Savannah State University

Savannah State University (SSU) is a public historically black university in Savannah, Georgia, United States. It is the oldest historically black public university in the state. The university is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

Savannah State operates four colleges: College of Business Administration, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, College of Sciences and Technology and the Savannah State University College of Education.

Savannah State University was founded as a result of the Second Morrill Land Grant Act of August 30, 1890. The act mandated that southern and border states develop land grant colleges for black students, as their systems were segregated. On November 26, 1890, the Georgia General Assembly passed legislation creating the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth.

A preliminary session of the school was held in the Baxter Street School Building in Athens, where Richard R. Wright Sr. was principal. The college operated there for several months during 1891, before moving to its permanent location in Savannah on October 7, 1891, with Wright as the first president. The school had five faculty members. Its eight students were all graduates of Edmund Asa Ware High School, the first public high school for blacks in Augusta. The campus was built on the former lands of Placentia Plantation, including its colored cemetery.

The college awarded its first baccalaureate degree in 1898. In 1921, the first female students were admitted as residents on the campus. In 1928, the college became a full four-year degree-granting institution and ended its high school and normal school programs. Normal schools had been created in the 19th century in many state systems in the United States, after the German model, to educate teachers for elementary school students. With the expansion of towns across the US, and continuing issues in trying to educate four million freedmen and their descendants, there was an urgent need to establish many new schools and to train teachers quickly in the North and the South. States used normal schools for training teachers for primary school grades and sometimes secondary school as well. Normal schools or colleges tended to have two- or three-year programs. Gradually the normal schools were converted to full colleges with four-year curricula, or were left behind.

In 1932, the college became a full member institution of the University System of Georgia and its name was changed to Georgia State College. The college served as Georgia's land-grant institution for African-American students until 1947. The designation was then transferred to Fort Valley State College. In January 1950, the college changed its name to Savannah State College.

With the growth in its graduate and research programs, in 1996 the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia elevated Savannah State College to the status of state university and the name was changed to Savannah State University.

In 2008, a proposal was made to merge Savannah State University with Armstrong Atlantic State University, but it did not pass. Almost a decade later, Armstrong State would eventually be merged with Georgia Southern University in nearby Statesboro.