Jarvis Christian University (JCU) is a private historically black Christian college in Wood County, Texas. It was founded in 1912. It had a total undergraduate enrollment of 867 in the fall of 2019. During the 2022–2023 academic year, Jarvis Christian College was renamed Jarvis Christian University and it began offering graduate programs the following year.

Although formal instructional programs at Jarvis began on January 13, 1913, with an enrollment of 12 students, all in the elementary grades, the school began as early as 1904, when the Negro Disciples of Christ of Texas began to plan for a school for Black youth. A white couple whose families had owned slaves—Major James Jarvis and his wife Ida Van Zandt Jarvis—donated land upon which the school could be built; the Jarvis family deeded 456 acres (185 ha) to the Christian Women's Board of Missions on the condition it be maintained as a school for Blacks. Jarvis opened its doors as Jarvis Christian Institute, modeled after the Southern Christian Institute located west of Jackson in Edwards, Mississippi.

Jarvis is the only historically black college which remains of the twelve founded by the Disciples of Christ Church.

Jarvis' first students were educated in the remains of an old logging camp and later in a cabin which became the school's first multi-purpose building.

Thomas Buchanan Frost came to the school as superintendent in 1912. Charles Albert Berry joined him as the principal. In 1914, James Nelson Ervin became the first president of Jarvis and served in that capacity until 1938. During the first year of Ervin's tenure, high school classes were added to the curriculum. It became one of the few places at the time at which blacks in East Texas could complete a high school education. Some college work was offered as early as 1916.

The executive committee of the National Women's Board voted in May 1915, to appropriate US$1,000 (equivalent to $31,826 in 2025) for a sawmill that was purchased and installed on campus. The sawmill was operated from the 1920s through the 1940s by male students in the summer. They cut wood for structures on campus and to fire furnaces and stoves used during winter months around campus. Most of the buildings on the Jarvis Campus built during the 1920s–1940s were made with wood from this mill. Most of those buildings burned.

In 1927, junior college courses were integrated into the curriculum. In 1928, the school incorporated as a college.

Senior College course offerings were introduced at Jarvis in 1937. The Emma B. Smith Building, used to house administration offices, was built in 1936 and is the only campus structure surviving from the Ervin presidency.