Before that season, the MEAC was the first conference to secure NCAA sanctioning for women's bowling by adopting the club sport prior to the 1996–97 school year.

In 1969, a group whose members were long associated with interscholastic athletics met in Durham, North Carolina for the purpose of discussing the organization of a new conference.

All three schools eventually returned to the conference; Maryland Eastern Shore rejoined in 1981, Morgan State in 1984, and North Carolina Central in 2010.

[9] In November 2017, Hampton announced they would leave the MEAC to join the Big South Conference beginning with the 2018–19 season.

[10] In February 2020 North Carolina A&T announced departing MEAC to join Big South Conference effective July 2021.

Within few months, in June 2020, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman also announced that they will leave the MEAC and join the SWAC starting in July 2021.

The MEAC has hired a consulting firm to help assess its current schools and to help it identify potential institutions for addition to the conference.

[11] The conference plans to operate with eight current members, starting 2021 until further expansion, in a compact geographical footprint removing North and South divisions.

Kentucky State University and Virginia State University, respectively members of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, confirmed that they had discussed possible membership with the MEAC and had commissioned feasibility studies on moving to Division I.

One report also indicated that Chicago State University, a predominantly African-American school but not an HBCU, had lobbied the MEAC regarding membership.

CSU was scheduled to leave the Western Athletic Conference, a league in which it is a major geographic outlier, in July 2022 to become an independent.

In 2015, the MEAC joined the SWAC and Ivy leagues in abstaining from sending their conference champions to the FCS Playoffs.

On June 8, 1980, the MEAC earned the classification as a Division I conference by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).