Fort Valley State University

Overview

Fort Valley State University is a public historically Black land-grant university in Fort Valley, Georgia, Georgia’s designated 1890 land-grant institution, enrolling over 2,500 students on a 1,365-acre campus, the largest by area of any public university in the state. It was founded as Fort Valley State College in 1939 through the consolidation of two privately founded, American Missionary Association-affiliated schools — the Fort Valley High and Industrial School (founded 1890, chartered 1896) and the State Teachers and Agricultural College for Negroes of Forsyth, Georgia (founded 1902) — both transferred to state control to form the new institution. In 1947 the state Board of Regents moved the official “land grant” designation from Georgia State College (later Savannah State University) to Fort Valley State College, and in 1949 the Georgia General Assembly formally designated it the Land-Grant College for Negroes in Georgia, during the segregated Jim Crow era of public education.