North Carolina Central University

North Carolina Central University

Former names	National Religious Training School and Chautauqua National Training School Durham State Normal School North Carolina College for Negroes North Carolina College at Durham
Motto	Truth and Service
Type	Public, HBCU
Established	1910
Chancellor	vacant due to the death of Debra Saunders-White on November 26, 2016
Provost	Johnson O. Akinleye
Students	9,600
Location	Durham, North Carolina, U.S.
Campus	Urban
Colors	Maroon & Gray
Athletics	NCAA Division I
Nickname	Eagles
Affiliations	Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference
Website	www.nccu.edu
North Carolina Central University
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
North Carolina Central University campus
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Location	Bounded by Lawson St., Alston Ave., Nelson, and Fayetteville Sts., Durham, North Carolina
Coordinates	35°58′27″N 78°53′55″W / 35.97417°N 78.89861°W / 35.97417; -78.89861Coordinates: 35°58′27″N 78°53′55″W / 35.97417°N 78.89861°W / 35.97417; -78.89861
Built	1928
Architect	Atwood & Nash; Public Works Administration
Architectural style	Colonial Revival, Georgian Revival
MPS	Durham MRA
NRHP Reference #	86000676
Added to NRHP	March 28, 1986

86000676

North Carolina Central University (NCCU) is a public historically black university in the University of North Carolina system, located in Durham, North Carolina, offering programs at the baccalaureate, master’s, professional and doctoral levels. The University is a member-school of Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

North Carolina Central University was founded by James E. Shepard as the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua in the Hayti District. It was chartered in 1909 as a private institution and opened on July 5, 1910. Along with other progressives, Woodrow Wilson, the future U.S. President, contributed some private support for the school's founding. The school was sold and reorganized in 1915, becoming the National Training School; it was supported by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, a philanthropist of New York who was particularly concerned about education. It supported Black teacher development in the Jim Crow era, a time when funding and support for Black education by southern states was severely limited.

Becoming a state-funded institution in 1923, it was renamed Durham State Normal School. In 1925, reflecting the expansion of its programs to a four-year curriculum with a variety of majors, it was renamed the North Carolina College for Negroes. It was the nation's first state-supported liberal arts college for black students. To avoid the Jim Crow system of segregated passenger cars on the train, Shepard insisted on traveling to Raleigh by car to lobby the legislature. The college's first four-year class graduated in 1929.

The college was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools as an "A" class institution in 1937, but it was not admitted to membership until 1957. Graduate courses in the School of Arts and Sciences were added in 1939, in the School of Law in 1940, and in the School of Library Science in 1941. In 1947, the General Assembly changed the name of the institution to North Carolina College at Durham.