University of the District of Columbia

Overview

The University of the District of Columbia is a public historically Black land-grant university in Washington, D.C. — the city’s only public university — formed on August 1, 1977, through the merger of Federal City College, Washington Technical Institute, and District of Columbia Teachers College. UDC traces its roots to the earliest of these predecessor institutions, the Normal School for Colored Girls, founded in 1851 by Myrtilla Miner — the first normal school in the District of Columbia and the fourth in the United States. The university today is a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, with a main campus at Van Ness and additional sites including a Lamond-Riggs campus, a Congress Heights campus, and a research farm in Beltsville, Maryland.

Myrtilla Miner’s School

UDC’s founding predecessor, the Normal School for Colored Girls, opened its doors on December 3, 1851, with just six students meeting in a rented, roughly 14-foot-square room, amid considerable racist opposition in the city. Benefactors included the Society of Friends and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, who donated $1,000 from the sales of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The school survived until the Civil War, reopened afterward, and by 1879 had joined the District’s public education system as the Miner Normal School; in 1929 Congress made it a four-year teachers’ college, and in 1955, following Brown v. Board of Education, it merged with the formerly white Wilson Teachers College to form the District of Columbia Teachers College — one of UDC’s three direct predecessor institutions.