Bowie State University
university in Maryland, United States
Bowie State University (Bowie State or BSU) is a public historically black university in the Prince George's County of the U.S. state of Maryland, north of Bowie. It is part of the University System of Maryland. Founded in 1865, Bowie State is Maryland's oldest historically black university and one of the ten oldest in the country. Bowie State is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
History
Teachers College
Bowie State University is the oldest historically black university in Maryland. It was founded in 1865 by the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People as a teaching school. The school first used space at the African Baptist Church at Calvert Street and Saratoga Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1867, a dedicated facility was purchased nearby at Saratoga Street and Courtland Street, and the school was formally named the Baltimore Normal School for Colored Teachers. After being reorganized in 1883 as the Baltimore Normal School, it educated African Americans to be teachers for African American students until 1908. At that time, the school became a state institution of teaching under the Maryland State Department of Education and was redesignated as a Normal School No.
“Bowie State University” enters the record as university in Maryland, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bowie, State and University can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q895439. VIAF identifies the subject as 128127110. The Library of Congress control number is no92012369. Authority coordinates are 39.022, -76.757. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1865, 1867, 1883 and 1908.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bowie State University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.