greensboro campus was established the following year.

A&M, as it was then known, was created as a co-educational institution, becoming the first public North Carolina college to admit both women and men. That policy continued until 1901, when admission was temporarily restricted to males. In 1928, admissions were once again opened to women.

A&M conferred its first degrees in 1899 to a graduating class of seven students. In 1904, the college added a 100-acre university farm featuring labor-saving, cutting-edge farm equipment and producing much of the food for the campus cafeteria. Recognizing the progress and development of the college, the N.C. General Assembly renamed it the Negro Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in 1915, giving rise to the A&T abbreviation still used today.

In 1939, the college was authorized to launch its first master’s program, the M.S. in Education and Certain Other Fields. As the college’s enrollment and programmatic growth outpaced its campus and facilities, in 1946 it added 96 acres of land adjacent to its 14-acre campus. With new space, the School of Nursing was established in 1953. In 1957, the college was renamed for the second time to the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina. That same year, A&T enrolled its first white student, Rodney Jaye Miller, who was also the first white student admitted to any public Black university in the state.

As the Civil Rights movement expanded across the country, four A&T freshmen, all teenagers, made a legendary stand for equality. On Feb. 1, 1960, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, David Richmond and Ezell Blair (now Jabreel Khazan) walked less than a mile from campus to the downtown Greensboro Woolworth’s and asked to be served at the whites-only lunch counter. When refused service, they refused to leave, setting off a sit-in movement that quickly spread across the south. By the time their protest ended six months later, not only had the Woolworth’s action succeeded in overturning the chain store’s racist service policy, many lunch counters and restaurants across the country did away with segregation in their own businesses.

Seven years later, A&T was designated a regional university and its name changed for a third time to the one it holds today. In 1971, the N.C. General Assembly brought A&T and 15 other public campuses into the University of North Carolina System, each institution with its own chancellor and board of trustees. At A&T, President Lewis Carnegie Dowdy was re-appointed as the university’s first chancellor.

A&T continued to grow and expand. It added its first doctoral programs in 1994, and was classified in 2004 as a Doctoral/Research Intensive University by the Carnegie Foundation. In 2011, A&T joined forces with the University of North Carolina-Greensboro to open the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering on the Gateway Research Campus, co-owned and managed by both institutions.

Under the leadership of Chancellor Harold L. Martin Sr., the university placed new emphasis on academic excellence and in 2014, became America’s largest historically Black college or university. It continues to hold that distinction and many others today, including:

• It is the most affordable doctoral research university in the nation.
• It also graduates more Black STEM students than any other university in America, including the most Black engineers and agricultural science majors.

In 2016, the university underwent a strategic academic reorganization, creating three new colleges and focusing its programs more squarely on the goals of its strategic plan. Chancellor Harold Martin announced in Fall 2023 that he would retire the following year. Chancellor James R. Martin II assumed leadership of the university the day of his predecessor’s retirement.

In the 2024-25 academic year, North Carolina A&T enrolled 14,311 students, setting an all-time enrollment record for HBCUs for the third consecutive year. Just months prior, the university announced that its endowment had crested over $200 million, making A&T the first public HBCU to surpass that milestone, and that it had taken in more than $100 million in research contracts and grants for the second straight year.

Construction is underway at multiple locations across campus, with a five-story, 400-bed residence hall, a mixed-use office complex, an urban test kitchen and food development facility and a community education center all rapidly taking shape. The university expects to reach enrollment of 15,500 by 2030, and with one of the fastest growing application rates in the nation, it will continue to expand to meet student demand.