Prairie View A&M University

1925

Texas segregation laws led to the creation of Prairie View A&M University.

Marjorie P. Collins kept a scrapbook—called “The Girl Graduate”—of her time as a student at Prairie View A&M College (now University). She later became a teacher at Almeda Road Junior High School in Houston, Texas.

Prairie View was founded in 1878 as Alta Vista Agricultural & Mechanical College for Colored Youth. Founded two years after the Texas Constitution mandated separate schools for Black and white children, its first eight students were African American men. Originally the school focused on training teachers, but later expanded its curriculum.