HBCU

There are currently 110 historically black colleges and universities in the U.S. This includes both public and private institutions as well as 2 and 4 year schools and community colleges. In 1965 the Higher Education Act refers to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) as "...any historically black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans, and that is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting agency or association determined by the Secretary [of Education] to be a reliable authority as to the quality of training offered or is, according to such an agency or association, making reasonable progress toward accreditation."

While other schools, colleges and universities have large bodies of African American students if they were founded after the Higher Education Act and Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the US Supreme Court, which outlawed racial segregation, they cannot be historically black colleges or universities.

See a list of HBCU schools.