*The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) was founded on this date in 1873. It is a public Historically Black College and University (HBCU).
It is located in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and is the second-oldest public institution in Arkansas. UAPB is a member school of the University of Arkansas System and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Authorized by the Reconstruction-era legislature as the Branch Normal College and opened in 1875 with Joseph Carter Corbin as principal. It was nominally part of the "normal" (education) department of Arkansas Industrial University, later the University of Arkansas. It was operated separately as part of a compromise to get a college for Black students, as the state maintained racial segregation well into the 20th century.
It was later designated as a land-grant college under the 1890 federal amendments to the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. As Congress had initially established the land grant colleges to provide education to all qualified students in a state, in 1890, it required states to maintain segregated systems to develop a separate land-grant university for Blacks and whites. In 1927, the school severed its ties with the University of Arkansas and became Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College (Arkansas AM&N). It moved to its current campus location in 1929. Nearly 50 years later, in 1972, Arkansas AM&N re-joined what is now the University of Arkansas System. It gained its current name and university status as a full-fledged campus with graduate study departments.
Since 1988, the university has gained recognition as a leading research institution in aquaculture studies, offering the state's only comprehensive program. It supports a growing regional industry throughout the Mid-South (according to the school, aquaculture is a $167 million industry in Arkansas alone and worth approximately $1.2 billion in the Mississippi Delta region). The program was recently enhanced by adding an Aquaculture/Fisheries Ph.D. program. The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff is Arkansas's oldest and largest HBCU. Notable Alumni include chemist Samuel Massie.
