Wilberforce, Ohio · Founded 1887 · Marauders
“Ohio's only public HBCU — a tiny Wilberforce campus that built a football dynasty and the Invincible Marching Marauders.”
The definitive film of the dynasty: the 12–1 NAIA championship season, the 83–0 Kentucky State blowout, and the 19–16 Gardner–Webb title-game comeback, cut from the CSU archives.
The band's own archive reel — Invincible Marching Marauders 2007–2020 under Dr. Ramon W. Key Jr., the era of the Block Party film and the Honda battles.
The IMM's viral-era showmanship: a full 2015 stand performance in crisp 1080p, the sound that packed McPherson Stadium in the mid-2010s.
The Marauders' halftime show at Welcome Stadium in Dayton — the hometown classic stage where CSU's band owned the city.
The alumni anthem: a Marauder's love letter to the school, played at every Homecoming for 13+ years — 'For GOD, For Central, For State!'
The family feud on film: the IMM battles hometown Wilberforce and Simmons College of Kentucky at the 2026 Midwest Showdown.
The 2026 Music Through the Streets Battle of the Bands in Warrensville Heights, Ohio — the current IMM proving the legacy travels.
September 5, 2026: the IMM takes its halftime show into Grambling's house and holds its own against the World Famed Tiger Marching Band.
The pregame sound battle in Grambling — two legendary HBCU bands warming up the same field.
The after-the-game fifth quarter at Grambling, where HBCU band battles are really won and lost.
Vintage footage from the championship season itself — the band that played while Hugh Douglas was terrorizing quarterbacks.
The Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic halftime — two storied bands sharing one showcase.
NFL defensive end (1991–94 at CSU): 42 sacks in 32 college games, two-time NAIA All-American, 1993 national champion; 1995 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, three-time Pro Bowler, Black College Football Hall of Fame 2019.
NFL offensive tackle (1987–90): anchored the Cowboys' 1990s dynasty at right tackle — three Super Bowls, four Pro Bowls, blocking for Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman; started 133 of 146 NFL games.
6-foot-7, 360-pound NFL tackle who started at Central State before finishing at South Carolina State; undrafted in 1993, started 119 NFL games for the Browns and Ravens and became one of the league's highest-paid linemen.
NFL defensive back, class of 1990; played for the New Orleans Saints.
NFL player from the Marauders' championship-era pipeline.
NFL defensive lineman from Central State.
NFL defensive end from the Marauders program.
NFL offensive lineman from Central State.
NFL running back from the Marauders.
Olympic gold medalist — won the 400-meter hurdles at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; the brightest star of Central State's eight women's NAIA national track championships.
Television personality and former White House aide; a Central State graduate and former Miss CSU.
U.S. Representative from Ohio; earned her bachelor's degree from Central State.
Grammy-winning jazz vocalist who attended Central State — one of the most celebrated singers to come through Wilberforce.
First African American appointed city manager of Kansas City, Missouri.
Former city commissioner and mayor of Dayton, Ohio.
Mayor of Xenia, Ohio — the town next door that shares Central State's tornado history.
Former President of Malawi; listed among Central State's notable alumni (unverified: true — sourced from the university's alumni table, independent confirmation not found in sources opened).
Before there was a Central State, there was Wilberforce — founded in 1856 at Tawawa Springs, Ohio, in honor of the abolitionist William Wilberforce, and affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It was the nation's oldest private HBCU and a stop on the Underground Railroad, built as what its founders called a refuge from slavery's rule of ignorance. Central State's story grows directly out of this soil: the two schools still share the same small patch of Greene County, and every Charter Day program retells the shared root.
On July 27, 1887, the Ohio General Assembly enacted legislation creating a Combined Normal and Industrial Department inside Wilberforce University — the act that marks Central State University's founding. The mission was twofold: train teachers and provide vocational/industrial education, with a permanent state funding base like other state-supported institutions. The statute declared the department open to all applicants of good and moral character with no limits on race, color, sex, or creed — though everyone understood it was designed to serve the educational needs of Black students. A separate board of trustees governed the state-financed operations even though the department lived inside Wilberforce.
After more than half a century as a two-year normal and industrial department, Ohio expanded the program to a full four-year degree-granting operation in 1941. That single change rewrote the school's future: it was no longer just a teacher-training annex but a real college taking shape inside Wilberforce's walls. Within six years, the state would cut the cord entirely.
In 1947 the department legally separated from Wilberforce University and began operating independently as the College of Education and Industrial Arts at Wilberforce. Dr. Charles H. Wesley — Wilberforce's own president and a noted historian of Black labor — crossed over to become Central State's first president, holding the post for nearly two decades. The split was administrative more than geographic: the new college stayed on the same Wilberforce ground, two Black institutions now side by side on one street.
The Ohio legislature dropped the old mouthful of a name in 1951 and rechristened the school Central State College. The new name was a declaration that the institution belonged to all of Ohio, not just to the Wilberforce campus it had been born on. Under Wesley's long presidency the college kept climbing toward full university standing.
In 1965 the institution achieved university status and became Central State University — Ohio's only publicly supported HBCU, a distinction it still holds alone. Harry E. Groves, Esq., steered the school through the transition year. The timing mattered: the Civil Rights Act was a year old, federal higher-education money was flowing, and a public Black university in the Midwest had room to become something the country hadn't seen before.
On April 3, 1974, the Super Outbreak — the largest tornado outbreak in U.S. history at the time — tore through Wilberforce and neighboring Xenia, destroying most of Central State's campus. Buildings came down, lives were disrupted, and the university's future was suddenly an open question. The school rebuilt instead of folding, and the tornado became a permanent part of Central State's identity: a story of resilience the university still tells about itself, of bending like the oak and coming back.
Under head coach William 'Billy' Joe (1981–1993), Central State became a national power. The 1983 Marauders marched all the way to the NCAA Division II national championship game, falling 41–21 to North Dakota State — but the message was sent. A small HBCU in rural Ohio was now playing for hardware on national television, and the pipeline of talent that would win real titles in the next decade was already being built.
In one of the more eyebrow-raising chapters of Central State lore, heavyweight champion Mike Tyson received an honorary doctorate from the university in 1989. Students on campus still cite it as proof that Central State has never been a conventional school. It was an honorary degree, not an alumni connection — but the story survives in every 'did you know about CSU' conversation to this day.
The 1990 Marauders won the NAIA Division I national championship, beating Mesa State 10–9 in a defensive slugfest. It was the first national football title in school history and announced the start of the most dominant decade any HBCU football program has ever had. The team was also recognized as black college national champion, a crown Central State would wear seven times between 1948 and 1992.
The 1992 Marauders went 12–1 and finished No. 1 in both the NAIA and Black College Sports Report polls. The season's signature moments came back to back: an 83–0 annihilation of rival Kentucky State, then a 19–16 championship-game comeback over Gardner–Webb in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, where quarterback Henderson Mosley played on a badly sprained ankle and Leroy Perkins scored the winner with 36 seconds left. Future NFL Pro Bowler Hugh Douglas anchored a defense that recorded 42 sacks in 32 games across his three-year CSU career.
Billy Joe's former assistant Rick Comegy took the 1995 Marauders to a third NAIA Division I championship in six years, routing Northeastern State 37–7 after a 49–21 semifinal win over Montana Western. Quarterback play and a ferocious defense defined the decade — Central State remains the last HBCU to win a national title in football, a fact its alumni repeat with pride and a little ache. The 1995 team waited nearly 30 years to finally get its championship rings, presented at a belated ceremony organized by alumni.
The dynasty ended in a pile of trouble: the NAIA had banned the team from postseason play for two years for using academically ineligible players, and in 1997 the Ohio Legislature — with the school in deep financial distress — required Central State to drop football for two years as a condition of continued state funding. The program went dark after the 1996 season. For eight years there was no Marauder football at all, and the championship banners gathered dust.
In 2001 the board of trustees voted to restore football through private donations, and in 2005 — under president Dr. John W. Garland, a 1971 Central State graduate — the Marauders returned to the field at the NCAA Division II level. Coach Theo Lemon inherited 85 players, more than half of them freshmen or transfers, and sold them on one pitch: play right now, no depth chart. The rebuild was slow, but the band and the student body finally had autumn Saturdays again.
The Invincible Marching Marauders appeared prominently in the 2006 concert film Dave Chappelle's Block Party, putting Central State's band in front of a national audience. The same era brought multiple appearances at the Honda Battle of the Bands in Atlanta and halftime shows for the Cleveland Browns and Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, and Detroit Pistons — plus a World Bowl performance in Barcelona and a stop in London. For a decade the IMM was one of the most-traveled bands in the HBCU world.
With enrollment sliding and state lawmakers grumbling, some legislators began pushing to merge Central State with nearby Wright State or even reunite it with Wilberforce — Wilberforce's own board chair said he'd welcome reunification 'if the state made an adequate financial commitment.' Alumni and supporters fought the idea hard, arguing Ohio needed its public HBCU standing on its own. The merger never happened, but the pressure reshaped how the university had to justify its existence to Columbus every budget cycle.
In 2014 Central State was finally designated an 1890 land-grant institution — making it the only public HBCU land-grant university north of the Mason–Dixon Line. The designation unlocked federal agricultural research dollars and gave the school a new institutional identity: not just Ohio's Black college, but a research university with a hemp program, a College of Engineering, Science, Technology and Agriculture, and a seat at the land-grant table. Wilberforce's own telling of the story calls Central State the land-grant powerhouse its mother institution gave rise to.
Central State opened its new $33.5 million University Student Center in 2015, the single biggest campus investment in a generation, and retired NBA star Magic Johnson — a longtime supporter of the school — came to campus to celebrate the opening. The same year, Marauder athletics joined the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC). After years of budget crises and enrollment slides, 2015 felt like the corner turning.
Fall enrollment fell to 1,742 in 2016, down more than 30 percent from 2,503 in 2011 — the number that had plunged the school into its budget crisis. President Cynthia Jackson-Hammond's administration responded with transfer pipelines to area community colleges, new housing, and relentless assessment of what was actually working. By fall 2018 enrollment had climbed back above 2,000 to 2,099 students, the first increase in five years.
On August 6, 2021, with Governor Mike DeWine in attendance, Central State broke ground on a $15 million, 57,000-square-foot Honors residence hall between the library and the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center. The three-story, 119-bed apartment-style facility — built by University Housing Solutions — opened for fall 2022 and anchored the brand-new Honors College, one of president Jack Thomas's signature priorities. The Honors College had admitted 240 students, 107 of them freshmen, in under a year.
Central State pushed a $65 million capital wave across campus: two more Honors residential halls plus an Honors headquarters building, a $10.1 million Residential Hall East for 146 students overlooking McPherson Stadium (with a second dining hall), and the Marauder Pride Community One residence hall — which filled completely before it was even finished, with a waiting list of juniors and seniors. Administrators started talking openly about pushing the on-campus population from 60 percent toward 80 percent and building 'our own little city' in Wilberforce.
On July 1, 2024, Dr. Morakinyo A.O. Kuti — a 1985 Central State alumnus who arrived on campus from Nigeria in 1982 — became the university's 10th president. Kuti left home at age 10 for boarding school in Nigeria, an experience he credits with teaching him that the physical and emotional environment of a school decides whether students succeed. He'd watched Central State evolve under six previous presidents as a student and administrator; now the evolution is his to lead.
In March 2025 Central State named former NFL defensive back Tony Carter as head football coach, then stacked the staff with pro pedigree: Super Bowl XLIII MVP Santonio Holmes, two-time Pro Bowl return man Leon Washington as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, and Dayton native Brandon McKinney — a decade-long NFL nose tackle — coaching the defensive line. The message to recruits and to the SIAC was unmistakable: the Marauders intend to matter again. The 2025 Homecoming brought the IMM's 'To the Hill' march through a packed campus.
The Invincible Marching Marauders opened the 2026 season with a statement trip: September 5 at Grambling State, trading halftime, zero-quarter, and fifth-quarter sets with the World Famed Tiger Marching Band in front of a Louisiana crowd. Weeks later the band battled at the 2026 Music Through the Streets Battle of the Bands in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, and faced hometown rivals Wilberforce and Simmons College of Kentucky at the Midwest Showdown. The drum major corps — including Tylor Roseberry, the band's second female drum major — carries a legacy the alumni band association guards fiercely.
The main event. Two public HBCUs, a few hours apart, and a history with real teeth — the 1992 Marauders hung an 83–0 beating on Kentucky State in front of 8,500 at McPherson Stadium during the national-title run. The band rivalry is just as live: the 2026 fifth-quarter videos of IMM vs. the Mighty Marching Thorobreds are appointment viewing. CSU's own athletics pages name Kentucky State (and West Virginia State) as the school's main athletic rivals.
The other named main rival — a fellow public HBCU in Institute, West Virginia, with a shared history in Black college athletics going back generations. When Central State was rolling through NAIA title runs, West Virginia State was one of the programs measuring itself against the Marauders.
Not a conference rivalry — it's closer than that. Wilberforce University is literally the school Central State was born inside of in 1887, and the two campuses still share the same small town. They meet every year at the Midwest Showdown Battle of the Bands (2026: Central State vs. Wilberforce vs. Simmons College of Kentucky), where the IMM and Wilberforce's Hounds of Sound battle for the town. Blood runs deep here; the split was 1947 but the family tension never left.
The cross-town series with the University of Dayton: CSU won the first meeting in 1974 at Welcome Stadium; Dayton took 1977 and 1978. The series was revived in the 2000s as a deliberate Miami Valley showcase — two local programs with six combined national titles between them at the time — with CSU's Al West, a graduate of both schools, coaching the Marauders.
🥁 Invincible Marching Marauders
The IMM — 'We perform with P.R.I.D.E.' — is the pride of Central State, the unit that rivets Homecoming and carries the school's name into NFL stadiums. Beyond the Block Party film credit, the band has played Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the World Bowl in Barcelona, London, and halftime for the Browns, Cavaliers, Pacers, and Pistons. The alumni band association is famously protective of the legacy: head drum major Nathaniel Williams anchored the Key era, and today's corps includes Tylor Roseberry, the band's second female drum major. Directors before 2007 could not be verified from sources opened — marked unverified, not guessed.
Led the IMM through its most-traveled era: Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2006 film), multiple Honda Battle of the Bands appearances, and NFL halftime shows. The band's 2007–2020 media archives are credited to his directorship, with Lindon Phillips as assistant and Sylvia G. Kelley running auxiliaries.
A 1994 Central State graduate who returned home after directing bands at Kentucky State (where he chaired Humanities and Performing Arts) and building acclaimed programs in Michigan school districts. Leads the current IMM, including the 2026 Grambling trip and MTTS battle run; honored at the 2025 Charter Day.
All nine National Pan-Hellenic Council organizations hold chapters at Central State — the full Divine Nine on one small campus, governed by CSU's own NPHC chapter under the Office of the University Center and Student Development. With Wilberforce's Greeks literally across the street, yard season in Wilberforce is a two-campus affair.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
The single largest campus investment in a generation: a $33.5 million student center that became the social heart of campus. Retired NBA star Magic Johnson, a longtime supporter of the school, came to Wilberforce for the opening celebration.
Broke ground August 6, 2021 with Governor Mike DeWine attending; opened fall 2022. A 57,000-square-foot, three-story, 119-bed apartment-style hall between the library and the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center, built by University Housing Solutions, housing the new Honors College's high achievers.
Two more Honors residential halls completed, plus a headquarters building for the Honors College itself — the $65 million wave's academic anchor. Combined with the first hall, Central State built capacity for 419 Honors students against an Honors enrollment of about 280.
The fourth and final Honors Hall building: 24,000 square feet, 48 units, 96 beds, completed fall 2024 — the last installment of the Honors housing buildout.
A 146-student residence hall overlooking McPherson Stadium football field, including a second dining hall that administrators expected to become the most requested housing on campus.
The new residence hall's sister facility to Hall East — it filled completely before construction was even finished, with a waiting list of juniors and seniors. The 'test case' that proved students would pay for apartment-style living in Wilberforce.
Allison Hall closed in May 2025 for an extensive sustainability-focused renovation rather than a teardown: 60,000 additional square feet, 218 more beds, a new grab-and-go market, elevators, and gender-neutral bathrooms. Reopens for the 2027–28 academic year.
Westfall — one of 'the towers' — finished interior renovations (windows, flooring, lighting, building efficiencies) in 2023 and reopened for the 2024–25 academic year.
The second tower, Durward Hall, followed Westfall through the same interior modernization and began housing students for the 2025–26 academic year.
CSU STRATA, the university-affiliated private company, closed the Prospect Plaza Apartments in fall 2024 for remodeling — part of the broader push to modernize every bed on and around campus.
The 2025 staff story is the football rebuild: three former NFL players with real pro pedigree — a Super Bowl MVP, a two-time Pro Bowl returner, and a decade-long NFL lineman — hired to resurrect the program that won three national titles in the 1990s. On the academic side, the land-grant era brought research leadership like hemp researcher Dr. Craig Schluttenhofer into prominence.
Took office July 1, 2024; 1985 alumnus.
Leads the Invincible Marching Marauders; CSU class of 1994.
Former NFL defensive back (Broncos, Patriots, Vikings, Colts, Saints); hired March 2025.
Two-time NFL Pro Bowl return man (Jets); joined the Marauder staff in 2025.
Dayton native; decade-long NFL nose tackle (Chargers, Ravens, Colts); joined 2025.
Super Bowl XLIII MVP; joined Central State's staff in the 2025 NFL-veteran wave.
Listed in the 2025 presidential investiture program as athletics director.
Central State is small — roughly 2,000 students on a compact Wilberforce campus it shares with Wilberforce University — and that smallness is the whole texture: everybody knows everybody, the band is the heartbeat, and football Saturdays at 7,000-seat McPherson Stadium feel like family reunions. Students describe it as a home away from home where 'fashion is everything' freshman year and finding your people is the real curriculum. The yard sits minutes from Dayton, so the city is the backyard, but the campus itself is pure HBCU village.