ABSTRACT
Prairie View Agricultural & Mechanical University is the second oldest public institution of higher education in the state of Texas. The Fifteenth Texas Legislature on August 14, 1876, authorized the establishment of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas for Colored Youths in Waller County, approximately fifty miles northwest of Houston. The legislators used provisions of the federal Morrill Act of 1862 for initial funding, making Prairie View Agricultural & Mechanical College a land-grant institution whose mission was teaching, research, and public service. The legislators stipulated that Prairie View Agricultural & Mechanical College would be a component of what has evolved into the Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University System. The college system was initially segregated, and this arrangement had its genesis in the Texas Constitution of 1876, which stated that “separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and impartial provisions shall be made for both.”1 However, in the day-to-day operations of the two universities, there was never parity in funding, until the Texas Constitution was amended in 1984, designating Prairie View Agricultural & Mechanical University as one of only three “institutions of the first class” in Texas.
