History of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
The college made a permanent home in Greensboro with the help of monetary and land donation by local citizens.
Students staged sit-ins at local segregated businesses, and the campus served as the setting for a conflict between protesters and the US National Guard during the 1969 Greensboro Uprising.
The university also generates contracts with major international companies, foundations and federal agencies securing funding to enhance academic programs, provide student scholarships, and reach its goal to position itself as a premier institution of higher learning and research on a state, national, and international level.
In order to comply with the Second Morrill Act and yet prevent admission of African Americans to the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now known as North Carolina State University, the college's board of trustees were empowered to make temporary arrangements for students of color.
[2][3] On March 9, 1891, the "Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race" was established by an act of the North Carolina General Assembly as an annex of the private Shaw University in Raleigh.
[2] The act read in part: "That the leading objective of the college shall be to teach practical agriculture and the mechanic arts and such learning as related thereto, not excluding academic and classical instruction."
The college, which started with four teachers and 37 students, initially offered instruction in Agriculture, English, Horticulture, and Mathematics.
With monetary and land donations totaling $11,000 and 14 acres (57,000 m²), the new Greensboro campus was established the following year and the college's first President, John Oliver Crosby, was elected on May 25, 1892.
The multi-purpose building served as dormitories for men and women, food service, classrooms and offices.
In 1946, the college acquired 96 acres of land adjacent to the original 14-acre campus [2][7] In 1953, The School of Nursing was established, with the first class graduating four years later.
On February 1, 1960, four freshmen men helped spark the civil rights movement in the southern United States.
Ezell Blair (Jibreel Khazan), Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond "sat-in" at an all white eating establishment (Woolworth's) and demanded equal service at the lunch counter.
The actions of the four freshmen gained momentum as other students of the university joined them in their non-violent protest to desegregate Woolworth's lunch counter, which became known as the Greensboro sit-ins.
The conflict, which lasted between May 21 through May 25, was sparked by perceived civil rights issues at the segregated high school, when a popular student council write-in presidential candidate was denied his landslide victory allegedly because school officials feared his activism in the Black Power movement.
Described at the time as "the most massive armed assault ever made against an American university," The uprising ended soon after the National Guard raided and raid of the 505-room male dormitory, W. Kerr Scott Hall, taking hundreds of students into protective custody.
[11] The one casualty as a result of the conflict, freshman Willie Ernest Grimes, was posthumously awarded the Bachelor of Science in 2008.
[2] In September of that same year, the university announced the creation of a Joint Millennial Campus, with neighboring UNC-Greensboro, with the intent to focus on regional economic development.
The following year, N.C. A&T received approval to establish a Ph.D program in computational science and engineering (CSE) beginning in the fall of 2010.
[13] Preeminence 2020's overall objective is to position the North Carolina A&T to become a premier institution of higher learning and research on a state, national, and international level.
