African American education and public leadership

The journey in one line

13 stops in United States so far. The first rung is 4 of them, and the list keeps growing.

Families take this trip. A rising senior, a car, and a week of campus tours down the east coast and through the south. It is a real journey with a real shape, and the historically Black colleges on it are still admitting students. This list mixes those campuses with the homes of people who built institutions: Mary McLeod Bethune, Carter G. Woodson, Maggie L. Walker, Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.

After emancipation, education was the first thing people organised, often before housing and before wages. Congregations paid for schools. Freedmen's Bureau teachers were run out of towns. The colleges that survived trained most of the country's Black doctors, lawyers, teachers and ministers for a century. Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week from the house on Ninth Street. Maggie L. Walker was the first woman in the United States to charter a bank. These are small buildings with long consequences.

Washington holds three of these within a few miles. Atlanta's university centre is one campus walk. Virginia links Hampton, Richmond and the Booker T. Washington farm. Tuskegee and Carver's birthplace in Missouri are further out. Campuses are working universities. Visitor centres and tours run on term-time schedules and shut for holidays.

Where it goes

The stops, in order

What a visit means here. A visit means entering the named campus landmark, house museum or park site.

1. 1

   Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site

   Tuskegee, Alabama, United States

   

   Founded in 1881 with Booker T. Washington as its first principal, and built brick by brick by its own students from clay dug on the site. George Washington Carver ran the agricultural department here for nearly fifty years. Both his laboratory and Washington's house stand on the campus.

   What counts as a visit

   The George Washington Carver Museum and The Oaks, on the working campus.

   Access

   An active university; The Oaks is shown by ranger-led tour only. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

2. 2

   Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site

   Washington, United States

   

   Bethune founded a school in Daytona Beach in 1904 with a dollar and a half and five pupils, and it became Bethune-Cookman University. This Washington townhouse was her home and the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women, from which she advised Franklin Roosevelt.

   What counts as a visit

   The house museum and the National Archives for Black Women's History.

   Access

   A small townhouse with limited hours; free entry. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

3. 3

   Founders Library, Howard University

   Washington, United States

   

   The clock tower at the head of Howard's main yard, opened in 1939. It holds the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, one of the largest collections of material on people of African descent anywhere. Thurgood Marshall and the Brown v. Board legal team worked out their strategy in this building.

   What counts as a visit

   The library building and the main yard.

   Access

   A working university library. Public access to the reading rooms is limited and the yard is open. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

4. 4

   Morehouse College

   Atlanta, Georgia, United States

   

   Founded in 1867 in the basement of a Baptist church in Augusta and moved to Atlanta, Morehouse is the only historically Black men's college in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr entered at fifteen. It sits in the Atlanta University Center, the largest cluster of historically Black colleges in the country.

   What counts as a visit

   The campus and the Martin Luther King Jr International Chapel.

   Access

   A working campus; tours run in term time and are booked through admissions. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

5. 5

   Spelman College

   Atlanta, Georgia, United States

   

   Begun in 1881 in a church basement by two teachers from Massachusetts and eleven formerly enslaved women who wanted to learn to read. Spelman is now the leading historically Black women's college in the country and its museum of fine art focuses on women of the African diaspora.

   What counts as a visit

   The campus gates and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.

   Access

   A working campus; the museum keeps its own term-time hours. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

6. 6

   Jubilee Hall, Fisk University

   Nashville, Tennessee, United States

   

   The Fisk Jubilee Singers toured Europe and America in the 1870s to save their university from closing, singing spirituals to audiences who had never heard them. They raised enough to build this hall, the first permanent building for Black students in the United States. A portrait of the singers, commissioned by Queen Victoria, hangs inside.

   What counts as a visit

   The exterior of Jubilee Hall and the campus.

   Access

   A working campus; interior access depends on the university. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

7. 7

   Emancipation Oak, Hampton University

   Hampton, Virginia, United States

   

   Mary Peake taught free and enslaved Black children under this live oak from 1861, in defiance of Virginia law. The first Southern reading of the Emancipation Proclamation was held beneath it in 1863. The tree still stands at the edge of Hampton University, which grew out of that school.

   What counts as a visit

   The tree and the surrounding campus.

   Access

   On a working campus; the tree is outdoors and approachable. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

8. 8

   Booker T. Washington National Monument

   Hardy, Virginia, United States

   

   The small tobacco farm where Washington was born into slavery in 1856. He walked five hundred miles to Hampton to enrol. The monument keeps the farm rather than a mansion, which is the honest version of where he started.

   What counts as a visit

   The visitor centre and the reconstructed farm.

   Access

   A rural site with a short interpretive trail; free entry. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

9. 9

   Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site

   Washington, United States

   

   Woodson was the second African American to take a doctorate at Harvard. He ran the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History from this row house and launched Negro History Week in 1926, which became Black History Month.

   What counts as a visit

   The restored row house on Ninth Street.

   Access

   A small site with limited opening; check before going. Checked 2026-09-16.

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

10. 10

    Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site

    Richmond, Virginia, United States

    

    Walker was the first woman in the United States to charter a bank, the St Luke Penny Savings Bank, which she founded in 1903 so that Richmond's Black families could get mortgages. Her house in Jackson Ward is kept with her own furniture.

    What counts as a visit

    The house, on a ranger-led tour.

    Access

    Small timed tours; free. Checked 2026-09-16.

    Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

11. 11

    George Washington Carver National Monument

    Diamond, Missouri, United States

    

    The farm where Carver was born into slavery, and the first national monument dedicated to an African American. The park keeps the woods he explored as a child, which he called his first classroom, along with a museum and a laboratory for visiting schools.

    What counts as a visit

    The visitor centre, museum and the Carver nature trail.

    Access

    Free; a rural site with a one-mile loop trail. Checked 2026-09-16.

    Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

12. 12

    Cheyney University of Pennsylvania

    Cheyney, Pennsylvania, United States

    

    Founded in 1837 with a bequest from the Quaker Richard Humphreys as the Institute for Colored Youth, Cheyney is the oldest institution of higher learning for Black Americans in the country. It is still a public university in the Pennsylvania system.

    What counts as a visit

    The campus.

    Access

    A working campus; visits are arranged through the university. Checked 2026-09-16.

    Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

13. 13

    Lincoln University

    Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, United States

    

    Chartered in 1854 as Ashmun Institute, Lincoln was the first degree-granting historically Black university in the United States. Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall and Kwame Nkrumah all studied here, which says something about its reach.

    What counts as a visit

    The campus.

    Access

    A working campus; tours are booked through admissions. Checked 2026-09-16.

    Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

Respect and access

These are places where people are studying and living. Keep out of residence halls, ask before photographing students, and use the campus visitor route. The National Park Service house sites are small and take few people at a time. Book where you can.

Opening times, prices, permits and eligibility change. Nothing on this page is a statement about today. Follow the Check access link on a place before you plan around it.

Sources

• aucenter.eduhttps://aucenter.edu/ · checked September 16, 2026
• cheyney.eduhttps://cheyney.edu/ · checked September 16, 2026
• howard.eduhttps://howard.edu/ · checked September 16, 2026
• fisk.eduhttps://www.fisk.edu/ · checked September 16, 2026
• hamptonu.eduhttps://www.hamptonu.edu/ · checked September 16, 2026
• lincoln.eduhttps://www.lincoln.edu/ · checked September 16, 2026
• nps.govhttps://www.nps.gov/bowa/index.htm · checked September 16, 2026
• nps.govhttps://www.nps.gov/cawo/index.htm · checked September 16, 2026
• nps.govhttps://www.nps.gov/gwca/index.htm · checked September 16, 2026
• nps.govhttps://www.nps.gov/mamc/index.htm · checked September 16, 2026
• nps.govhttps://www.nps.gov/mawa/index.htm · checked September 16, 2026
• nps.govhttps://www.nps.gov/tuin/index.htm · checked September 16, 2026

TravelDay selected and grouped these places. Naming a custodian, a government agency or UNESCO as a source is not a claim that any of them endorsed this journey.