Central State University

Overview

Central State University is a public historically Black land-grant university in Wilberforce, Ohio, founded in 1887 and enrolling roughly 2,700 students; it is a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. It began as a two-year, state-funded “Combined Normal and Industrial Department” housed within Wilberforce University, a historically Black college founded in 1855 and owned by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The program expanded to a four-year curriculum in 1941, gained independence from Wilberforce University in 1947, was renamed Central State College in 1951, and achieved full university status in 1965; in 2014 it received formal designation as a land-grant university.

From Wilberforce University

Central State’s roots trace to Wilberforce University, founded in 1855 by the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church together with the AME Church, with a biracial board of trustees that included Bishop Daniel A. Payne and Ohio governor Salmon Chase. Wilberforce closed in 1862 as the Civil War drew away the Southern students who had made up much of its enrollment; the AME Church purchased the facility and reopened it in 1863, making it the first college owned and operated by African Americans. The state-funded normal and industrial program that would become Central State was established within Wilberforce by the Ohio legislature in 1887.