Kentucky State University

Overview

Kentucky State University is a public historically Black land-grant university in Frankfort, Kentucky, the second-oldest state-supported institution of higher learning in the state, chartered in May 1887 as the State Normal School for Colored Persons. During Frankfort’s 1887 centennial celebration, the city donated $1,500 toward land for the new college on a bluff overlooking the city, and the school formally opened October 11, 1887, with three teachers, 55 students, and John H. Jackson as its first president. It became a land-grant college in 1890 under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, adding home economics, agriculture, and mechanics to its curriculum and graduating its first class of five students that spring; the school was renamed the Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons in 1902 and the Kentucky State Industrial College for Colored Persons in 1926.

Dr. King’s 1957 Commencement Address

Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the commencement address at Kentucky State in 1957, titled “Facing the Challenge of a New Age.” The school’s civil engineering program was started in 1942 after the NAACP threatened a lawsuit on behalf of a Black student seeking to study engineering at the University of Kentucky, and in 1960 Kentucky State enrolled its first white student. The school became a university, taking its present name, in 1972.