Normal, Alabama (Huntsville) · Founded 1875 · Bulldogs
“The Hill in Normal, Alabama — a former slave's school that became the state's Black land-grant university and the home of the Marching Maroon & White.”
The full Macy's performance — the first HBCU band ever to lead the parade, watched by 28.5 million viewers.
Compilation opening at 0:00 with the Marching Maroon & White leading all eleven bands down the route.
Killa Kev Productions' 4K cut of the Macy's march — the band and Dancing Divas in full detail.
News coverage of the Macy's debut with performance footage — first HBCU band to lead the parade.
WHNT News 19's Huntsville report on the band's historic selection for the 2023 parade.
Footage of the band's New York week accompanying coverage of Carlton Wright's retirement after twelve years as director.
An ethnomusicological field tape of the 1998 Classic — crowd, bands, and all — a time capsule of the rivalry.
The Marching Maroon & White's 1989 halftime show at Legion Field — vintage MMW from the rivalry's middle decades.
The Fifth Quarter band battle from the 2003 Classic — the post-game showdown fans remember longer than the score.
Fifth Quarter from the 2006 Classic — the same season AAMU won its first SWAC football championship.
The full 2023 Classic parade; AAMU's Marching Maroon & White and Divas step off at 23:06.
Highlights of the 82nd Classic (Alabama State 24-17) embedded in HBCU Gameday's game coverage.
Pro Football Hall of Famer; four-time Super Bowl champion with the Pittsburgh Steelers (1974–87); AAMU's all-time great, jersey retired, and the school's standard for football excellence.
Winner of American Idol season 2 (2003); the 'Velvet Teddy Bear' put AAMU on the national pop-culture map. Class of 2015.
NFL defensive end, longtime Indianapolis Colt, Super Bowl XLI champion and one of the league's great pass rushers.
NFL offensive tackle with a long pro career, part of AAMU's pipeline of linemen to the league.
Arena football legend and one of the most decorated players in that league's history.
NFL linebacker (class of 2007), continuing the Bulldogs' defensive tradition.
Major League Baseball outfielder, World Series champion with the 1969 Miracle Mets.
Mathematician and NASA official (class of 1954) — a direct product of the school's science mission in the Rocket City.
The visionary jazz musician and bandleader attended AAMU, one of the most avant-garde figures in American music with a Huntsville connection.
Pioneering jazz drummer of the Count Basie Orchestra; listed among the school's notable people.
Composer, arranger, conductor, and educator; longtime professor of music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Former Birmingham City Council member and Alabama state senator (class of 1971).
Attorney and former Birmingham City Council member.
Educator and member of the Alabama State Board of Education.
Minister and publisher, a civic leader in Black Alabama.
The 'Father of the Blues' served as the school's music director in its early years — faculty, not alumnus, but inseparable from the school's musical identity.
On December 9, 1873, the Alabama legislature approved a normal school for the education of colored teachers in Huntsville. It was a Reconstruction-era promise on paper. What turned it into a real school was a 26-year-old former slave, William Hooper Councill, who lobbied for the plan and would spend the next 34 years building it. The historical marker on campus dates the university's origin to this act, calling Councill founder and first president.
The Huntsville State Normal School for Negroes opened May 1, 1875, in a rented building at a church on Eustis Street, with 61 teaching students, two instructors, and Councill as principal. The state appropriation was $1,000 a year. It was one of about 180 state normal schools founded to train teachers for the common schools, and one of 23 created specifically to train Black teachers for the segregated South. Most such schools eventually became state colleges; few grew as large as this one.
Within three years the school proved itself well enough that the state doubled its appropriation from $1,000 to $2,000. Enrollment and curriculum expanded. Councill, meanwhile, was building a public platform beyond the classroom: in 1877 he founded the Huntsville Herald newspaper, which he edited until 1884, and he was reading law at night. The school was becoming the institutional anchor of Black Huntsville.
In 1881 the faculty pooled money from their own salaries to purchase two and a half acres on West Clinton Street — the school's first property of its own. That same move carried the school out of its rented church space and into a place it owned. Councill had also opened the Lincoln School in Huntsville years earlier, and in 1885 he established St. John AME Church. He was stitching together an entire educational ecosystem for Black North Alabama.
Industrial training began in 1883, and in 1885 the legislature changed the name to the State Normal and Industrial School of Huntsville, reflecting new programs in sewing, printing, carpentry, mattress making, and gardening. By the mid-1880s the school rivaled Tuskegee Institute in central Alabama as a vocational-industrial training center. Councill and Booker T. Washington competed hard for favors and funds from the legislature and northern philanthropists. Councill went further than Washington in courting white paternalism, a strategy that won appropriations and drew critics.
In 1887 Councill was ejected from a first-class coach on an Alabama railroad and filed a complaint with the Interstate Commerce Commission, drawing national attention years before Plessy v. Ferguson. His superiors relieved him of the presidency for the defiance. Then they reappointed him in 1888. The episode captures the whole tension of his career: a man who begged white favor to keep the school alive while also challenging segregation in federal court.
The school relocated to a new site outside Huntsville, and when a post office was established the community took the name Normal, Alabama — after the normal school itself. Students physically constructed residence halls on the new campus. The university still sits on that hilltop in Normal, and alumni and friends still call it simply 'The Hill.' It remains one of the few American college towns named for the school rather than the other way around.
In 1891 the legislature designated the school a land-grant college under the terms of the Morrill Act of 1890, with funds for training Black students in agriculture and mechanic arts. The federal money let the school enlarge and re-establish at its present location. It is Alabama's Black land-grant institution — the counterpart to Auburn under the segregated dual system — and the land-grant mission in agriculture, food science, and extension still defines its research identity today.
In 1896 the name changed to the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. Arts courses were added, and the school's musical life took shape: W. C. Handy, later known as the Father of the Blues, served as the school's music director. The Marching Maroon & White traces its own roots to 1890, and its early lineage runs through Handy and William Grant Still Sr., father of the renowned composer. A band that old, at a school that old, carries a century of sound in its step.
A library was built in 1904 with funds from the Carnegie Corporation, the philanthropy that seeded libraries at Black colleges across the South. By now the school enrolled around 180 students and had moved far past its normal-school origins, though it still served a state that funded Black education at a fraction of white education. The Carnegie building marked the school's arrival as a permanent institution.
William Hooper Councill died April 9, 1909, and is buried on the campus he founded. Born enslaved in North Carolina in 1849, sold on an auction block in Huntsville as a boy, he became a teacher, lawyer, newspaper editor, minister, author of books like Lamp of Wisdom, and the founder of a university. In 2020 the university announced the William Hooper Councill Eternal Flame Memorial at his gravesite — a flame that does not go out, for a man who would not either.
In 1919 the school became the State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute for Negroes, one more name in a long sequence that tracked its slow climb from normal school to college. During the 1910s the school began fielding athletic teams in football and baseball. The football program that would one day fill Legion Field for the Magic City Classic started on these modest early fields.
Alabama A&M played Alabama State in football for the first time on October 31, 1924, losing 30-0. Nobody then could have known the fixture would become the largest HBCU football event in America. The game has been played every year without interruption since 1945, and at Birmingham's Legion Field since 1940. AAMU leads the all-time series 44-43-3, a margin of a single game across a century.
Joseph Fanning Drake, previously Dean of the College at Alabama State College in Montgomery, became president in 1927 and stayed until 1962 — the longest tenure in school history. He took over an unaccredited junior college with a faculty of 80 and 1,000 students and began the long push toward senior-college standing. For a time Drake was reportedly the only Ph.D. in Huntsville. His presidency carried the school through the Depression, World War II, and the first tremors of the civil rights era.
In 1939 the Alabama Board of Education authorized the college to offer senior college-level courses, the academic breakthrough Drake had spent a decade pursuing. The first class to receive bachelor's degrees since 1920 graduated in 1941. The school was no longer a junior college feeding other institutions — it was producing its own graduates.
On January 14, 1948, the name changed again to Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College. Two years earlier the school had earned a Class A rating from the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, and in December 1963 it became a fully accredited member of the Association. The Class A rating in 1946 was the region's formal acknowledgment that the school Councill started in a church basement had become a real college.
On June 26, 1969, the Alabama State Board of Education adopted a resolution changing the name to Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University. It had taken ninety-four years to go from normal school to university. The school kept the 'Agricultural and Mechanical' in its name as a statement: the land-grant mission in agriculture and the mechanic arts was not a relic but the core of its identity.
In 1981 a desegregation case opened the university's admissions to all applicants regardless of race. Like many HBCUs, AAMU's student body had been shaped by the segregated system that created it; the court order made the school's doors legally open to all. In the decades since, the university has grown more diverse while keeping its HBCU identity and mission at the center.
In 1986 the physics department began offering a Ph.D. program, the school's first doctoral program and a marker of its arrival as a research university. Today AAMU offers doctorates in applied physics, food science, plant and soil science, and reading/literacy. Few schools that started as $1,000-a-year normal schools award Ph.D.s in physics.
The $10 million Louis Crews Stadium opened in 1996, giving the Bulldogs a real Division I home, and in 1997 the school joined the Southwestern Athletic Conference. The move put AAMU football on the Black college sports map alongside Grambling, Southern, and Jackson State. The stadium is named for the legendary coach Louis Crews, under whom John Stallworth played from 1970 to 1973.
Alabama A&M won its first SWAC football championship in 2006, the program's arrival as a conference power under head coach Anthony Jones, the second-winningest coach in school history. The title validated the SWAC move a decade earlier. The Bulldogs' most famous football son, four-time Super Bowl champion and Pro Football Hall of Famer John Stallworth, had set the standard decades before — and the 2006 team finally brought the conference crown home.
Dr. Daniel K. Wims, the university's 12th president, took office January 1, 2022, after a 7-4 board vote the previous October. He had been the school's provost since 2010. Within 2022 alone, three new structures were added to the physical plant: a 6,000-seat Event Center, a Welcome Center with one-stop student services, and the William Hooper Councill Memorial Plaza. The board has since bet on his longevity, extending his tenure toward a decade-plus stay.
The Marching Maroon & White became the first HBCU band ever to lead the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, opening the 97th annual parade in New York after an 18-month application process and a $575,000 fundraising drive. Band director Carlton Wright, who led the program from 2013 to 2025, had applied after seeing the University of Alabama's Million Dollar Band in the 2021 parade. Twenty-eight and a half million viewers watched the Bulldogs high-step down the route playing 'Back Stabbers,' 'We Are Family,' and an original hip-hop Nutcracker remix called 'Nutcrack-ah.'
The university selected Freedom Real Estate and Capital to oversee more than $140 million in new construction: a 125,000-square-foot Science Building for physics, biology, and chemistry, and a $58 million Student Amenities Center bridging East and West campus across Meridian Street. Separately, Morris Hall and Stephens Hall reopened after a $21 million gut renovation that rebuilt both residence halls down to their cores. The Hill is in the middle of its biggest building boom since the land-grant era.
After Carlton Wright's retirement closed a twelve-year chapter, the university named William J. Young director of bands following a national search. Young came from Southern University, where he was associate director of the Human Jukebox and a student of the legendary Dr. Isaac Greggs. The program also added Nathan Haymer — the former Southern interim director whose tenure ended in a federal embezzlement case and prison sentence — as an assistant, a hire that drew strong reactions across HBCU band circles. The Marching Maroon & White opened the new era at the MEAC-SWAC Challenge in Atlanta.
First played October 31, 1924 (Alabama State won 30-0), the Classic has run every year since 1945 and at Birmingham's Legion Field since 1940. It is the largest HBCU football game in America — 60,000+ in the stadium, nearly 200,000 participants across the weekend, and roughly $25 million in economic impact for Birmingham. Alabama A&M leads the series 44-43-3, a single game across a century. The week includes the Classic Kickoff, the Magic City Classic Parade, massive tailgates, and a halftime Battle of the Bands between the Marching Maroon & White and the Mighty Marching Hornets that many fans consider the main event. Amazon became title sponsor in 2025 (the Amazon Magic City Classic presented by Coca-Cola), and ESPN's First Take broadcast live from Legion Field that year. Alabama State won the most recent meeting 56-13 in 2025 for its fourth straight; the next is October 31, 2026.
🥁 Marching Maroon & White (MMW), 'Show-band of the South' · since 1890
The Marching Maroon & White has been high-stepping since 1890 — one of the oldest HBCU bands in America. It represented Alabama in the 1998 National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C., led the 2006 Tournament of Roses Parade, appears on Lucy Pearl's 'Dance Tonight' remix, and was named one of Sports Illustrated's Top 10 Black college marching bands. The 2023 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade — leading all 11 bands, Dancing Divas opening the NBC broadcast with Jon Batiste — was the program's biggest national moment. At home it anchors the Magic City Classic halftime, where its battle with Alabama State's Mighty Marching Hornets is as hotly contested as the football.
Father of the renowned composer William Grant Still; part of the program's early lineage of serious musicians.
The 'Father of the Blues' served as the school's music director in its early years, one of the most storied names in the band's lineage.
The first African American appointed Chief Musician (Bandmaster) in the United States Army; carried that standard back to the Hill.
One of the program's long-serving directors who kept the Maroon & White tradition alive through the mid-20th century.
Interim director of bands leading a lean 132-member group; led the program's trip to Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium in 2012.
The modern architect. An AAMU alumnus, he grew the band past 200 members and took it to the Tournament of Roses Parade, the Honda and Pepsi battles of the bands, and — the capstone — leading the 2023 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as the first HBCU band ever to do so. Retired in 2026 after twelve years.
Hired April 2026 after a national search. A Southern University alumnus and former Human Jukebox associate director trained under Dr. Isaac Greggs; charged with building a consistent championship-level program.
All NPHC organizations except Iota Phi Theta hold chapters at AAMU. The university has a special claim on two of them: Charles Henry Chapman, one of the seven founders of Alpha Phi Alpha, was a professor of agriculture here, and Harriet Josephine Terry, one of the founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha, taught English at AAMU for 37 years. Few campuses anywhere can say two Divine Nine founders walked their halls as faculty.
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After the move to the Normal site outside Huntsville, students physically constructed residence halls themselves — labor as education, in the industrial-training tradition. The campus they built on the hilltop is the campus the university still occupies.
A library built with Carnegie Corporation funds gave the school its first real academic library. It marked the school's arrival as a permanent institution rather than a rented-room normal school.
The $10 million stadium gave the Bulldogs a true Division I FCS home and is named for legendary coach Louis Crews. It hosts AAMU home games and remains the center of fall Saturdays on the Hill.
One of three structures added in 2022 alone, the Event Center gave the university a modern arena-scale venue for basketball, convocations, and concerts — a long-missing piece of the physical plant.
Built alongside the Event Center, the Welcome Center consolidated student-oriented service units into one-stop access — admissions, aid, and records under one roof instead of scattered across the Hill.
A memorial plaza honoring the founder, complementing the Eternal Flame Memorial announced in 2020 at his gravesite on campus. The university has steadily built Councill's memory into the physical landscape.
Construction documents went out in April 2023 for a full renovation of the Parker Building and new classroom space — part of the administration's stated goal of renovating one major academic building unit per year.
The university began a rolling renewal of student housing: Building 7 of the Normal Hills Student Apartments complex started renovation, Carter Hall's science labs and offices were reworked, and Hopkins Hall's upper floors hit 85% completion — all while Gravitt Apartments was demolished to clear ground for a new 600-bed residence hall on Meridian Street.
The centerpiece of the $140 million campus transformation: a 125,000-square-foot Science Building with modern classrooms and labs for physics, biology, and chemistry, built to support the university's expanding STEM programs and doctoral research.
Approved by the Board of Trustees, the Amenities Center will bridge East and West campus across Meridian Street with a food court, theater space, game room, bookstore, student governance offices, and outdoor pavilions — designed as the new social heart of campus. Construction was scheduled to begin in 2025.
The two longtime residence halls (opened 1972 and 1981) reopened after a nearly $21 million renovation that took both buildings almost down to their cores and rebuilt them with new systems, finishes, and study lounges for 280+ students. President Wims framed it as a commitment: renovate the historic buildings, don't demolish them.
In August 2024 the university leased the giant billboard atop Birmingham's Two North Twentieth building, planting the AAMU logo and its 'Start Here. Go Anywhere.' slogan over the state's biggest city — a branding play aimed at recruiting students statewide. Not a building, but a statement of ambition.
Anthony Jones (2002–2013), the second-winningest football coach in program history, delivered the 2006 SWAC title. Louis Crews, the stadium's namesake, coached John Stallworth from 1970–73. On the faculty side, the school's history includes Alpha Phi Alpha founder Charles Henry Chapman (agriculture) and AKA founder Harriet Josephine Terry (English, 37 years).
In office since January 1, 2022; former provost; driving the $140M campus build-out.
Led the housing expansion that pushed on-campus accommodation to 62% of students and championed the new Student Amenities Center.
A former North Carolina A&T player who has coached the Bulldogs in the Magic City Classic; 'I've played HBCU, I've coached HBCU, I'm HBCU, I'm SWAC.'
Campus life runs on two fuels: the band and the Classic. The Marching Maroon & White plays every home game at Louis Crews Stadium, and the year builds toward the Magic City Classic in Birmingham — a week of parades, step shows, tailgates, and the halftime showdown with Alabama State's Mighty Marching Hornets that students plan their falls around. The campus sits on 2,300 acres on the Hill in Normal, laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., five minutes from downtown Huntsville and its aerospace economy. AAMU also holds the license for WJAB-FM 90.9, the NPR affiliate broadcasting 24/7 from campus.