Langston, Oklahoma · Founded 1897 · Lions
“Oklahoma's only HBCU — the westernmost four-year public HBCU in America, founded by Black settlers who refused to wait for anyone's permission to build a college.”
The Marching Pride's full field show at the 2026 HBCU Labor Day Classic battle of the bands in Jackson, Mississippi — the program's current national-stage era.
The band's official video from the 2023 National Battle of the Bands in Houston — the national showcase appearance under Mark Gordon, Jonathon Allen, and Brandon Stevenson.
The band's official 4K halftime show from the 2024 season opener — the high-knee-lift HBCU marching style in full form.
The viral 2023 homecoming parade video — drumline, cheerleaders, dancers, and the men's synchronized dance that made Langston's band famous beyond Oklahoma.
The band's official homecoming field show, dedicated to Hardin 'Butch' Benjamin, a forever member of the Marching Pride family.
The official 2024 homecoming show — classics plus a special ballad performance, from the band's own channel.
The Marching Pride band and alumni doing the Funk Train after the 2010 homecoming halftime show — the alumni-homecoming tradition on camera.
Rare footage of the band's 1992 homecoming halftime show — the pre-Gordon era sound.
The 2005 homecoming halftime show — early-2000s Marching Pride.
2014 homecoming footage including the Tulsa high school visit and Alpha Phi Alpha brothers in the crowd.
An alumnus's own footage of the alumni band taking the spotlight one more time at homecoming.
The 2023 Honda Battle of the Bands lineup footage featuring Langston's Marching Pride alongside Alabama State, Morgan State, Savannah State, Texas Southern, and Virginia State.
First American woman to earn an International Pilot's license; enrolled at Langston in 1910 and completed one term before pursuing aviation.
Class of 1945 civil rights icon whose Supreme Court victory desegregated the University of Oklahoma law school; the state built Langston's 1948 law school in a failed attempt to keep her out.
Class of 1944; leader of the 1958 Oklahoma City Katz Drug Store sit-in, one of the most important early sit-ins of the civil rights movement.
Basketball legend and longtime Harlem Globetrotter star, known as one of the greatest dribblers who ever lived.
Class of 1975; Dallas Cowboys linebacker and Super Bowl XII champion, one of the NFL's great characters of the 1970s.
Class of 2003; singer and EGOT-winning actress (did not graduate).
Frontman of the Gap Band and R&B star in his own right; once served as Langston's drum major (attended).
Pioneering jazz vocal group inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.
Celebrated poet and debate coach on the Langston faculty 1947–1964; portrayed by Denzel Washington in The Great Debaters.
Actor (Coffy, RoboCop, Nashville) with a long film and television career.
Class of 1954; founding publisher of The Black Scholar (1969) and pioneering Black studies scholar.
Former president of Fisk University, Talladega College, and Benedict College; served as Langston's interim president in 2011–12.
Former president of Texas Southern University.
Class of 1940; first Black woman CPA to earn a Ph.D. in accounting; department head at Utah State University's School of Accounting.
Class of 1997; NFL wide receiver.
NFL running back.
Former fullback for the Cleveland Browns.
Class of 2013; Langston football quarterback.
21st Adjutant General of Oklahoma.
Former member of the Oklahoma Senate.
Class of 1962; first Black graduate of West Texas State University.
Nine-time All-American and Langston's first NAIA indoor long jump national champion (2009, school record 24-04.0); holds the school outdoor 200m record (20.88) and is part of the school-record 4x100 and both 4x400 relays; later an LU track assistant coach.
Edwin P. McCabe and Charles Robbins founded Langston City in 1890 as one of Oklahoma's all-Black towns, a place where African Americans migrating from the South could own land and run their own affairs. By 1892 the town of 600 had 25 retail businesses and a common school enrolling 135 students, and its newspaper, the Langston City Herald, was recruiting more Black migrants to come. The town's founders made a college part of the plan from the start — but Black citizens were barred from attending any higher-education institution in the Oklahoma Territory. The push for a Black college began as a community demand, not a legislative gift.
On March 12, 1897, Governor William C. Renfrow signed House Bill 151, establishing the 'Colored Agricultural and Normal University' at or near Langston. The bill had been introduced February 4 by J. W. Johnson, president of the Territorial Council, and taken in charge by Henry S. Johnston. The school was Oklahoma's 1890 land-grant institution — the second Morrill Act required land-grant states to either admit Black students or build a separate school for them, and Oklahoma chose the separate school. Its legal purpose was to instruct 'both male and female Colored persons in the art of teaching' plus agricultural, mechanical, and industrial arts. From day one it was popularly called Langston University, though the official name wouldn't change until 1941.
One condition of the law was that the land for the college had to be purchased by Black citizens themselves — so they held picnics, auctions, and bake sales and bought it within a year. On September 3, 1898, the school opened in a Presbyterian church in Langston with an initial budget of $5,000, 41 students, and a faculty of four. Dr. Inman E. Page, the son of a formerly enslaved man who had purchased freedom for himself and his family, became the first president and set the school's course for the next seventeen years.
Under Inman E. Page (1898–1915), known as 'the grand old man of education,' enrollment grew from 41 to 650 and the faculty from 4 to 35. Classroom buildings and dormitories went up, the curriculum was strengthened, and the campus expanded to 160 acres. Page's educational philosophy — practical training fused with liberal learning for a segregated society that needed Black professionals, technicians, and craftsmen — settled into the institution's DNA and still shapes its programming. His gravesite and monument sit on the campus today, southeast of Page Hall. By 1913 the faculty numbered 26, with six buildings including two women's dormitories, a men's dormitory, a mechanical building, and the president's residence.
The years after Page were rough. Isaac B. McCutcheon served 1915–1916, followed by John M. Marquess (1916–1923) and a five-month interim under R. E. Bullitt — tenures marked by political controversy, with McCutcheon himself resigning after being fired as a history professor. World War I and shifting territorial politics slowed the university's growth just as Page had gotten it moving. Stability returned with Isaac W. Young, a physician who entered through his friendship with Governor-elect Jack Walton, serving 1923–1927 and again 1931–1935, with Z. T. Hubert (1927–1931), J. W. Sanford (1935–1939), and A. L. Turner (1939) filling the chairs between and around him.
Langston joined the Southwestern Athletic Conference in 1931 and, under legendary coach Caesar Felton 'Zip' Gayles, became one of the defining programs of Black-college football. The 1933 Lions went 9–1, finished SWAC co-champions, and played Prairie View in the Prairie View Bowl; the 1938 and 1944 teams were also SWAC co-champions. Langston claimed HBCU national championships in football in 1939 and 1941. Anderson Field in Langston hosted the home games, and Page Stadium in Oklahoma City drew thousands — 7,500 watched the 1938 Prairie View tie. Basketball followed with HBCU national championships in 1944 and 1946.
G. Lamar Harrison took the presidency in 1939 and held it through 1960, the longest tenure in school history. He put the campus on a construction surge — a modern stadium, a new library, the I. W. Young Auditorium, and Jones Hall — with steam heat, paved streets, and a physical plant rising to $4 million. The university started radio, shoe, and barber shops, printed its own catalog in its own print shop, and had the Langston University Alumni Association pushing to remove the presidency from political influence, which gave Harrison rare stability. The curriculum was revised into five divisions with two-year associate programs added, and in 1948 Langston joined the Association of American Colleges and earned North Central accreditation.
At President Harrison's request, the legislature passed a bill officially changing the name from the Colored Agricultural and Normal University to Langston University in 1941. The change honored John Mercer Langston, who had died in 1897 — the same year the school was founded — and for whom the town was already named. Everyone had been calling it Langston University since 1897; it just took 44 years for the paperwork to catch up.
Poet Melvin B. Tolson, the celebrated debate coach and writer, taught at Langston from 1947 until 1964, anchoring the English department and giving the university a literary legend on its faculty. Denzel Washington portrayed Tolson decades later in the 2007 film The Great Debaters, which centered on his Wiley College debate teams. Tolson's presence cemented Langston's reputation as a place where Black intellectual life thrived far from the big coastal cities. His tenure overlapped with some of the university's most storied athletic and cultural years.
When Langston graduate Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (class of 1945) was denied admission to the University of Oklahoma's law school because she was Black, she took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court and won. Oklahoma's response was to establish a separate law school at Langston in 1948. It wasn't equivalent to OU's, so she sued again and finally won admission to the University of Oklahoma law school — a victory that helped crack the legal foundations of segregation in higher education. Her case is one of the proudest chapters in Langston's history: a Black woman, denied a classroom, forcing the state to build a school and then forcing it open anyway.
Since May 1954, Langston University — along with all other state-supported colleges in Oklahoma — has been open to qualified students of all races, following the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. The school's mission sharpened rather than blurred: under later presidents it defined itself as the place filling cultural and educational gaps for underserved students. Today the student body is 76% Black with growing Latino, Native American, international, and white enrollment.
Langston joined the Oklahoma Collegiate Conference in 1958, becoming one of the first historically Black universities to compete in a previously segregated conference. The Lions won conference championships in 1959 and 1960. The 1961 team, under coach Tim Crisp, went 8–2 and shared the OCC title; Langston led the entire NAIA in total defense (81.2 yards per game) and passing defense (23.6 yards per game), and quarterback Donald Lee Smith led the NAIA in total offense at 235.3 yards per game. Most home games were played in nearby Guthrie, with homecoming at Anderson Field in Langston.
William Henri Hale was installed in 1960 as the first Langston alumnus to lead the university, and served until 1969. His irony-laced challenge was integration itself: with Black students now welcome at formerly all-white schools, he had to prove Langston still mattered. He answered with a 'Ten-Year Plan' — two new residence halls, a student center, three faculty apartment buildings, three classroom buildings, a library annex, a music building, and a science and technology building, all for over $4 million. Enrollment topped 1,100, including nine white students and 25 foreign students, with 20 white instructors on a 75-member faculty. In growth and retention, Langston ranked near the top of Oklahoma colleges.
After a period of instability, Ernest L. Holloway — an alumnus who had risen from registrar to vice president for administration — served as the fifth interim president in 1977–78. Samuel J. Tucker was named the 13th president in March 1978, promising a 'new renaissance of excellence.' In December 1978 the Board of Regents dismissed him for alleged fiscal mismanagement and named Holloway interim president for the second time. The whirlwind left the university craving exactly what Holloway would deliver: steadiness.
On October 10, 1979, the Board of Regents appointed Ernest L. Holloway the 14th president of Langston University, beginning what would be a generation of stability. One of his first challenges was the new urban mission assigned to Langston: urban campuses in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, which opened in 1979 and still serve working adult students today. In 1979 his administration also secured a four-lane highway between Langston and Guthrie — the stretch of Highway 33 was later named the Dr. Ernest L. Holloway Highway in his honor. The 1990s brought a wave of improvements: the presidents' residence became the Helen Aline Johnson Hospitality Management Center, the G. Lamar Harrison Library was renovated with a bell tower that became the campus's architectural centerpiece, the William H. Hale Student Union's dining facilities were expanded, and the Randy Ponder Military Center opened as the first agreement of its kind between a college and the National Guard. Cable TV and instructional television through HETA and the Black College Telecommunications Network reached the campus.
Langston University celebrated its centennial in March 1997, marking a century since House Bill 151 and the bake-sale land purchase. A centennial history, 'Celebrating a Century of Excellence,' documented the rise from a church classroom to a statewide university system. The centennial book's proverb captured the school's self-image: 'Africa is a rubber ball; the harder you dash it to the ground, the higher it will rise.' The university stood 'high on a throne with royal mien' — the phrase its people have always used.
Dr. JoAnn W. Haysbert, provost of Hampton University, was appointed Langston's 15th president in 2005, becoming the first woman to lead the university and one of only two female presidents of state colleges in Oklahoma. She called Langston 'Oklahoma's Hidden Treasure' and spent six years telling its story around the state and nation. In 2005 the university also earned accreditation for its Doctor of Physical Therapy program — its only doctoral program and one of the few in Oklahoma. She stepped down at the end of 2011 to return to Hampton as executive vice president.
In February 2006 the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against Langston University on behalf of Barbara Craig, a white professor who had taught there seven years, alleging she received lower wages and fewer opportunities than similarly qualified Black colleagues. A white payroll clerk, Debra Jenkins, brought a parallel suit over a promotion. In both cases the employees received financial restitution, and the hiring and promotion criteria were modified. It was a bruising, public episode for a school whose entire mission was built on fighting the other direction of discrimination.
After an interim period under alumnus Dr. Henry Ponder, Dr. Kent J. Smith Jr. — then vice president for student affairs at Ohio University — took office as the 16th president on June 4, 2012. He would lead the university through a decade of modernization and crisis management. In August 2021 he announced that COVID-19 relief money would forgive $4.65 million in student debt for everyone enrolled between spring 2020 and summer 2021. He retired at the end of the spring 2023 semester.
February 2023 brought Langston's biggest basketball moment in generations: the Lions swept the Sooner Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament championships (29–2), becoming the first HBCU to do both in the SAC in the same season. The 2023–24 team went further, finishing as NAIA national championship runner-up. On March 30, 2023, the Tulsa campus opened a new 17,000-square-foot allied health facility, home of the School of Nursing and Health Professions — dedicated as the Jack Henderson Allied Health Facility on August 2, 2024. The men's program's architect, Chris Wright, left for Alabama State in 2026, and Sam Kohnke was named the 18th head coach that May; the Lady Lions won their first SAC regular-season and tournament titles in 2024–25 under Chris Vincent.
The Oklahoma A&M Board of Regents unanimously appointed Dr. Ruth Ray Jackson as interim president beginning July 6, 2023, following an eight-month national search, and she was appointed the 17th president in April 2024, with her investiture on March 14, 2025. Jackson had been at Langston since 2014 — dean of the School of Education and Behavioral Sciences, then associate vice president for student success, then vice president for academic affairs — and before that spent 11 years at LSU Shreveport and years as a high school English teacher, assistant principal, and principal. 'I love this university and believe in its faculty, staff, students, and alumni,' she said. 'Our mission must be focused on empowering students, celebrating student success, and contributing to the betterment of Oklahoma and beyond.'
In March 2025, Langston University was named a Carnegie Research College and University — a milestone for a school that started with a $5,000 budget. The Marching Pride, under Dr. Mark Gordon since 2018, has exploded from 45 members to nearly 300, with dozens of international students joining just to march. The band has performed at NFL games, Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets games, the National Battle of the Bands in Houston (2023), the Honda Battle of the Bands in Montgomery (2023), Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and the 2026 HBCU Labor Day Classic in Jackson, Mississippi — and its 2023 homecoming parade performance went viral. The school remains Oklahoma's only HBCU, a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and the westernmost four-year public HBCU in the nation.
When Langston played in the SWAC (1931–1957), Prairie View A&M was the Texas foil. The 1933 Lions went 9–1 and met Prairie View in the Prairie View Bowl on New Year's Day, falling 20–7 before 4,000 in Houston. They beat Prairie View 14–6 at Page Stadium in Oklahoma City in 1944 and 27–6 in Prairie View in 1949. The two bands still cross paths on the national battle-of-the-bands circuit.
Another SWAC-era blood feud. Langston's 1938 team beat Wiley 5–0 in Marshall and tied Prairie View before 7,500 at home; the 1949 Lions blanked Wiley 19–0 on the road. Both schools were pillars of Black-college football before the color line fell in college athletics.
In the modern SAC era, Wayland Baptist has been the measuring stick. Langston's 2023 men's basketball team beat Wayland Baptist 80–68 for the program's first SAC tournament title, and the 2019 football team clinched its third straight conference championship by beating Wayland Baptist 35–20 behind Tim Whitfield's four touchdowns. Wayland took the league's other NAIA bid both years.
The Lady Lions' 2025 breakthrough ran straight through Mid-America Christian: Langston beat the Evangels 64–54 at C. Felton Gayles Fieldhouse for the program's first SAC women's tournament championship, after both schools marched to the NAIA national tournament.
🥁 Langston University Marching Pride
The Marching Pride is Langston's loudest ambassador — Charlie Wilson of the Gap Band once served as drum major, and the Golden Felines dancers march alongside the band. The Pride has performed for the Kansas City Chiefs, Denver Nuggets, and Oklahoma City Thunder; at the Georgia Dome, AT&T Stadium, and the Edward Jones Dome; in four Honda Battle of the Bands; at New Orleans Mardi Gras; and on the national stage at the National Battle of the Bands in Houston. Their 2023 homecoming parade performance went viral on YouTube. A band photo from 1921 survives in the centennial history, showing the tradition reaches back over a century.
Arrived as director in 1993 and grew the band from 60 members to 116, rebuilding the program's recruiting culture around hard work and positive attitude. The centennial history credits him with launching the Marching Pride's modern era.
Director of the Marching Pride in the early 2000s; quoted in 2004 campus press on the band's role promoting jazz and professionalism.
Transformed the program: from 45 members on arrival to nearly 300 today, including dozens of international students who come to Langston just to march. The band holds the second-highest retention rate of any student group on campus. Previously built the band at M.B. Smiley High School in Houston to nearly 400 and spent a decade as assistant director at his alma mater Prairie View A&M. Received an honorary doctorate in philosophy in 2023. Assistant directors: Dr. Jonathon Allen and Professor Brandon Stevenson.
Alpha Phi Alpha brothers were documented marching in Langston's 2014 homecoming ('shout out to the Frat! AEA Bruh's'), and Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma — the band fraternity and sorority — performed at Meet The Greeks and are active in the Marching Pride community. A full active D9 chapter roster could not be verified from opened sources; Zeta Phi Beta's historic Lambda Alpha chapter is listed inactive on the national roll.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
Under G. Lamar Harrison, the campus got a modern stadium, a new library, the I. W. Young Auditorium, and Jones Hall, with steam heat and paved streets pushing the physical plant's value to $4 million.
Under William Henri Hale: two residence halls, the student center, three faculty apartment buildings, three classroom buildings, a library annex, a music building, and a science and technology building — the biggest single building wave in school history to that point.
The Holloway administration secured a four-lane highway between Langston and Guthrie; the Highway 33 portion was named for President Holloway in recognition of his effort to get it built.
The library was renovated and given a bell tower that became the architectural focus of the campus — the defining 1990s-era landmark.
The residence of former presidents (the 'White House') was renovated and dedicated as a hospitality management center with guest housing and a restaurant.
The student union's dining facilities were expanded as part of the 1990s improvements under Holloway.
Established as the first agreement of its kind between a college and the National Guard, letting students join the Guard on campus.
The university's only doctoral program — one of the few DPT programs in Oklahoma — earned accreditation, with dedicated facilities in the School of Physical Therapy building.
A new 17,000-square-foot allied health facility opened March 30, 2023, on the Tulsa campus, home of the School of Nursing and Health Professions; dedicated as the Jack Henderson Allied Health Facility on August 2, 2024.
Langston University–Tulsa and LU–Oklahoma City celebrated 45 years of serving working adult students in Oklahoma's two big cities (June 2024 luncheons), with the Tulsa campus operating on the OSU–Tulsa facility.
Notable coaches in the school's football history include Caesar Felton 'Zip' Gayles (146 wins, the winningest coach, SWAC-era legend), Greg E. Johnson (35–31, two OIC titles, two NAIA playoff trips, famous 15–14 postseason win over Grambling and Eddie Robinson), and Quinton Morgan, who won three straight conference titles and set career rushing records with Tim Whitfield in 2019. KALU 89.3 FM is the university's public radio station.
Athletic director during the 2022 basketball turnaround; hired Chris Wright and presided over the 2023 SAC sweep era.
17th president; previously VP for academic affairs and dean of the School of Education and Behavioral Sciences.
Named the 18th head coach in May 2026 after Chris Wright's departure for Alabama State; arrived from Oklahoma City University where he won the SAC tournament in 2025–26.
First-year coach who led the Lady Lions to their first SAC regular-season and tournament titles in 2024–25 (29–2); previously assistant under Wright during the 2023–24 NAIA runner-up run.
Campus life runs through the band and homecoming. The Marching Pride is the university's most visible ambassador — most students will tell you people come to see halftime first and the football team second. With campuses in Langston (rural), Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, students span traditional freshmen to working adults. The Edwin P. McCabe Honors Program serves the highest-achieving undergraduates. KALU 89.3 FM carries the university's voice across central Oklahoma. News9's coverage captured it well: 'At an HBCU school, they come to support the football team, but they come to see half time.'