HBCU Spotlight: Harris Stowe State University

Harris–Stowe State University (HSSU) is a public historically black university in St. Louis, Missouri. The university offers 50 majors, minors, and certificate programs in education, business, and arts & sciences. It is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. It is located immediately east of the Saint Louis University campus. The school had a fall headcount enrollment of 1,098 students in 2023.

HSSU has roots in more than one institution; one with a White student body, one with a Black student body, one pre-emancipation and the other post-emancipation. Origins of HSSU, pre-emancipation, began 1857 when the St. Louis Public Schools founded St. Louis Normal School, a Whites-only school, and post-emancipation in 1890 as the Sumner Normal School, solely for the preparation of African American women, as elementary school teachers. These institutions had these things in common, they were racially segregated, they were women-only, and all their graduates were school teachers.[3]

Although two separate institutions, prior to 1954, for a period of time, John L. Purdom, was president of both institutions during the 1930s. St. Louis Normal School (Harris Teachers College) and Sumner Normal School (Stowe Teachers College) started to admit men in 1940. They merged into a single institution after 1954.