St. Louis, Missouri · Founded 1857 · Hornets
“Missouri's only public HBCU — two teachers' colleges, one white and one Black, merged by a Supreme Court ruling into a school that still trains St. Louis's teachers.”
The annual laser light show in the Emerson courtyard — HSSU's unofficial fall spectacle, produced by Louis Capet XXVI since 2014; the 2022 edition in full HD.
The 2023 edition, shot in the rain with fogged lenses — the producer notes the humidity was good for the lasers even when the cameras struggled.
The 2024 edition, front-view Facebook Live cut with a Hot 104.1 FM DJ on the soundtrack — the laser show has become a multi-year HSSU tradition.
The laser-show producer's behind-the-scenes photos from his 2022 St. Louis trip — taken while in town for HSSU's annual show; documents how the tradition gets made.
A Greek graduation celebration on the HSSU campus — shows the Divine Nine's visible place in Hornet student life.
An HSSU graduate's family celebration — the small, personal side of a school where graduations still feel like family reunions.
KSDK's election-night report on the night HSSU's most famous alum made history — Bush studied at Harris-Stowe in 1995–96 and later secured $1 million in federal funding for the school.
Former U.S. Representative for Missouri's 1st district (2021–2025); first African American woman to represent Missouri in Congress; studied at HSSU 1995–96; secured $1 million in federal funding for the school in 2022.
Former superintendent of public schools in the District of Columbia, San Francisco, and Philadelphia — one of the few educators to lead three major urban districts.
First African-American mayor in Michigan (Ypsilanti), honored in the Congressional Record.
Longtime Missouri State Senator from St. Louis's 5th District.
Former circuit attorney for the City of St. Louis and former Missouri state representative.
Los Angeles City Council member, 1973–1987.
U.S. Coast Guard aviator; first African American promoted to Captain in the Coast Guard.
Retired St. Louis television anchorman, former Saint Louis University vice president, and author; a Harris-Stowe graduate.
Hip hop DJ, record producer, and entrepreneur; has DJ'd HSSU Homecoming concerts.
Stowe Teachers College alumnus honored posthumously with the Distinguished Education Legacy Award for 40+ years in education; former HSSU executive vice president emeritus.
1936 Stowe Teachers College graduate celebrated at the 2007 Homecoming parade for 70+ years of alumni loyalty.
Fall 2023 graduate at age 74 — the oldest graduate in school history, completing a 50-year dream begun in 1973 before military service; planned to attend law school next.
Before emancipation, the St. Louis Public Schools founded the St. Louis Normal School in 1857 to train white women as elementary school teachers. It was the first teacher-education institution west of the Mississippi River and the twelfth such institution in the United States. The campus was whites-only and women-only; every graduate became a schoolteacher.
Anna Brackett became principal of the St. Louis Normal School in 1863, the first normal school in the United States led by a woman. She pushed the Board of Education to adopt an entrance age requirement and an entrance examination, and fought to give female students access to higher education and liberal studies as preparation for professional teaching. She resigned in 1872 when curriculum changes cut against her beliefs.
The St. Louis school system established Sumner Normal School in 1890 to train Black teachers, essentially as an extension of the senior year at Sumner High School. In a segregated system, it was the counterpart to the white normal school: women-only, teacher-training, and entirely separate. Its graduates would go on to staff St. Louis's Black classrooms for generations.
The white normal school, by then named Harris Teachers College after former St. Louis superintendent and U.S. Commissioner of Education William Torrey Harris, was authorized in 1920 to grant a four-year Bachelor of Arts in Education degree. The upgrade marked its shift from a two-year training school to a full undergraduate college. Harris's name still anchors the school's title today.
Sumner Normal School was authorized in 1924 to issue a four-year Bachelor of Arts in Education degree, matching what the white college had gained four years earlier. The Black institution kept pace academically even as the city kept it separate. It remained the primary pipeline for Black teachers in St. Louis.
In 1929 Sumner Normal School was renamed Stowe Teachers College in honor of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin had fueled the anti-slavery cause. From 1930 to 1940 it operated from the former Simmons Colored School campus in The Ville. The building would later land on the National Register of Historic Places.
In an unusual arrangement for a segregated era, Dr. John L. Purdom, a white administrator, served as president of both Harris Teachers College and Stowe Teachers College during the 1930s. The two schools remained racially separate in every other respect. HSSU's own official history notes the irony of this shared presidency predating the formal merger by two decades.
Both colleges began admitting men in 1940, ending their women-only eras. That same year Ruth Harris became the first Black woman president of Stowe Teachers College, a milestone the current president, Dr. LaTonia Collins Smith, still names as the legacy she follows. The schools remained racially segregated for another fourteen years.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education mandated integration of public schools, and Harris and Stowe Colleges were merged into a single institution. It initially kept only the 'Harris Teachers College' name until Stowe alumni and other St. Louisans demanded the Black school's name survive — so 'Stowe' was added and it became Harris-Stowe College. The merger made the school what it had never been before: integrated and public.
In 1963 the college moved into the historic Vashon High School building at 3026 Laclede Avenue, opened in 1937 and one of the few surviving structures of Mill Creek Valley, the once-thriving Black neighborhood razed between 1955 and 1965. The building — now the Dr. Henry Givens Jr. Administration Building — sits on what the university's master plan calls 'literally hallowed ground': part of the original French settlement, a pre-WWII hub of the African-American community, and the center of the largest urban renewal project of the 1950s.
The Missouri General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 703 in 1979, adding the college to the state system of public higher education as Harris-Stowe State College. Its mission was still elementary teacher education, and when Dr. Henry Givens Jr. became president that year the school offered exactly one degree and occupied one building. The state-college era launched the growth that defined the next three decades.
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Statewide Celebration Commission of Missouri was established in 1985, and from its inception every state kick-off program has been held at Harris-Stowe State University. Dr. Givens chaired the commission from its founding. The celebration grew into one of the largest Dr. King commemorations in the nation — the 39th annual was held at HSSU in January 2025 — making the campus the statewide home of King's legacy in Missouri.
In 1993 the Missouri General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 153, which changed Harris-Stowe's mission from teacher and urban-school education to addressing unmet urban needs more broadly. The school added the B.S. in Urban Education for non-teaching personnel and a Business Administration degree. It was the legal pivot from teachers' college to a full university in waiting.
The historic Stowe Teachers College building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 4, 2004, following the National Park Service's study of The Ville neighborhood's historic resources. The listing preserved the physical memory of the Black teachers' college in brick and mortar. Meanwhile the coed HSSU Drumline began in the 2004–05 school year with 20 members drawn from HSSU, Vashon, and Normandy high schools.
Senate Bill 98 elevated the college to Harris–Stowe State University in 2005. The administration building was renamed for Dr. Henry Givens Jr. that same year in honor of his service. Under Givens the university had tripled enrollment and grown from one building and one degree to eight facilities and fourteen degree programs. By then it was Missouri's only public HBCU and a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
In 2009 the HSSU Drumline expanded into a complete marching band, the HSSU Marching Hornets, announced in the alumni newsletter's Homecoming issue that fall. The Honeycomb dance line (founded fall 2006 with nine dancers) and the Golden Sting flag corps complete the unit. The same year the $17.5 million William L. Clay Sr. Early Childhood Development/Parenting Education Center opened as the centerpiece of Homecoming's 'New Additions Enhancing Historic Traditions' theme.
Dr. Henry Givens Jr. retired in 2011 after 32 years as president — the transformational era that built the modern campus. Dr. Albert L. Walker, formerly president of Bluefield State College, succeeded him in October 2011; his May 2012 installation doubled as the first commencement held on campus in nearly two decades, after years at Powell Symphony Hall. Walker led the school through a rigorous HLC accreditation and died in 2019.
Days after the shooting death of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, HSSU held a public forum titled 'Community in Crisis' on August 20, 2014, where students voiced a raw range of emotions about the unrest. When Ferguson schools reopened, male HSSU students, faculty, and staff went to Griffith Elementary to welcome and encourage the children — a relationship that grew into campus tours and ongoing mentoring. The university joined WashU, SLU, and UMSL in a Regional Collecting Initiative archiving Ferguson's history. A future member of Congress, Cori Bush, had studied at HSSU in the 1990s.
Dr. Dwaun J. Warmack's presidency (from 2014) brought the fastest growth in the school's history: applications soared from 667 in 2013 to more than 6,000 in 2018, enrollment jumped 34%, and degree offerings grew from 14 to more than 50 majors, minors, and certificates. In 2015 Governor Jay Nixon signed a bill at HSSU authorizing the university to offer graduate degrees for the first time, paired with $2.2 million in bond-funded repairs to the Givens building, AT&T Library, Emerson Center, and Vashon Center. The Center for Non-Violence and Abuse Prevention also opened in 2015.
The Hornets men's basketball team won the 2017 American Midwest Conference tournament, beating William Woods 80–56 for the program's 8th conference championship and first since 1983. As the #6 seed, they won three straight road games to punch HSSU's first-ever ticket to the NAIA National Tournament in men's basketball. First-year head coach Dunlap's squad finished 19–12. The men repeated as AMC tournament champions in 2018.
Dr. Dwaun Warmack left in August 2019 to become president of Claflin University in South Carolina, and longtime provost Dr. Dwyane Smith stepped in as interim president. The transition closed a five-year run that had made HSSU the fastest-growing public university in Missouri. Warmack had forged the NGA geospatial partnership and campus partnerships in nursing, pharmacy, engineering, and occupational therapy.
Dr. Corey S. Bradford Sr., a St. Louis native and former Prairie View A&M senior vice president, became the 20th president on May 1, 2020. He landed donations from Diageo North America and Verizon and deepened the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency partnership, but left after one year for a research university. Provost Dr. LaTonia Collins Smith became interim president on June 1, 2021, and kicked off the $3 million renovation of the Vashon Community Center into the Don and Heide Wolff Jazz Institute and National Black Radio Hall of Fame.
Dr. LaTonia Collins Smith was named the 21st president on March 1, 2022 — the first woman and first African American woman to lead the university in its 160-plus years, following the legacy of Ruth Harris at Stowe in 1940. A St. Louis native raised in The Ville and an HSSU employee since 2010, she had co-led the school's largest-ever $5 million NSF grant. That same year Congresswoman Cori Bush secured $1 million in federal funding for HSSU, and the Propel Center awarded a $1 million industry-impact grant.
David Morris, 74, walked across the stage at the Fall 2023 Commencement as the oldest graduate in HSSU history — the fulfillment of a 50-year dream that began in 1973 before he was drafted into the military. He had lost his siblings, wife, and daughter, and survived a stroke in 2007, before finishing his degree with the help of academic advisor Karen Czmarko. His advice: 'Don't give up. If it's worth it, you got to fight for it.' He planned to go to law school next, and a local attorney volunteered to help him get there.
Harris-Stowe broke ground on a $62 million STEM Research and Education Center in early 2026, the largest capital investment in school history, and launched its inaugural MBA program in January 2026. The moves cap a decade of reinvention from a teachers' college into a STEM-and-business university on the strength of the NSF grant and the NGA/Taylor Geospatial Institute partnerships. Homecoming 2026 ran October 18–25 on campus in midtown St. Louis.
The defining modern matchup: HSSU beat William Woods 80–56 for the 2017 AMC tournament championship — the program's first conference title since 1983 and its first-ever NAIA national tournament berth. The two split regular-season series routinely, and the Hornets' 61–56 road win at Fulton in January 2023 kept the edge sharp. No formal rivalry name found; the championship game is the shared memory.
A grinding AMC series: Central Baptist leads the all-time series 13–8 and has won six of the last seven, including a 95–49 homecoming rout in 2024 — CBC's largest margin ever over HSSU. The Hornets have answered with statement wins, making this the conference's most lopsided-but-lively feud. No formal rivalry name found.
Missouri's two public HBCUs meet in exhibition basketball — HSSU hosted Lincoln in a November exhibition at the Emerson Center. Dr. Givens also served as interim president at Lincoln in 1987, linking the schools' leadership histories. A natural in-state HBCU rivalry that deserves a formal name; none found.
🥁 HSSU Marching Hornets · since 2009
The Marching Hornets are a young band with an old drumline soul: they grew out of a 20-kid community drumline into a full HBCU-style marching unit in 2009, complete with the Honeycombs and Golden Sting flags. They anchor Homecoming parades down Market Street to Kiener Plaza, basketball pep rallies in the Emerson gym, and the Dr. King statewide celebration — the sound of the school's modern era.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
HSSU reports nearly a dozen Greek organizations, mostly city-wide chapters shared with other St. Louis-area colleges rather than chapters seated at HSSU itself. Greeks are a visible part of Homecoming — the 2016 celebration featured a Divine Nine step show in the Givens Building auditorium — and a 2025 video documents a full Greek graduation celebration at HSSU. Charter years embedded in hssu.edu contact emails reflect the national orgs' founding years, not chapter charters, so charter dates are left unverified except for DST's Alpha Omega city-wide chapter.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
Opened as the campus library and tech hub with computer labs, an archives room, and video-teleconference facilities. It gave the growing college its first real library building and anchored the academic side of the 18-acre Givens campus.
The college acquired the Vashon Community Center adjacent to campus, expanding its footprint into the historic Vashon corridor. Two decades later it would become the site of the university's biggest cultural investment — the jazz institute and National Black Radio Hall of Fame.
Added on-campus housing and a dining hall, a milestone for a school that had been a commuter teachers' college. By spring 2018 the residence halls were at 100% capacity with waitlists, and the master plan warned the university would need to double its beds.
The historic Stowe building in The Ville was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 4, 2004, after the Park Service's Ville historic-resources study. The listing preserved the Black teachers' college's physical legacy even as the merged university lived in the old Vashon building.
A combined residence hall and student center that gave the campus its first real student-life building. Named for a longtime campus figure, it anchors the residential quad the 2018 master plan calls the center of student life.
The $17.5 million early-childhood center opened as the flagship of the Givens presidency's building boom, serving children ages 6 weeks to 5 years and giving HSSU early-childhood majors real classrooms to train in. An $11 million investment figure also appears in later university materials; the 2009 alumni newsletter's $17.5M figure is used here.
The multipurpose Emerson Center of Performing Arts — gym, small theater, workout and art rooms — was built by a KWAME/Sverdrup joint venture and became the home of Hornet basketball, Homecoming pep rallies, concerts, and commencement. It is the building most students mean when they say 'the gym.'
When Governor Nixon signed the graduate-degree bill at HSSU, he also announced $2.2 million in bond-funded repairs to the Givens Administration Building, the AT&T Library, the Emerson Center, and the historic Vashon Center — the first systematic renovation of the aging campus core.
HSSU kicked off a $3 million renovation (with National Park Service rehabilitation funds) to turn the former Vashon Community Center into the home of the Don and Heide Wolff Jazz Institute — one of the finest privately owned jazz collections in America — and the National Black Radio Hall of Fame. It is the university's biggest cultural bet: a jazz archive and Black radio museum in the heart of Mill Creek Valley's memory.
Under President Collins Smith the university pushed a $3 million innovation center (led by Stacy Gee Hollins, named one of St. Louis's most influential business women) to connect students to entrepreneurship, building on the Propel Center's $1 million industry-impact grant and the new Demo Day for student founders.
HSSU broke ground on a $62 million STEM Research and Education Center — the largest capital project in school history — alongside the launch of its inaugural MBA program. Together they mark the school's final transformation from a teachers' college into a STEM-and-business university serving the region's geospatial and tech corridor.
A small, teaching-focused faculty — roughly 12:1 student-to-faculty — with grant-active researchers in STEM (NSF, NGA partnerships). Notable faculty include Dr. Reynaldo Anderson, chair of the humanities department, and Dr. Freddie Wills, whose students present geospatial research with Gateway Global partners. Former provost Dr. Dwyane Smith served as interim president 2019–2020.
21st president, first woman to lead HSSU; in office since March 1, 2022.
Listed as provost in the Fall 2025 commencement program.
Selected as head coach of the Hornets men's basketball program.
Led development of the $3 million Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship; named one of St. Louis's Most Influential Business Women (2022).
A compact, overwhelmingly Black, majority-women campus (about 83% Black, ~70% women, roughly three-quarters Pell-eligible) tucked into midtown St. Louis next to Saint Louis University. The Office of Student Engagement sponsors 30+ activities and about a dozen academic clubs: the nationally recognized Concert Chorale (top honors at an international festival), the Victory gospel choir, the Harris-Stowe Players theatre troupe, the Stingers drumline, the Golden Hornets hip-hop crew, and the Black Rep — St. Louis's renowned Black theatre company — in residence with full seasons on campus. Commencement returned to campus in 2012 after nearly 20 years at Powell Symphony Hall, with graduates processing from the Givens building through the amphitheatre. It feels like a family school in a city that keeps trying to grow it: residence halls ran at 100% capacity in 2018 with waitlists.