Wilberforce University (WU) is a private university in Wilberforce, Ohio, United States. It is one of three historically black universities established before the American Civil War. Founded in 1856 by the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), it is named after English statesman and abolitionist William Wilberforce. In 1863, it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), which had ties to the school since its inception. WU remains affiliated with the AME.

Beginning in 1887, WU operated as a partially state-funded and partially private institution. Concerns over the separation of church and state led WU's theology department to separate and establish the independent Payne Theological Seminary. The state-funded division of the school separated from WU in 1947 and became what is today known as Central State University.

The university currently offers twenty-five academic programs of undergraduate and graduate study. Since 1966, the school has emphasized cooperative education in which students do internships in their field of study in addition to their coursework. The school is a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and its athletic teams, the Bulldogs, compete in the HBCU Athletic Conference.

At the time Ohio became a state in 1802, it did so as a free state with the slave states of Kentucky and Virginia along its southern border. Ohio became a major thoroughfare for the Underground Railroad during the 19th century with an estimated 40,000 slaves escaping from the American South along Ohio routes. Additionally migratory patterns of free people of color in conjunction with the arrival of escaped slaves led to a significant growing black population across the state, but especially in Hamilton County, Ohio and those counties adjacent to it in Southwestern Ohio which had the largest and fastest growing black populations in Ohio in that era.

The need to educate the Ohio black community became a pressing issue of concern to community leaders, politicians, and religious groups. The Ohio Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church) adopted education resolutions in 1833, and in the years following required their ministers to preach sermons on the need for education. The Ohio General Assembly formally mandated the establishment of public schools for Ohio's black population in 1854. Cincinnati High School opened that same year as the first public school for black students in Ohio. The Ohio Conference of the AME Church founded Union Seminary in West Jefferson, Ohio in 1847, but the school failed to thrive and closed in 1863.

In the years leading up to the American Civil War there was a growing movement to establish schools of higher learning for black people in the Northern United States as part of the abolitionist movement to end slavery. This was in stark contrast to the Southern United States where it was illegal for blacks to obtain an education. The first of these schools were Cheyney University of Pennsylvania (founded 1837) and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (founded 1854). The interest in founding a similar school in Ohio was partly generated by a series of race riots in Southern Ohio that occurred in 1826, 1836, and 1841. The Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church believed that the establishment of a university for blacks in Southwestern Ohio could do much to solve racial problems in the region, and were also wanting to provide opportunities to improve the lives of the approximately 50,000 black methodists living in the area overseen by the Cincinnati Conference.

Wilberforce University was the third^{[clarification needed]} historically black college (HBC) founded in the United States, and the last HBC established prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Some sources describe Wilberforce University as the oldest or first HBC because it was the first HBC to graduate students with an accredited bachelor's degree in 1857; an achievement not reached by another HBC until 1868 when Lincoln University awarded its first bachelor's diplomas.

Wilberforce University (WU) was officially incorporated in accordance with the laws of Greene County, Ohio on August 30, 1856. It was earlier established by a ratification of first the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) on October 31, 1855 and later a vote of the MEC's national general assembly in May 22, 1856. The process of bringing this initiative to vote was done after a committee was founded on September 28, 1853 by the MEC to study founding a black college in consultation with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church). The school was established as a coeducation school of higher education for African-American students with its original name stylized as Wilberforce University. The use of the word university in the title was debated during the process of the school's founding, but ultimately it was decided that it should be used as an important aspirational gesture for what the founders hoped the school would become. They called this act a "pledge of victorious faith".