Bowie State University

Overview

Bowie State University is a public historically Black university in Prince George’s County, Maryland, north of Bowie, part of the University System of Maryland — Maryland’s oldest historically Black university and one of the ten oldest in the country. Founded in 1865 by the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People as a teaching school, it first used space at Baltimore’s African Baptist Church before a dedicated facility was purchased in 1867 and the school was formally named the Baltimore Normal School for Colored Teachers. Reorganized in 1883, it trained Black teachers until 1908, when it became a state institution under the Maryland State Department of Education. In 1910 the school moved to the 187-acre Jericho Farm in Prince George’s County, where about 60 students lived in the old farmhouse, and it was renamed the Maryland Normal and Industrial School at Bowie in 1914.