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The Ledger
The Rise · Historically Black Colleges and Universities

The HBCUs

Institutions founded to educate Black Americans when almost nothing else would. One record per campus, built from the U.S. Department of Education's own lists, with the founding story each institution tells on its own site.

The count, as the sources state it

102
Institutions flagged HBCU and active in the NCES IPEDS directory, 2024-25 provisional data collection, file dated 2025-09-21. The records on this page.
100
Stated as “2026 Eligible HBCU/HBGIs” on the Office of Postsecondary Education's FY 2026 Eligibility Matrix, dated 2026-06-08: the statutory Title III Part B list, which also carries graduate institutions.
61
Campuses placed on the map by an exact match from the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder. 41 are held until a person resolves the address.

51 public, 51 private, across 21 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. 101 records carry a founding history cited to the institution's own page; the rest wait for one.

Where they stand

A pin is a campus address the Census Bureau matched exactly. Nothing on this map was estimated. The same layer is one chip away on the Ledger map.

61 of 61 placed campuses in view

By state · 102 institutions

Alabama 14

  12. Stillman College

    Tuscaloosa. Private. Founded 1876.

    Not yet placed: Census Non Exact

Arkansas 4

  3. Shorter College

    N Little Rock. Private. Founded 1886.

    Not yet placed: Census Non Exact

Delaware 1

District of Columbia 2

Florida 4

Georgia 10

Kentucky 2

Louisiana 7

Maryland 4

Mississippi 6

Missouri 2

North Carolina 10

Ohio 2

Oklahoma 1

Pennsylvania 2

  2. Lincoln University

    Lincoln University. Public. Founded 1854.

    Not yet placed: Census Non Exact

South Carolina 8

Tennessee 6

  2. Fisk University

    Nashville. Private. Founded 1866.

    Not yet placed: Census No Match

  3. Lane College

    Jackson. Private. Founded 1882.

    Not yet placed: Census No Match

Texas 9

U.S. Virgin Islands 1

Virginia 5

West Virginia 2

Held, not guessed

41 campus addresses did not come back from the Census Bureau as an exact match: building names in place of street addresses, post office boxes, route numbers, ZIP codes unique to a campus, and one territory outside the geocoder's benchmark. Each record says which. None was placed at a city centre or through another service.

Sources

102 institutions, one record each, from the IPEDS Institutional Characteristics, Directory information (HD2024) file dated 2025-09-21. Each record notes whether it also appears on the Office of Postsecondary Education's Title III Part B list dated 2026-06-08, which states 100.

  1. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. IPEDS Institutional Characteristics, Directory information (HD2024), 2024-25 provisional data collection. https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/data/HD2024.zip. File dated 2025-09-21.
  2. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education. Higher Education Programs Eligibility Matrix, sheet 'HBCU', dated 2026-06-08. https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fy-2026-higher-education-programs-eligibility-matrix-june-8-2026-114185.xlsx.
  3. U.S. Census Bureau Geocoder, batch address service, benchmark Public_AR_Current. https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/.
  4. Each institution's own history page, cited on its record. No enrollment figures are published here; none were sourced.

Machine-readable: /api/v1/hbcus

These campuses have gathered generations. TheCookout is where the newBWS community gathers now. Pull up a plate.