Tag: Tuskegee Institute (Tuskegee AL)

Wikipedia says: Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature.

Tuskegee’s campus was designed by architect Robert Robinson Taylor, the first African-American to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in conjunction with David Williston, the first professionally trained African-American landscape architect.

The school was founded on July 4, 1881, as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers. This was a result of an agreement made during the 1880 elections in Macon County between a former Confederate Colonel, W.F. Foster, who was a candidate for re-election to the Alabama Senate, and a local black Leader, Lewis Adams. W.F. Foster offered that, if Adams could persuade the black constituents to vote for Foster, then Foster, if elected, would push the state of Alabama to establish a school for black people in the county. At the time the majority of Macon County population was black, so black constituents had political power. Adams succeeded and Foster followed through with the school.