Tennessee State University

Overview

Tennessee State University is a public historically Black land-grant university in Nashville, Tennessee, the state’s only state-funded HBCU, established as the Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State Normal School for Negroes in 1912 and formally dedicated on January 16, 1913. It was renamed Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State Normal College in 1925 and Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State College in 1927. In 1941 the Tennessee General Assembly directed that its educational program be upgraded; the school awarded its first master’s degrees three years later and gained full accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools by 1946. The presidency of Walter S. Davis, from 1943 to 1968, brought major expansion, including construction of roughly 70 percent of the school’s facilities and the founding of its graduate school and four other schools; the college took its present name, Tennessee State University, in 1968.

Recent History

In 2022, the Tennessee legislature awarded the university $250 million to upgrade its facilities and academic programs — at the time, the largest single state investment ever made in an HBCU. In 2023, Tennessee State’s best-known graduate, Oprah Winfrey, served as commencement speaker for the first time.