Tuskegee University

Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service in 1974. The university has been home to a number of important African American figures, including scientist George Washington Carver and World War II's Tuskegee Airmen. Tuskegee University offers 43 bachelor's degree programs, including a five-year accredited professional degree program in architecture, 17 master's degree programs, and five doctoral degree programs, including the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Tuskegee is home to nearly 3,000 students from around the U.S. and over 30 countries. Tuskegee's campus was designed by architect Robert Robinson Taylor, the first African-American to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in conjunction with David Williston, the first professionally trained African-American landscape architect. The school was founded on July 4, 1881, as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers. This was a result of an agreement made during the 1880 elections in Macon County between a former Confederate Colonel, W.F. Foster, who was a candidate for re-election to the Alabama Senate, and a local black Leader, Lewis Adams. W.F. Foster offered that, if Adams could persuade the black constituents to vote for Foster, then Foster, if elected, would push the state of Alabama to establish a school for black people in the county. At the time the majority of Macon County population was black, so black constituents had political power. Adams succeeded and Foster followed through with the school. The school became a part of the expansion of higher education for black people in the former Confederate states following the American Civil War, with many schools founded by the northern American Missionary Association. A teachers' school was the dream of Lewis Adams, a former slave, and George W.