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This higher education institution was organized after an 1873 act of the Alabama State Legislature and the efforts of William Hooper Council, an ex-slave who became its first principal and president. It opened on May 1, 1875, as the Huntsville Normal School with two teachers, 61 students, and an annual state appropriation of $1,000. During the early years the college received support from the Slater and Peabody Funds and private contributors. After successfully introducing industrial education in 1878, the legislature increased its state appropriation to $4,000 per year and changed the name to the State Normal and Industrial School at Huntsville. After the 1890 Morrill Act of the U.S. Congress, the school began receiving Federal support and changed its name again, this time to the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, in 1891.

The additional support helped the college to grow. The campus moved to Normal, Alabama, and its name was changed to the State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute for Negroes in 1919. After the graduation of the class of 1920, the college was designated a junior college; it resumed awarding bachelor’s degrees in 1941 after authorization from the state board of education, and it became the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1948. Its present name was adopted in 1969. The university now serves over 6,000 students in undergraduate and graduate degree programs, including offering Ph.D.s.

During the Civil Rights Movement, A&M’s students participated in local sit-ins. This happened when white supremacists accelerated efforts to stamp out dissent activities in publicly supported institutions. Governor John Patterson complained that the school’s president had allowed members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to enter the campus to solicit support. He claimed that one-third of the students who were arrested for sit-ins in Huntsville were A&M students. The governor responded by threatening the school’s financial support. In an emergency session, the state’s board of education ordered the president to take a year’s leave of absence, followed by his retirement the next year.

Fletcher F. Moon