Greensboro, North Carolina · Founded 1891 · Aggie the Bulldog
“America's largest HBCU — the Aggies of East Greensboro, where the sit-in movement was born and GHOE draws 130,000+ every October.”
The legendary 1993 homecoming show broadcast on BET — a helicopter drops the drum major at the 50-yard line in the Howard rivalry game.
The band as the lead band of the 2012 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, seen by the whole nation.
The Marching Machine competing at the 2017 Honda Battle of the Bands in Atlanta.
The Frazier Hall Sessions feature from the year the BGMM was named HBCU Band of the Year.
The Ayantee 'Watch the horns blow' feature on the band's horn and wind sections.
During halftime in Chapel Hill, the Blue and Gold Marching Machine and the Marching Tar Heels performed a Katy Perry tribute together — rivals on the scoreboard, collaborators at halftime.
Lions GM and A&T alumnus Brad Holmes tells the band they're performing at the 2022 NFL season opener at Ford Field.
Fan-shot halftime at Truist Stadium — band takes the field around the 12:20 mark; full HBCU game-day energy.
HBCU Buzz's live look at the BGMM at the Greatest Homecoming on Earth.
Video coverage of the June 2024 announcement that James R. Martin II would succeed Harold Martin as chancellor.
BGMM performance clip from the Ayantee marching-band showcase articles; exact title not extractable from the embed, verified present in an N.C. A&T band feature.
BGMM performance clip from the Ayantee 'horns blow' showcase article; exact title not extractable from the embed, verified present in an N.C. A&T band feature.
Member of the A&T Four; sat in at Woolworth's on February 1, 1960, igniting the sit-in movement.
Member of the A&T Four; civil rights activist and chemist.
Member of the A&T Four; went on to become a U.S. Air Force major general.
Member of the A&T Four; degree awarded posthumously.
Civil rights leader, founder of Rainbow PUSH, two-time presidential candidate.
NASA astronaut and physicist; died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.
U.S. Congresswoman representing North Carolina's 12th district; longtime educator and legislator.
Former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court — the first Black chief justice in state history.
Retired U.S. Congressman who represented New York for 30 years.
16th Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Retired U.S. Army brigadier general and author.
NBA player, coach, and general manager with the Warriors; Basketball Hall of Famer.
Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive end, Houston Oilers.
NFL running back ('the Human Joystick'); three touchdowns in the 2015 inaugural Celebration Bowl win.
Detroit Lions executive vice president and general manager; four-year football letterman, 2001 team captain on the 1999 MEAC/HBCU championship team.
Founder of Dudley Products, the Black hair-care empire.
Actor and TV host (BET's 106 & Park); Oscar-winning producer per the university catalog.
Olympic gold medalist, 4x400m mixed relay, Tokyo 2020.
On March 9, 1891, the North Carolina General Assembly ratified an act establishing the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race — the school that would become N.C. A&T. It was created in the same legislation as the white agricultural and mechanical college that became N.C. State, because segregation law forbade Black and white students from attending college together. The act declared the college's leading objective would be 'practical agriculture and the mechanic arts.' A&T is recognized as the first land-grant college for people of color in North Carolina.
John Oliver Crosby was elected the school's first president on May 25, 1892. He led the young college during its earliest years, when it had no campus of its own and operated out of Shaw University in Raleigh. Crosby's four-year tenure covered the hard startup period — building a faculty, a course of study, and a student body from scratch under Jim Crow.
Donations from Dr. DeWitt, C. Benbow, and Charles H. Moore — $11,000 and 14 acres of land — made it possible for the college to leave Raleigh and establish its own campus in Greensboro in 1893. That land in East Greensboro is the heart of the campus still. Women enrolled from 1893 to 1901, a window that wouldn't reopen until 1928.
James B. Dudley took over the presidency in 1896 and stayed until 1925, giving the school nearly three decades of steady leadership. His long tenure carried A&T from a fledgling mechanical college into an established institution with real roots in Greensboro. The Dudley name would stay attached to the school — Dudley Street borders the campus, and alumnus Joe L. Dudley Sr. later built a hair-care empire carrying the name worldwide.
Music professor Charles Edwin Stewart founded a college band and orchestra, laying the groundwork for what would become the Blue and Gold Marching Machine. Stewart also composed the music for the university's theme song, 'Dear A&T.' Eight years later the school became the first Black college in North Carolina with a band — a roughly 50-piece ensemble that quickly became the backbone of the music department.
An act of the General Assembly renamed the school The Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in 1915. The name stuck in spirit through every later change — 'A&T' is one of the most recognizable names in Black college life. By the 1930s the band had grown enough to be offered as an extracurricular activity, and A&T was still the only Black college in the state with one.
Ferdinand D. Bluford became president in 1925 and led the college until 1955 — three full decades spanning the Depression, World War II, and the start of the modern civil rights movement. Under Bluford the school hardened into a durable institution with growing enrollment and campus. He was followed in 1955/1956 by Warmoth T. Gibbs.
Band director Walter F. Carlson introduced the idea of adding an auxiliary to the marching band in 1946, modeling the concept on the bands at the University of Michigan and Ohio State. Carlson even drew inspiration from Michigan's band uniforms to design A&T's flashy blue-and-gold look. That decision became a lineage: majorettes in the mid-1960s, flag twirlers, the group called 'The Untouchables' in the late 1980s, and the Golden Delight dancers renamed in 1991 — today one of the top HBCU dance teams in the country.
In 1957 the school's name was changed to the Negro Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, a name it would carry for a decade. Warmoth T. Gibbs led the college from 1955/56 to 1960, steering it into the decade that would make it famous far beyond Greensboro. His successor, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, took over in 1960 — the year four freshmen walked downtown to Woolworth's.
On February 1, 1960, four A&T freshmen — Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond — walked downtown to the F.W. Woolworth store at 132 South Elm Street and sat at the whites-only lunch counter. They bought toothpaste at the integrated counter first, then asked for coffee and donuts; a waitress told them, 'We don't serve Negroes here.' They stayed until the store closed, recruited classmates that night, and came back the next morning with more students. The sit-in ignited a student-led movement across the South, the Woolworth's counter was desegregated on July 25, 1960, and a section of that counter now sits in the Smithsonian. Congress later credited the Greensboro Four with helping make the Civil Rights Act of 1964 possible. Every February 1, the university hosts a breakfast honoring them.
Lewis C. Dowdy became president in 1964 and led the college through the civil rights era and into the UNC System, staying until 1980. It was under Dowdy, in 1967, that the school took its current name: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. In 1971 the legislature folded all 16 public bachelor's-granting institutions into the University of North Carolina System, and Dowdy was reappointed as the school's first chancellor in July 1972.
The marching band was renamed the Blue and Gold Marching Machine in 1977 under band director Johnny B. Hodge, in the late-1970s to early-1980s leadership era he shared with Jimmy Williams. The symphonic band was also started during this time. The BGMM identity — high-stepping drum majors, the horn sound, the auxiliaries — was locked in during this era, and the band began drawing national attention with trips like the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.
Edward B. Fort became chancellor in 1981 and stayed until 1999, guiding A&T to national prominence in engineering and technology education. He initiated more than thirty new academic programs and the university awarded its first Ph.D.s in mechanical and electrical engineering. More than $50 million in new construction and nearly $30 million in facility renovations reshaped the physical campus, and enrollment expanded with a growing global footprint.
The 1993 Blue and Gold Marching Machine homecoming show was broadcast nationally on BET, and the band made it legendary: a helicopter dropped drum major D'Jour Anthony Criss off at the 50-yard line at halftime. The game itself was a classic — Howard's Jay Walker threw for 420 yards and four touchdowns to win in overtime — but the Aggies won halftime, and Howard's band reportedly didn't make the trip to Greensboro for many matchups afterward.
James C. Renick became chancellor in 1999 and led the university until 2006, a period of record enrollment and new campus infrastructure. He established a $100 million capital campaign. The football team won the MEAC and the HBCU national championship in 1999 under legendary coach Bill Hayes, with future Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes as a four-year letterman and 2001 captain. Lloyd V. 'Vic' Hackley served as interim chancellor in 2006–07.
Dr. Johnny B. Hodge retired in 2003, and Dr. Kenneth G. Ruff — a former BGMM drum major (1988–1990) who had served as a part-time assistant under Hodge — took over as Director of Bands. Over the next 23 years he turned an already respected program into one of the most recognizable HBCU bands in America: Honda Battle of the Bands wins, the 2012 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as lead band, the 2024 Tournament of Roses Parade, ESPN's Band of the Year honors, and a standing relationship with the Carolina Panthers. He retired in June 2026.
Stanley F. Battle became chancellor in 2007 and served until 2009. His short tenure landed historic firsts: A&T became the first HBCU to receive an Engineering Research Center grant from the National Science Foundation, and it established the first Wall Street trading room at an HBCU. The College of Engineering was ranked in the top 25 nationally.
Harold L. Martin Sr., an A&T engineering alumnus, became chancellor in 2009 — the first alumnus to hold the office — and stayed 15 years. Under Martin, applications grew 246% between 2011 and 2021, A&T became the nation's largest HBCU, the endowment hit a record $202 million, research funding rose 138% to $147.4 million, and the university's economic impact on the Piedmont Triad grew from $978 million to $2.4 billion. Key facilities rose under his watch, including the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering and the Harold L. Martin Sr. Engineering Research and Innovation Complex.
The Blue and Gold Marching Machine led the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City in 2012 — the lead band position, representing the whole nation. It remains one of the band's signature moments, alongside their official-band relationship with the NFL's Carolina Panthers and a top-10 national band ranking from Sports Illustrated.
In December 2015, a crowd of 35,000 in the Georgia Dome watched running back Tarik Cohen run for three long touchdowns against Alcorn State, including the game-winner as the clock wound down, winning the inaugural Celebration Bowl and the Black college football national championship. The win sent applications soaring — they've doubled since 2015 to more than 30,000 a year — and started the most dominant run in modern HBCU football: four Black national titles in five years (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019).
On a rainy November afternoon at BB&T Stadium, the Aggies demolished archrival N.C. Central 54-0 — the most lopsided win in the 91-game series, and the most points A&T had ever scored on the Eagles. It was their 11th MEAC championship, fifth conference title in six years, and sent them to the Celebration Bowl for the third straight season as defending two-time HBCU national champions.
A&T left the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference — the association of historically Black schools it had helped create more than 50 years earlier — to join the Big South, a conference of historically white schools. The move was about ambition: pairing higher athletic competition with the university's push toward R1 research status. In February 2022 A&T announced it would move again, to the Colonial Athletic Association, joining fellow HBCU Hampton there.
Nearly 500 people — including Gov. Roy Cooper — celebrated the grand opening of the Harold L. Martin Sr. Engineering Research and Innovation Complex on February 17, 2022. The same fall, Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes (A&T class of 2002) surprised the band with an invitation to perform at the Lions' NFL season opener at Ford Field. The BGMM had also wowed the 2022 Pepsi National Battle of the Bands in Houston that summer.
June 2024 brought a changing of the guard: Harold Martin retired after 15 years, and UNC System president Peter Hans's pick, Dr. James R. Martin II — the former U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh — took office as chancellor on August 15. That fall the BGMM marched in the 2024 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. And GHOE — the Greatest Homecoming on Earth — drew at least 131,753 people by law-enforcement crowd counts, with the football game selling out two months early and extra bleachers pushing attendance to 23,016. Fall 2024 enrollment hit 14,311, the 11th straight year as the nation's largest HBCU.
Fall 2025 enrollment hit 15,275, making A&T the first HBCU in history to enroll more than 15,000 students — the 12th consecutive year of growth, and the largest HBCU ever for the fourth year running. Graduate enrollment passed 2,000 for the first time, doctoral enrollment jumped 23.4% to 702, and the freshman class arrived with a 3.7 average GPA. On the field, the Aggies hosted rival N.C. Central in the Aggie-Eagle Classic under head coach Shawn Gibbs, a former NCCU running back.
In 2026 the university is celebrating the centennial of its first documented homecoming (1926) — 100 years of what became the Greatest Homecoming on Earth, with officials expecting more than 200,000 attendees this fall, parade, football game, and hip-hop concert all landing on Halloween, October 31. The same summer, Dr. Kenneth Ruff retired after 23 years as Director of Bands, closing one of the most influential tenures in modern HBCU band history. His successor had not been named in the sources checked.
The fiercest rivalry in Black college football — Greensboro vs. Durham, a 91-game series. A&T's 54-0 demolition of the Eagles in 2019 was the most lopsided result in series history and sent the Aggies to their third straight Celebration Bowl. NCCU got revenge with a 66-point outburst the next time around, and the 2025 meeting in Greensboro had head coach Shawn Gibbs — a former NCCU running back — facing his alma mater.
A&T and S.C. State shared the 2019 MEAC title after the Bulldogs' overtime win over Norfolk State, while the Aggies rolled through NCCU. S.C. State's run of six MEAC titles in seven years (1977–83) was the standard A&T chased — and eventually matched with five titles in six years of their own.
The 1993 homecoming game is the stuff of legend: Howard quarterback Jay Walker threw for 420 yards and four touchdowns to win in overtime on the field, but the Blue and Gold Marching Machine won halftime so decisively — helicopter drum-major drop, broadcast on BET — that the Bison band reportedly skipped the trip to Greensboro for years after.
🥁 Blue and Gold Marching Machine · since 1918
The BGMM is known for five high-stepping drum majors, a powerful horn section, the Cold Steel drumline, and the Golden Delight dance team — around 200 members in 12 sections. Their national resume runs from the 2012 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (as lead band) to the 2024 Rose Parade, NFL stadiums, Honda Battle of the Bands wins, and ESPN's Band of the Year. The 1993 BET homecoming show — a helicopter dropping the drum major at the 50 — is Aggie legend. The band also inspired the fictional Atlanta A&T band in the 'Drumline' films.
Professor of music who started the college band and orchestra; composed the music for the university theme song 'Dear A&T.' The formal 50-piece band was born in 1918.
Introduced the auxiliary concept in 1946, modeling it on Michigan and Ohio State — even drawing on Michigan's uniforms for A&T's blue-and-gold look. The start of the Golden Delight lineage.
Co-director with Johnny Hodge in the era when the band gained the 'Blue and Gold Marching Machine' name and the symphonic band was started.
Director of bands for roughly 25 years — 'spanning four decades' per 247Sports. The BGMM name was born under his leadership; he built the high-stepping, horn-driven identity and took the band to Macy's and the Silverdome.
Former BGMM drum major (1988–1990) who returned as director and led for 23 years: Honda Battle of the Bands wins, lead band of the 2012 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the 2024 Tournament of Roses Parade, ESPN's Band of the Year, and official-band status with the Carolina Panthers. Retired June 2026.
Ruff's successor had not been announced in the sources checked as of October 2026.
The Divine Nine are woven into GHOE — the biggest homecoming in the country — with the Greek plots anchoring Aggie Fan Fest and homecoming week doubling as one of the largest NPHC gatherings in the nation. Recognized orgs are governed under the Joint Greek Council constitution (ncat.edu). Beta Epsilon of Alpha Phi Alpha took the 2021 and 2025 GHOE step-show titles. Band greek life runs deep too: KKPsi's Iota Zeta and TBS's Theta Zeta (both 1990) serve the Blue and Gold Marching Machine.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
A 175,000-square-foot student center replaced the old union, with expanded student organization space, dining, 18 meeting rooms, recreation and entertainment areas, and a 10,000-square-foot bookstore. It earned an ENR Award of Merit for the build team that brought it in under a reworked budget and held the ribbon cutting on schedule. Exact opening year is approximate — sources checked described the finished building without confirming the year.
The Campaign for North Carolina A&T ended in 2020 having raised $181.4 million — the most successful capital campaign ever for a public HBCU. It powered the endowment's climb from $28 million toward $160 million and funded the building wave of the decade.
Grand opening February 17, 2022, with Gov. Roy Cooper, Greensboro's mayor, and nearly 500 guests. The complex anchors A&T's engineering research push — the school produces more Black engineers than any university in the country — and was named for the chancellor who drove the R1 ambition.
A new discovery, testing, and advanced manufacturing center on Gateway Research Park's South Campus, part of the Preeminence 2020-era physical plant expansion that grew A&T's research footprint.
A&T announced plans in 2021 to renovate War Memorial Stadium into the home of Aggie baseball, a two-and-a-half-year project slated to begin in early 2022. The football team plays at Truist Stadium.
Announced under the 2021–2027 master plan: an academic-support and recreation complex with a full-size soccer field, outdoor lounges, racquetball, team sports, dance, yoga, bowling, and boxing — the 'global village' piece of the campus growth plan.
On November 14, 2023, A&T leaders broke ground on the Urban and Community Food Complex at the 492-acre University Farm — planned for more than 15 years, part small-business incubator, part research facility, aimed at driving food and agribusiness entrepreneurship in East Greensboro.
The state budget gave A&T $125.5 million for a health sciences building — its largest capital project — to consolidate the fast-growing Hairston College of Health Sciences, its largest college. Funding phases in through 2028, so construction may not begin until then. Details per the A&T Fan Forum summarizing state budget reporting; not confirmed against an official university release.
Plans for a $64 million residence hall — A&T's first new student housing building in almost 20 years — were reported alongside the health sciences funding, with construction expected to begin in fall 2024. Details per the A&T Fan Forum summarizing state budget reporting; not confirmed against an official release.
More than 600 people helped craft the Preeminence 2023 strategic plan, which set the explicit goal of reaching R1 — Very High Research Activity in the Carnegie Classification — by expanding doctoral programs, research funding, and expenditures. A&T was classified R2 at the time of the plan.
Legendary former football coach Bill Hayes led the 1999 team to the MEAC title and HBCU national championship. The athletic director and current basketball/baseball coaches were not verified in the sources checked.
Civil engineer (Citadel, Virginia Tech); former U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering at Pitt. Took office August 15, 2024.
Leads academic affairs through the enrollment surge and R1 push.
A former NCCU running back himself, coaching the Aggies against his alma mater in the Aggie-Eagle Classic.
A&T runs on Aggie Pride — a culture students describe as second to none, built on being the biggest HBCU in America and the school that started the sit-in movement. Fall means football Saturdays at Truist Stadium with the Blue and Gold Marching Machine at halftime, and October means GHOE, when East Greensboro becomes the center of Black college life. Engineering, agriculture, and business anchor the academic identity; the College of Engineering is the nation's top producer of Black engineers.