It is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).

Johnson C. Smith University was established on April 7, 1867, as the Biddle Memorial Institute at a meeting of the Catawba Presbytery in the old Charlotte Presbyterian Church.

The school was then named after her late husband, Henry Jonathan Biddle, who had died after the Battle of Glendale in 1862.

In 1891, Biddle University elected Daniel J. Sanders as the first African-American as president of a four-year institution in the south.

This fund was organized primarily to help church-related schools of higher learning to revamp their training programs, to expand their physical plants, to promote faculty growth and to create new areas of service.

Metropolitan College offers accelerated undergraduate degree programs to adults with courses available on-campus and online.

[13] In 1998, the library completed a $7 million yearlong modernization and reconstruction to allow the building to serve as an information hub in a digital age.

Its intercollegiate sports programs include basketball, bowling, cross-country, football, golf, softball, volleyball, tennis, and track and field.