Prairie View A&M: An HBCU's 150 Years

Prairie View A&M University rose from the grounds of a former plantation to become the oldest public historically Black university in Texas — an institution now approaching a century and a half of educating students who were long shut out of higher education elsewhere in the state. Founded by the Texas legislature in 1876 as the Alta Vista Agricultural and Mechanical College for Colored Youth, it opened its doors in 1878 on land bought from the Alta Vista plantation near Hempstead. Through a string of name changes and hard-won expansions, it grew into a full university and a cornerstone of Black life in Texas. This driving tour crosses the campus and the surrounding community, pausing at the historic halls and library that carry the names of the educators who shaped it, at churches and cemeteries tied to the community that grew up around the school, and at the markers that tell how a plantation became a place of learning.