Howard University

In 1867, just two years after the end of the Civil War, a group of visionaries in Washington, D.C. founded a university with a radical idea: that Black Americans — and anyone else who had been denied a quality education — deserved access to the finest higher learning the country could offer. They named it Howard University, after General Oliver Howard, commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. What they built became something extraordinary. Howard University grew into one of the most respected universities in the world — not just among historically Black colleges and universities, but among all institutions of higher learning. Its students and graduates called it 'The Mecca,' a place of culture, intellectual power, and community that drew the best and brightest Black minds in America. The names of Howard's graduates read like a who's who of American achievement. Thurgood Marshall earned his law degree from Howard and went on to argue the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court — and later became the first Black Supreme Court Justice. Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison earned her undergraduate degree here. Kamala Harris, who became the first Black and South Asian woman elected Vice President of the United States, graduated from Howard. Howard's law school was more than a law school — it became the training ground for the civil rights movement. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund drew heavily from Howard-trained attorneys who used the law as a weapon for justice. With about 10,000 students, professional schools in law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and business, and the world-class Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University remains one of America's greatest institutions — a beacon of Black excellence that has shaped this nation's history.