Saint Paul's College opened its doors on September 24, 1888, originally training students as teachers and for agricultural and industrial jobs.

[2] On September 24, 1888, James Solomon Russell[5] of the Protestant Episcopal Church founded the Saint Paul Normal and Industrial School, with fewer than a dozen students.

The school was intended chiefly to develop African-American teachers, a critical and prestigious job in the late 19th and early 20th-century South.

Although the college had been on probation, it lost its accreditation for "violations concerning financial resources, institutional effectiveness in support services, institutional effectiveness in academics and student services, lack of terminal degrees for too many faculty members, and a lack of financial stability.

[4] In 2017 the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which had assumed ownership of most of the former campus, sold the property to a Chinese-related firm that has not announced its plans.

"[14] Saint Paul's College developed the Single Parent Support System (SPSS), the only program of its kind in the United States.

Initiated in 1987, the SPSS was an on-campus residential educational program designed for single parents with two or fewer children between the ages of two months to nine years old.