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The Ledger

The Rise · HBCUs

Every HBCU in America, on one map.

One record per school. Counts from 2023.

Schools founded to educate Black Americans when almost nothing else would, with the founding story each school tells on its own site.

Enrollment is the official 2023 count, rounded. Tap a school for its source.

The count, by the official lists

102
Schools listed as HBCU and open on the official 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 schools.
102
Campus locations from the official 2024-25 record, used as published. Every school is placed at its campus.

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 school's own page; the rest wait for one.

Where they stand

Every school is on this page. A solid pin is the campus location on the official record, used as published; a hollow pin would mark the center of the city for any campus without one. Nothing on this map was estimated and no city center is presented as a campus. The same layer is one chip away on the Ledger map.

102 of 102 pins in view

Solid pin: campus location confirmed. The campus location on the official record, used as published. The pin is the campus.
Hollow pin: campus location not confirmed. No campus location is published and the address on file could not be matched, so the pin sits at the center of the city on the record, not at the campus.

By state · 102 schools

Where we are confident, and where we are not

Every one of the 102 schools is on this page. For 102 of them the pin is the campus location on the official directory, used as published and never geocoded, with the street address from the same record. No school is left at a city center. Each record page says in one sentence where its location comes from. No city center is ever presented as a campus.

Sources

102 schools, 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. Campus coordinates and street addresses: the LATITUDE, LONGITUD, and ADDR columns of the same IPEDS directory file, used as published.
  4. U.S. Census Bureau Geocoder, batch address service, benchmark Public_AR_Current (the earlier exact-match pass, kept on each record as a second check). https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/.
  5. Each school's own history page, cited on its record. Student counts: the federal IPEDS fall enrollment file, cited on each record with the exact figure.

Machine-readable: /api/v1/hbcus

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