Raleigh, North Carolina · Founded 1865 · Bears
“The South's oldest HBCU — a Raleigh Baptist school born in a hotel Bible class in 1865 that became the birthplace of SNCC and raised Ella Baker, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and Angie Brooks.”
UNC-TV's hour-long Telly Award-winning documentary on Shaw's history from the 1865 founding to Dr. Dillard's inauguration — the school's official filmed legacy, tied to the 60th anniversary of SNCC's founding on campus.
The national McDonald's spot that put Shaw's Platinum Sound band on TV — it aired nationwide in December 2021 and led directly to the $100K grant surprise at the CIAA send-off.
The viral 2017 student-made music video with Platinum Sound, the Chi-Chis cheerleaders, Zeta Phi Beta, Omega Psi Phi, and alumnus Steven Starks of Starks Films — 'Shaw U Pride reigns supreme.'
Platinum Sound at the CIAA Battle of the Bands in Baltimore on March 1, 2024, filmed by @ShowtimeWeb — the band squaring off against the conference's best.
Platinum Sound's full 2012 breakdown with the young drum major Timmy Richardson, whose dances at Shaw halftimes became internet lore.
The original viral moment: little Timmy dancing his way down to the field and into the Shaw halftime show — 'the rest is Shaw Bear history.'
The Platinum Sound tuba section (I.B.L.) blowing their own rendition of the Boondocks' 'Uncle Ruckus Theme Song' in 2019 — the section personality that makes HBCU bands famous.
Inside-the-bandroom footage of Platinum Sound's 2026 takeover event with West Charlotte High School — the raw, unpolished side of the band the TV spots don't show.
Shaw junior Malachi, a Platinum Sound drum major and chorus member, walks through the band and choir traditions on TheCollegeTour — 'Ain't nothing better than the first HBCU of the South, Shaw U!'
ESPN+ footage of the 2024 thriller: Shaw QB Christian Peters escapes defenders and finds Ah'shaan Belcher for the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds, 43-40 over Albany State.
Full-game footage of the Bears' 38-35 CIAA win over Fayetteville State on October 26, 2024.
Five minutes of vintage homecoming-weekend footage from 1990, the school's 125th year — a time capsule of the yard in the Talbert O. Shaw era.
Class of 1927, valedictorian — 'the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement'; organized the 1960 SNCC founding conference at her alma mater and shaped the NAACP and SCLC from behind the scenes.
D.D. 1934 — legendary Harlem congressman, serving New York in the U.S. House from 1945 to 1971.
B.S. 1949 — first African woman to serve as president of the United Nations General Assembly, and an associate justice of Liberia's Supreme Court.
B.A. 1971 — one of America's most famous trial attorneys, the 'Giant Killer'; the Willie E. Gary Student Center bears his name and he has chaired the board of trustees.
B.L. 1891 — the Shaw Law School's first graduate and later its dean; in 1917 he became the first African American elected to the New York State Assembly.
North Carolina politician and founding dean of the Shaw Law School from March 1890 — a key architect of the South's first Black law school.
A.B. 1882 — Republican U.S. Congressman from North Carolina, 1889–1893.
Class of 1914 — civil rights activist and Spingarn Medal recipient.
Class of 1953 — Democratic member of the North Carolina General Assembly, 14th Senate district, serving Wake County.
Class of 1939 — one of the first African American female pilots and flight instructors in the United States.
Class of 1886 — 'Durham's Black Superintendent' and co-founder of Mechanics & Farmers Bank.
Prominent North Carolina politician and the first African American to hold the rank of colonel in a U.S. volunteer regiment during the Spanish-American War.
The Empress of Soul — the R&B legend is counted among Shaw's celebrated attendees by HBCU historians and Black press retrospectives.
The First Lady of Gospel — the Durham-raised gospel icon is counted among Shaw's celebrated attendees.
A 19-year-old Shaw sophomore in 1960 who became a founding member of SNCC at the campus conference.
B.A. 1971 — first African-American member of the Rhode Island Senate.
Class of 1955 — Shaw alumnus who returned as its 9th president (1963–1969) and later led Howard University.
B.L. 1909 — lawyer recognized as the first deaf and Black lawyer in the country.
On December 1, 1865, Henry Martin Tupper — a Union Army chaplain and Baptist minister from Monson, Massachusetts, backed by the American Baptist Home Mission Society — organized a theology class to teach Freedmen to read and interpret the Bible in a Raleigh hotel room. It was the second university established for African Americans after the Civil War and the first to begin offering courses in the Southern United States, making Shaw the oldest HBCU in the South. Tupper's wife Sarah worked alongside him, and the school's charter would eventually specify admission without regard to race, creed, or sex — radical for its time.
Rapid growth in the class forced Tupper to buy land in 1866 and put up a building that served as both church and school, which took the name the Raleigh Institute. With no campus yet, students and faculty met in makeshift quarters — including, by one account, a hotel room. The school then moved into a large wooden building at the corner of Blount and Cabarrus Streets in Raleigh, which became its first real home. It kept that name until 1870.
In 1870 the school moved to its present site on 12 acres of land once held by Confederate General Barringer — ground where, by school lore, Tupper and his wife once hid in the cornfields from a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob. The purchase was made possible by a $5,000 donation from Massachusetts philanthropist Elijah J. Shaw (worth about $110,000 in 2021 dollars), which covered part of the $13,000 purchase price. The school was renamed the Shaw Collegiate Institute in his honor — it does not bear its founder's name. Shaw Hall, the first building, rose in 1871 with a 165-foot frontage, four stories and a tower, described then as the most commodious school building in all of North Carolina, housing classrooms, a library, and lodging.
In 1873 the school erected Estey Hall with $8,000 from Deacon Jacob Estey and his sons of Brattleboro, Vermont — the first building constructed in the United States for the higher education of African-American women. Designed by famed Raleigh architect George S. H. Appleget in Second Empire style, it trained women in cooking, sewing, music, and religion; Tupper himself bought the cloth the women sewed into garments and sold them to cover costs. The building stands today as the oldest surviving building on campus, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and now serving as a cultural center. Shaw had begun admitting women soon after its founding, making it one of the nation's oldest coeducational universities.
In 1875 the North Carolina General Assembly chartered the school as Shaw University, with the charter specifying that students were to be admitted without regard to race, creed, or sex. The coeducational emphasis was baked into the institution's identity from the start — Tupper and his wife believed men and women should be educated together just as they were reared in the family at home. The name it took that year is the name it still bears.
Shaw graduated its first college class in 1878 and its first theology graduates in 1880. The school became a teacher factory for the Black South: by 1900 it had trained more than 30,000 Black teachers. In 1879 a chapel and dining hall called the Greenleaf Building went up — named for yearly benefactor Orick H. Greenleaf of Springfield, Massachusetts, and built for $6,000 from tuition savings plus contributions from northern Baptists.
Tupper had dreamed of a medical school since 1866, and in 1881 that dream became reality: the Leonard Medical School opened its first session on November 1, 1881, in a new four-story Leonard Medical Building containing lecture rooms, dissecting rooms, and an amphitheater. Built with $15,000 from Tupper's brother-in-law Johnson Leonard plus gifts from northern Baptist donors, the medical complex also included a 34-bed dormitory and a 25-bed hospital that opened to patients on January 10, 1885. It was the first four-year medical school to train African-American doctors in the South and the first medical school in the state to offer a four-year curriculum. Shaw graduated its first class of medical doctors in 1886 and awarded its first pharmacy degree in 1893.
On December 11, 1888, Shaw opened the Shaw University Law School — the first law school for African Americans in the country. Its curriculum covered international and constitutional law, the common law, equity, and admiralty, and it was the only Black law school teaching legal shorthand, on the theory that the skill would let a Black lawyer earn a living in a firm's clerical ranks if discrimination blocked him from practice. North Carolina politician John S. Leary helped found the school and served as its dean from March 1890, followed by Edward A. Johnson — the law school's first graduate and later the first African American elected to the New York State Assembly. The law school graduated 54 students between 1891 and 1914 before closing in 1916.
Henry Martin Tupper died on November 12, 1893, after 28 years as founder and first president, and was buried on the campus alongside his wife Sarah — their tombs sit in the memorial garden at the heart of the campus today. His death came the same year Shaw awarded its first pharmacy degree, the peak of the school's professional-school era. By then the school had grown from a hotel Bible class into a full university with medical, law, pharmacy, theological, and teacher-training programs.
The 1910 Flexner Report on medical education gave Leonard Medical School a scathing evaluation, declaring the Black school 'was in no position to make any contribution of value,' while recommending Howard and Meharry remain open. Shaw's medical school closed in 1918, followed by the other professional schools — law in 1916, pharmacy and the preparatory academy in the years after. Since 1921 Shaw has functioned primarily as a liberal arts college, though it kept the 'University' name. The loss of the medical and law schools ended Shaw's run as the South's Black professional school, but its teacher-training mission carried on.
In 1931 Shaw elected Dr. William Stuart Nelson as its first African-American president, serving from 1931 to 1936 — 66 years after its founding. The theological department became a full seminary in 1933 and continued as part of the university until 1976, when it became an independent institution. The milestone of Black leadership arrived at a moment when the school's identity as a Baptist institution training Black teachers, ministers, and professionals was firmly set.
Over Easter weekend in April 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded at a conference on Shaw's campus organized by Ella Baker — a 1927 Shaw valedictorian then serving as executive director of the SCLC. Baker persuaded Martin Luther King Jr. to put up the $800 for the gathering, but she urged the students to form their own organization rather than become an SCLC youth wing. About 300 students met in Greenleaf Auditorium and Raleigh Memorial Auditorium; King addressed them, and Baker told the students their struggle was 'much bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized coke.' Then-Shaw sophomore Dr. David C. Forbes Sr. became a founding member. SNCC went on to drive the Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, and Mississippi Freedom Summer — and it all started at Shaw.
In 1968 Shaw became the first Black college to own a radio station, WSHA 88.9 FM, first broadcasting from an antenna atop a campus building downtown. In the late 1990s a new tower went up in southeast Raleigh near Interstate 40 to increase the station's power. The university sold the station to the Educational Media Foundation on July 26, 2018, and it was renamed WRKV — ending a half-century run of Shaw-owned broadcasting.
By the mid-1980s enrollment had declined and the university was deeply in debt, but President Talbert O. Shaw (the 12th president, no relation to the namesake) engineered a turnaround: he grew the student body from 1,600 to 2,700, restructured the debt, and created the Raleigh Business and Technology Center. Under his 'Strides to Excellence: Why Not the Best?' campaign, the school renovated historic buildings and built the Talbert O. Shaw Center for Teachers' Education. In March 1994 he and the university were the subject of a Chronicle of Higher Education cover story on the school's momentum — 'Shaw University Regains Its Momentum.'
Shaw led a landmark research study asking why not a single African-American soldier of World War II had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The 272-page study concluded racial discrimination had buried Black heroism, and recommended ten soldiers whose records merited the medal. In April 1996 the Defense Department agreed on seven; on January 13, 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded them the Medal of Honor — only 1st Lt. Vernon Baker was alive to receive his. It was just the third time the military had re-evaluated records to award the Medal of Honor, and the finding began with Shaw researchers.
Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy — previously the 15th president of Johnson C. Smith University — was named interim president in June 2009, then became Shaw's 14th and first female president. Under her leadership the university restructured its debt, greatly improved its Composite Financial Index ratio, and completed renovations to more than 17 campus buildings. In 2009 the university's Institute for Health, Social, and Community Research won a $4.3 million NIH grant to build research infrastructure aimed at reducing health disparities.
During the tornado outbreak of April 14–16, 2011, a damaging tornado tore through Shaw's downtown campus, severely damaging two dormitories, the student union, and the roof of historic Estey Hall. There were minor injuries but no one was seriously hurt — and the university canceled classes for the rest of the semester to repair the campus. The storm hit one of Raleigh's most historic institutions dead center, and recovery became a defining project of the early 2010s.
Dr. Paulette Dillard — a cell and molecular biologist with a Ph.D. from Clark Atlanta University — became the 18th president of Shaw in 2017, succeeding alumna Tashni-Ann Dubroy (2015–2017). Dillard, who joined Shaw's administration in 2012, has led the university through the rezoning era and the school's 160th anniversary planning. The documentary 'Shaw Rising' covers the school's history from the 1865 founding through her inauguration.
UNC-TV premiered 'Shaw Rising,' an hour-long documentary telling the story of the university from its 1865 founding through the Dillard inauguration, produced in partnership with Horizon Productions and Goodtree Studios; it won a Telly Award. The National Alumni Association had planned a massive 60th-anniversary celebration of SNCC's founding — 'The Spirit of SNCC: Beyond 2020,' with a Freedom Song tribute, a town hall moderated by Bakari Sellers, and a legacy banquet with Rep. Jim Clyburn — but COVID forced its cancellation in March 2020. The alumni association held a virtual 'Shaw Rising' watch party that drew thousands of views and alumni swapping homecoming memories in the chat.
In December 2021 Shaw University and its 'Platinum Sound' marching band were featured in a national McDonald's commercial — 'Like the student union…but with fries' — spotlighting the local McDonald's as a gathering place for Shaw students across generations. The spot featured band member Dave Walters Jr. and his mother Vanessa Lovette Barnes-Hammond ('93), a Shaw alumna who played saxophone while Dave plays sax in Platinum Sound now. Moved by the band's excellence, McDonald's surprised the program with a $100,000 grant on February 19, 2022, at the CIAA tournament send-off ceremony — money for equipment, uniforms, and essentials. Director Andrae King, a former Platinum Sound member himself, called it 'beyond anything we could have imagined.'
In May 2022 Shaw received a $500,000 National Park Service grant — an African American Civil Rights grant from the Historic Preservation Fund — to rehabilitate Leonard Hall, the 1883 building that once housed the Leonard Medical School and now holds the Shaw Divinity School and the Center for Racial and Social Justice. The money funds HVAC replacement and life-safety fire suppression upgrades. A year earlier the NPS had awarded just under $500,000 to preserve Estey Hall, with work on its roof and floors.
On June 20, 2023, the Raleigh City Council voted 5-3 to rezone 27 acres of Shaw's downtown campus as a Mixed Business District, allowing buildings up to 20 and 30 stories tall on the historically Black university's land. The plan: lease — never sell — parcels to developers for mixed-use offices and housing, generating revenue the tuition-dependent school could never raise on its own, with at least 100 student housing rooms required in the first three new buildings. Alumni group Save Our Shaw rallied against it as gentrification of a cultural landmark, marching around the campus perimeter on June 10; the university agreed to preserve Estey Hall, Leonard Hall, Tyler Hall, and Tupper Memorial Hall. School leaders say the deal could fund a new life sciences center, residence halls, athletic facilities, and a long-dreamed football stadium on the Shaw Farm.
The crosstown rivalry dates to 1907 — two Raleigh HBCUs a few miles apart, and the season-ending game is the Raleigh Classic, played for the Raleigh Classic Trophy. The 2010 meeting was the peak: both teams were good, the Western Division title was on the line at Broughton Stadium, and Shaw won a 10-6 defensive struggle, then took the CIAA Championship Game and went to the NCAA Division II playoffs while Saint Aug's won the Pioneer Bowl. In November 2022 Shaw beat the Falcons 30-27 in double overtime to reclaim the trophy — 'WE RUN RALEIGH,' said head coach Adrian Jones. But rivalry games bite both ways: winless Saint Aug's stunned Shaw 21-17 in the 2021 finale, and the Falcons took a 16-9 Senior Day win in 2014 on a university-record 49-yard field goal. The basketball rivalry runs just as hot, with both schools bringing the games back to their own campuses to restore the atmosphere.
🥁 Platinum Sound Marching Band
For decades Platinum Sound has been the staple of Shaw football Saturdays and the Raleigh community — elite musicianship and showmanship in garnet and white. Earlier directors could not be confirmed from published sources; the founding year is unverified. The band competes at events like the CIAA Battle of the Bands and went viral with young drum major Timmy Richardson, whose halftime dance made him a Shaw Bears legend.
A former Platinum Sound member leading the band he marched in. Under him the band was featured in a national McDonald's commercial (Dec 2021) and received a $100,000 McDonald's grant in February 2022 for equipment, uniforms, and essentials.
Shaw's catalog verifies eight NPHC chapter charters, with Phi Beta Sigma's Iota (chartered December 11, 1919 — the fraternity's 9th chapter, first Greek org at Shaw) and Delta Sigma Theta's Alpha Rho (chartered June 17, 1934, first sorority at Shaw) carrying the deepest history. The Greek plots are the centerpiece of the Quad — dating to the early 1970s, and the subject of a 2017 HBCU Buzz piece asking whether the plots would be relocated. Iota Phi Theta's Gamma Tau and Sigma Gamma Rho's Beta Theta are directory-listed rather than catalog-verified.
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Renovations began on Estey Hall, which had stood boarded up and unused in the center of campus for about 20 years. About $2 million in private gifts paid for the exterior restoration and the first two floors, returning the first building in America constructed for the higher education of Black women to active use as a cultural center.
During homecoming 1992 the school laid a new cornerstone for an expanded campus chapel, faced in brick thanks to a $250,000 gift from Thomas J. Boyd, a 1948 alumnus.
A $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant funded the upgrading of the science hall, one of the achievements trumpeted in the school's 'Wings for the Future' campaign materials.
Planned in 1989 as a joint effort of Shaw, city council officials, and neighboring Saint Augustine's College, the Raleigh Business and Technology Center was built on Shaw's campus. Both colleges use it for classes and community programs — a rare piece of shared infrastructure between the two Raleigh HBCUs.
The 1990s capital campaign funded new campus facilities headlined by the Talbert O. Shaw Center for Teachers' Education, honoring the turnaround president and anchoring the school's historic teacher-training mission.
Shaw began construction on the Center for Early Childhood Education, Research and Development the same year its Divinity School received a 10-year accreditation from the Association for Theological Schools.
During Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy's presidency the university completed renovations to more than 17 campus buildings while restructuring its debt — one of the largest physical-plant investments in the school's modern history.
Shaw received just under $500,000 from the National Park Service to preserve Estey Hall — roof work and floor restoration on the 1873 landmark, the oldest surviving building on campus.
The National Park Service awarded Shaw $500,000 in African American Civil Rights grant funding to rehabilitate Leonard Hall (built 1883, former home of the Leonard Medical School, now housing the Divinity School and the Center for Racial and Social Justice). The money covers HVAC replacement and a new life-safety fire suppression system.
Raleigh approved rezoning 27 acres of campus for mixed-use development up to 20–30 stories, with developers leasing — not buying — the land. The deal requires at least 100 student housing rooms in the first three new buildings and protects Estey, Leonard, Tyler, and Tupper Memorial halls. School leaders say the revenue could finally fund a new life sciences center, residence halls, athletic facilities, and a football stadium on the Shaw Farm — amenities the tuition-dependent school could never afford alone.
Shaw runs three academic schools: the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Business and Professional Studies, and the School of Divinity (graduate degrees). The football program plays at Durham County Memorial Stadium in Durham while the university pursues a long-planned on-campus stadium at the Shaw Farm on Rock Quarry Road. Current athletic director and head football coach could not be confirmed from published sources as of this writing.
18th president since 2017; cell and molecular biologist who joined Shaw's administration in 2012.
Biology professor (UNC Chapel Hill Ph.D. in genetics and molecular biology) serving as the university's chief academic officer since 2008.
Former band member leading Shaw's marching program since the 2022 McDonald's commercial and grant spotlight.
Shaw is a small, urban, downtown-Raleigh campus — 24 acres of historic brick buildings in the East Raleigh-South Park Historic District, five of them national or state historic landmarks. With roughly a thousand students, it feels intimate and deeply rooted: the founder's tomb sits in the memorial garden at the center of campus, and the Ella Baker mural along South Blount Street reminds students daily that the civil rights movement's youth wing was born here. Game days mean the bus ride to Durham County Memorial Stadium and the Raleigh Classic against Saint Aug's; homecoming week is the year's biggest reunion.