Raleigh, North Carolina · Founded 1867 · Falcons
“A 158-year-old Episcopal-founded HBCU on Oakwood Avenue in Raleigh that built the greatest track dynasty in Division II history — and is fighting for its life.”
The Superior Sound at the 2013 Dillon Battle of the Bands — the band's HBCU band-circuit peak, tagged by the uploader with 'St.Augustine's Superior Sound, CIAA, HBCU'.
Superior Sound (SSMB) performing the school song 'Brooklyn' — the sound Falcons heard at every home game in the early 2010s.
A tribute to the coach who won 39 NCAA Division II national titles at SAU and head-coached the 2004 U.S. Olympic track team — the single most important figure in school history.
Long-form interview with Thurman D. Hollins, director of bands at St. Augustine's in the 2010s, on how he got to the SAU podium.
Official SAU video: the SGA, President Everett Ward, and the Superior Sound marching band leading students from the quad to vote in the 2017 Raleigh municipal election — posted on st-aug.edu.
Official SAU video of the candidate forum the university hosted for Raleigh's 2017 municipal election, embedded on the school's own site — the school's civic role in the city.
SAU's official 2025 profile of SGA president Tillia Leary — Miss School of Business, Sigma Gamma Rho, Dean's List — who called the school her 'miracle on Oakwood Avenue' ahead of a commencement that might have been its last.
ID verified on Saint Augustine's official events calendar as the university's #GivingTuesday video (November 2018); the exact title could not be confirmed from a crawl, so the title is approximate.
From the Yard's video feed.
Scholar, educator, and author of 'A Voice from the South' (1892); among the first Black women to earn a Ph.D.; attended St. Augustine's Normal School. The school honored her with a Kadir Nelson-painted USPS stamp celebration in 2015.
Alumnae sisters whose memoir 'Having Our Say' made them national icons of Black longevity and dignity; the Delany name is on campus buildings.
Famed sculptor whose bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt appears on the U.S. dime; an SAU alumna the school claims with pride.
Class of 1965; won 39 NCAA Division II national track championships coaching his alma mater, head-coached the 2004 U.S. Olympic track team, coached 39 Olympians.
Civil rights leader who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. as a young man and later led the NAACP; a Wilmington Ten figure.
Justice of the Florida Supreme Court; founder of the Jackie Robinson Sports Association.
2005 world champion and 2008 Olympic bronze medalist in the 400m hurdles; five-time U.S. champion; four-time NCAA Division II champion at SAU and still the DII record holder (48.48).
All-CIAA lineman at SAU who became an AFL All-Pro defensive end with the Oakland Raiders, a key pass rusher on the 1967 AFL champions who reached Super Bowl II.
1991 NCAA Division II 100m champion for St. Augustine's; 2000 Olympic gold medalist in the 4x100m relay.
Former Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas.
Gospel record producer, songwriter, and lead singer of Luther Barnes and the Sunset Jubilaires.
His family was Raleigh's first to challenge the city's segregated public schools after Brown v. Board.
Former university chaplain and trustee emeritus (1926–2023).
Chair of the Departmental Appeals Board at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; former chief law judge of the Board of Veterans Appeals.
Chief Operating Officer of Quality Control Music in Atlanta.
Founder/CEO and CFO of Craig Insurance Group in Durham; owners of Smallcakes cupcake shops.
Olympic hurdler for Barbados (2016, Tokyo); a standout of the SAU women's track dynasty.
Saint Augustine's was chartered July 19, 1867, as Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute, founded jointly by the Freedman's Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church and clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina. The Reverend J. Brinton Smith, secretary of the Freedman's Commission, and the Right Reverend Thomas Atkinson, Bishop of the Diocese, drove it into being; Atkinson became the first president of the Board of Trustees and Smith the first principal. Its mission was plain and radical for 1867: give young Black men and women a thorough academic education, train teachers, and prepare young men for the ministry.
The school opened its doors for instruction on January 13, 1868. Like many Black schools of the Reconstruction era, it was founded to educate freedmen but directed by white church leadership — a tension that would shape its first decades. The early campus sat in Raleigh on what became 1315 Oakwood Avenue, where the university still stands. Enrollment grew steadily as word spread that freed families could get schooling under the Episcopal Church's roof.
The institution's first name change came in 1893, from Saint Augustine's Normal School to Saint Augustine's School. By then it was firmly a fixture of Black Raleigh, running both a normal (teacher-training) program and collegiate work. The early-1900s Episcopal Church began funding the school directly, which stabilized its finances for the first time. The campus began accumulating the historic buildings that still define it.
The cornerstone of Saint Augustine's Chapel was laid in 1895 under the guidance of Henry Beard Delany, who would become the first African-American bishop elected in the Episcopal Church and the first Episcopal bishop to graduate from the college. Built in the Gothic style, the chapel is the oldest surviving structure on campus and remains its spiritual heart — the place where generations of Falcons worshipped, graduated, and buried their dead. It still anchors the campus more than 130 years later.
Saint Augustine's founded St. Agnes Hospital and its Training School for Nurses in 1896, creating the first school of nursing in North Carolina for African-American students. The hospital served as the only hospital for Black patients in the area until 1960, a lifeline under Jim Crow. Its most famous patient was boxer Jack Johnson, the first Black world heavyweight champion, who died there in 1946 after an auto accident. St. Agnes closed in 1961; a 1990s restoration attempt was abandoned in 2001 over structural problems, and part of the building still stands as a historic property.
In 1919 the school began offering postsecondary instruction and became Saint Augustine's Junior College. This was the first formal step up from a school into a college, and it coincided with steady growth under long-serving principals and the Episcopal Church's deepening support. The campus expanded with early-1900s buildings in the Classical Revival style — Cheshire, Delany, and Hunter — that still carry the school's architectural signature. By the 1920s the institution was on a clear path toward a full four-year program.
Saint Augustine's became a four-year institution in 1927 and was renamed Saint Augustine's College a year later, in 1928. The first bachelor's degrees were awarded in 1931, completing the climb from normal school to liberal arts college. Football conference play also dates to the 1930s — a 2011 souvenir journal records that SAU football entered conference play in 1934. The college now had the full apparatus of a Black liberal arts institution: athletics, Greek life, and a growing national alumni base.
Harold Leonard Trigg became the institution's first Black president in September 1947, ending eighty years of white leadership from the church. Trigg served until January 1955, steering the college through the postwar enrollment boom and the early desegregation era. His appointment was a milestone the school still marks: after the Freedman's Commission's white missionaries, the college was finally in Black hands. Every president since Trigg has been Black.
Prezell Russell Robinson, an alumnus, became president in February 1967 and stayed until March 1995 — the longest tenure in school history. His 28 years covered the civil rights era, the school's integration into the NCAA, and the early growth of its modern campus, and the campus library now bears his name. Robinson's era also planted the seeds of the track dynasty: he hired alumnus George 'Pup' Williams as coach in 1976. When Robinson retired, the college had tripled in stature and was a known name in Black higher education.
Alumnus George 'Pup' Williams, class of 1965, returned to Raleigh and began coaching track and cross country in 1976, and what followed is unmatched in NCAA history. His teams went on to win 39 NCAA Division II national championships across men's and women's indoor and outdoor track, more than any coach in any division. Williams coached 39 Olympians, including three gold medalists, head-coached the 2004 U.S. Olympic track team in Athens, and graduated a reported 95 percent of his athletes. The program became the school's identity — the Falcons were feared on the track the way few small schools ever are.
WAUG 'Power 750' began broadcasting in 1987 from the campus, making Saint Augustine's the nation's first historically Black college to own an on-campus commercial radio station, later joined by a low-power TV station, WAUG-TV. The station was a genuine commercial operation licensed to New Hope, North Carolina, serving the Raleigh-Durham market. Over the years it carried talk aimed at the Black community — Roland Martin, Al Sharpton's Keepin' It Real — plus Falcons sports and the CIAA basketball tournament. In 2018 it flipped to a mainstream urban format leased to a local operator as 'Hot 97.9.'
The Falcons' men won seven consecutive NCAA Division II outdoor track and field championships from 1989 through 1995, the first of two long title runs under George Williams. The program stacked indoor and outdoor crowns alike, including 12 men's indoor titles. Williams later coached the 1996 U.S. Olympic team as an assistant and the 2004 team as head coach in Athens. By the mid-90s, recruits came to Raleigh specifically to run for the most decorated coach in Division II.
Dianne Boardley Suber took office in December 1999 and led the college for nearly 15 years, the longest tenure of any woman to hold the post. Her presidency brought visible campus improvements and a strong public profile, including the university-status push. But the later years were marked by enrollment losses and revenue shortfalls that The Chronicle of Higher Education called 'significant turmoil.' In April 2014, one month before her planned retirement, the board of trustees abruptly fired her — a rupture that set off a decade of leadership instability.
The 2,500-seat George Williams Athletic Complex opened on campus across from Emery Gymnasium, named for the legendary track coach and athletic director. The first football game was played there October 22, 2011, against Johnson C. Smith — the Falcons won 34-15 on Homecoming day. The complex gave football a real home for the first time, with a FieldTurf surface, a world-class track, and a modern scoreboard. It also became the home field for the Superior Sound marching band and the annual Raleigh Classic.
On August 1, 2012, Saint Augustine's College formally became Saint Augustine's University, reflecting its expanded graduate programs and ambitions. The name change was the fourth in the institution's history and capped the Suber era's growth push. Around the same time, the Superior Sound marching band was making noise under director T.D. Hollins — sousaphone section clips and a 2013 Battle of the Bands appearance in Dillon, SC, put the band on the HBCU band circuit. The university entered the 2010s projecting confidence it had never quite had before.
Saint Augustine's and crosstown rival Shaw University launched the Raleigh Classic in November 2016, a season-ending trophy game between Raleigh's two HBCUs at the George Williams Athletic Complex. The first one was a heartbreaker: the Falcons nearly rallied from a 28-0 first-quarter hole but lost 35-32 when Shaw recovered an onside kick in the final seconds. The Classic has since become the signature football date on both schools' calendars, usually decided late. It also marks the Falcons' modern identity — small crowds, but a real city rivalry.
Saint Augustine's turned 150 in 2017 and celebrated all year: a special Holy Eucharist service in the historic chapel on July 19 with the Bishop of North Carolina and the Bishop of Botswana, plus a concert on the mall. That May, Williams' men won their fifth straight NCAA Division II outdoor title — a comeback led by the 'Magnificent Seven' sprinters, sealed in the 4x400 relay at IMG Academy in Bradenton. The program stood at 39 national championships, the most of any Division II program. At 150, the school looked immortal.
After a national search, the board named Dr. Irving Pressley McPhail the 12th president, effective July 15, 2020 — a veteran HBCU leader from LeMoyne-Owen and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. Three months later he was dead of COVID-19 complications, having pushed the school toward a 'learning-centered' model in his short tenure. His widow, Dr. Christine Johnson McPhail, stepped in and was confirmed as president in February 2021, serving until the board fired her in November 2023; she later sued the board alleging gender-based discrimination. The episode left the university grieving and rudderless at the start of its worst decade.
Bershawn 'Batman' Jackson — the Olympic bronze medalist, 2005 world 400m hurdles champion, and four-time NCAA Division II champion at SAU — came home to coach, taking over the men's track program on April 1, 2022. Jackson's return was meant to steady the program after George Williams' 2020 firing. The same era brought an unusual first: Saint Augustine's announced it had formed the first-ever HBCU cycling team, a sign the athletics department was reaching beyond its traditional lanes even as budgets tightened. It was a hopeful year in a darkening stretch.
In December 2023, SACSCOC voted to strip the university's accreditation over financial oversight, governance, and reporting failures — the crisis that would nearly kill the school. Meanwhile, football ground on: the Falcons replaced the field turf at the George Williams Athletic Complex, played two early home games at Southeast Raleigh High School, and lost the Raleigh Classic to Shaw 21-14 before 2,374 fans. A former football coach also sued the school in December, alleging he was intimidated into silence before being fired. Marcus H. Burgess became interim president in December 2023 with enrollment already collapsing.
The May 2024 commencement went ahead on the football field under a cloud — NPR's Weekend Edition, which recorded the ceremony, headlined its piece 'A historically Black university holds what could be its last graduation.' About 150 students graduated, dancing to 'Swag Surfin' on the 50-yard line after interim president Marcus Burgess told them to 'let it out.' The school won a court injunction that temporarily restored provisional accreditation, and celebrated its 157th Founders' Day with Raleigh historian Carmen Wimberly Cauthen keynoting. Behind the defiance, the numbers were grim: enrollment fell from nearly 1,000 in 2017 toward a few hundred.
SACSCOC derecognized Saint Augustine's for noncompliance on July 14, 2025, automatically revoking accreditation — and this time the courts didn't save it. The CIAA board then voted not to extend the Falcons' membership, removing them from conference competition for the 2025-26 academic year and leaving the school without a conference home. Burgess resigned that August 'for personal reasons'; provost Verjanis A. Peoples became interim president. The fall semester opened online only, with an estimated 150 students. For a school that once won 39 national titles, the silence was deafening.
Saint Augustine's filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 27, 2026, citing its dire fiscal crisis after the accreditation loss. The institution discontinued its degree programs and reverted to unaccredited status after May 15, ultimately suspending all educational activities — a private Christian college with 159 years of history effectively shutting its doors as a school. Leadership churned through interim after interim: Marcus Burgess, Verjanis Peoples, Jennie Ward-Robinson, and Peoples again by spring 2026. The campus, the chapel, and the track remain — and so does the question of what rises next on Oakwood Avenue.
Raleigh's two HBCUs play a season-ending trophy game that has been pure theater. The inaugural Classic in 2016 saw SAU nearly erase a 28-0 deficit before falling 35-32 to an onside kick in the final seconds. In 2021 the Falcons won 21-17 for their only victory of the season, snapping Shaw's three-game win streak; in 2023 Shaw took it back 21-14 before 2,374 fans. The schools sit minutes apart in Raleigh, and the game decides bragging rights for the whole city.
A long-standing CIAA football matchup — the first game ever played at the George Williams Athletic Complex was SAU vs. JCSU on October 22, 2011, a 34-15 Falcons homecoming win. The Charlotte school has been a measuring-stick opponent through the CIAA years.
Another classic CIAA football rivalry in the conference's southern division. Standout SAU defensive lineman Chasz Cosby earned CIAA Defensive Lineman of the Week honors three times in 2017 largely on performances against Fayetteville State and the conference slate.
🥁 Superior Sound Marching Band · since unverified — founding year of Superior Sound could not be confirmed from SAU's own pages or HBCU band archives; earliest solid records show it active by 2011 (T.D. Hollins era)
Superior Sound is the sound of Falcon Pride — the band that played every home game at the George Williams Athletic Complex, marched the MLK Mall pep rallies, and carried the 2015 Honda Battle of the Bands vote campaign. Its sousaphone section went by 'D.T.P. — Disturbing The Piece' and battled Elizabeth City State's J.A.W.S. tubas in 2012. The dance line, Sapphire Dream, performs alongside the band at games. The music program also runs a jazz ensemble (under Professor Al Strong) and a choir led by Dr. Eric Poole, director of Choral Activities.
Director of bands in the early 2010s; HBCU band archives credit 'Mr. T.D. Hollins' for the 2012 Superior Sound, and SAU's own site names him director during the 2014 HBCU Experience in Wilmington. Sat for a long-form 'Choppin It Up' interview about his path to the SAU podium.
Appointed director of bands in September 2014; a Hampton graduate who previously led bands at Fayetteville State, Hampton, Delaware State, and Savannah State. Brought a veteran HBCU-band résumé to Raleigh. (Later tenures unverified — the school's public band coverage thins after the mid-2010s.)
Eight of the nine Divine Nine organizations hold chapters on the yard (no Iota Phi Theta chapter found) — SAU is one of the small HBCUs where nearly every letter society has a foothold. Chapter names carry forward from prior research with only weak corroboration (Gamma Psi Alpha Phi Alpha), so all charter dates read null. The 2022 Homecoming gallery caught the men of Phi Beta Sigma stepping at the step show, and Sigma Gamma Rho counted SGA president Tillia Leary among its 2025 graduates. Kappa Kappa Psi's prospect chapter ties the Greeks to the Superior Sound.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
The oldest surviving structure on campus, built in Gothic style with its cornerstone laid under the guidance of future bishop Henry Beard Delany. Still the spiritual center of the school — the 150th anniversary Holy Eucharist was celebrated there in 2017.
The hospital and Training School for Nurses made SAU the home of North Carolina's first Black nursing school. Closed in 1961; a 1990s restoration was abandoned in 2001 over structural and environmental costs, and part of the building remains as a historic property.
One of the campus's oldest academic buildings. In 2021 the National Park Service awarded a $500,000 HBCU preservation grant to stabilize Hermitage Hall for future rehabilitation — part of $9.7 million for 20 historic HBCU structures nationwide.
Four major buildings went up in one year as the college grew: the Benson Building of Technology, the Cheshire Building (business division), Delany Hall (financial aid and admissions), and Goold Hall Student Union. The Classical Revival style of the era still reads across the central campus.
Built as the student union, it later held the cafeteria, mailing room, bookstore, and ballroom. It became the everyday crossroads of Falcon student life — the 2014 'Meet the Falcons' pep rally happened on the MLK Mall right outside.
Home of the Office of the President, named for president James A. Boyer. This is the building the school's long line of presidents worked out of from 1970 onward.
The campus library, named for the 28-year president, became the academic heart of the school — the 2015 Kadir Nelson stamp-art visit for alumna Anna Julia Cooper was staged there. Enrollment-era students knew it as the quietest building on the yard.
A co-educational residence for rising sophomores, upperclassmen, and presidential scholars, the newest dorm on campus. Added apartment-style living the older residence halls — Baker, Latham, Lynch, Atkinson, Weston, Boyer — never offered.
The 2,500-seat stadium across from Emery Gymnasium: FieldTurf, a world-class track, and a modern scoreboard, named for the coach who built the track dynasty. First football game October 22, 2011 (SAU 34, JCSU 15 on Homecoming). Also home to the Superior Sound band and the Raleigh Classic.
With under $40,000 in the bank and nearly $2 million in dorm repairs needed, the board brought in the Hughes Company to fix residence halls 'at cost' — work that later drew fraud complaints from former trustees and a SACSCOC-era whistleblower letter reported by INDY Week and The Assembly. It became a symbol of the governance crisis.
Funded by athletics fundraising and donor support, the football field got state-of-the-art replacement turf (plus upgraded branding for recruiting), forcing two home games to Southeast Raleigh High School's stadium. Over the summer the outdoor basketball courts were resurfaced with new goals, courtesy of a $20,000 Home Depot Retool Your School award from 2022, and a renovated media room opened in Emery Gymnasium.
Tropical Storm Debbie damaged buildings across campus, forcing the school to delay fall 2024 classes two weeks to September 3 and push move-in to late August. The notice, signed by interim president Marcus Burgess, promised dorm and classroom maintenance upgrades and power and water restoration — work the school could barely afford as the financial crisis deepened.
For most of its modern history, SAU's staff story was the Williams track machine and a small, devoted faculty teaching first-generation students. In the final years, leadership churn defined it — four interim presidents between 2023 and 2026 — while professors went without paychecks in early 2024, canceling classes in protest. Through it all, the coaches, choir, and band directors kept showing up for the students.
Provost elevated to the presidency twice — first after Burgess's 2025 resignation, again after the April 2026 bankruptcy filing.
Alumnus, class of 1965; won 39 NCAA Division II national championships, coached 39 Olympians, and head-coached the 2004 U.S. Olympic track team. Fired in July 2020; the stadium and track complex carry his name.
Olympic bronze medalist and 2005 world champion who ran for SAU; returned to his alma mater to take over the storied program.
Jackson State-trained biologist; his father was an orchestra director and music professor at Jackson State, and Sampson himself marched in the band.
Appointed in January 2024 as a 'strategic step toward financial stability and accreditation excellence' — a hard job at a school fighting for its life.
Led the University Choir — the choir performed at the historic first-woman-ordained service in the chapel, and Poole's 2014 Intercollegiate Music Association concert work drew campus praise.
Led the SAU jazz ensemble at campus tributes and ceremonies; a working performer and recording artist.
Took over the Falcons during the accreditation crisis and the 2023 turf-replacement season.
His Skoolkast platform was featured in Triangle tech news in 2024 — one of the school's late-era innovation bright spots.
SAU's campus life was built for a small school with big pride: about 1,500 students at its recent peak, half from North Carolina and the rest from 37 states plus Jamaica and dozens of foreign countries. The Episcopal DNA showed — chapel scholars, Christian Fellowship Organization, Holy Eucharist services in the 1895 chapel. Greek life ran deep, the band and BlueChips cheerleaders owned game day, and homecoming was a full 'Blue and White Experience.' Students called the campus a 'miracle on Oakwood Avenue' — the 1315 Oakwood Avenue address is practically a motto itself.