Fayetteville State University

Fayetteville State University (FSU) is a public historically black university in Fayetteville, North Carolina, United States. It is part of the University of North Carolina System and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. History The second oldest state-supported school in North Carolina had humble beginnings. Immediately following the Civil War in 1865, a robust education agenda was begun in Fayetteville's African-American community with the founding of the Phillips and Sumner Schools for primary and intermediate learning. In 1867, the schools consolidated to form the Howard School, following the vision of the Freedmen's Bureau chief General Oliver O. Howard who erected a building on a tract of land generously donated by seven prominent African-American men – Matthew N. Leary, Andrew J. Chestnutt, Robert Simmons, George Grainger, Thomas Lomax, Nelson Carter, and David A. Bryant – who together paid $136 for two lots on Gillespie Street in Fayetteville and formed among themselves a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees to maintain the property for the education of local black youth. In 1877, an act of the North Carolina legislature provided for the establishment of the first teacher-training institution for African Americans in the state. Recognized for its successful record of educating black youth, the Howard School was selected for this designation and in that year became the State Colored Normal School and the first state-sponsored institution for the education of African American teachers in the South. Following a succession of leaders, in 1883, Dr. Ezekiel Ezra Smith, a graduate of Shaw Collegiate Institute (later Shaw University) in Raleigh, N.C., was appointed Principal and Chief Administrative Officer of the State Colored Normal School and began a fifty-year commitment of leadership and affiliation interrupted only by opportunities to honorably serve his country – once as Resident Minister and Consul General of the United States to Liberia and later as Regimental Adjutant of the Third North Carolina Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish–American War. During his distinguished tenure, Dr. Smith oversaw the school's move to a permanent site on Murchison Road and personally deeded additional land to bring its holdings to 92 acres, including a physical plant of several major buildings and cottages. It was also under his leadership that, in 1929, all high school work was suspended, and the title of Principal changed to president. On June 30, 1933, Dr.