Qualla: Delaware State University

Delaware State University: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lowell Silverman, CC BY-SA 2.5. On May 15, 1891, the Delaware General Assembly established the Delaware College for Colored Students. The name was bureaucratic and revealing: the state already had a Delaware College, in Newark, that was attended by white students. The new college needed a different name to keep the white legislators clear about which institution was funding what. In 1893 the state changed the name again, to the State College for Colored Students - this time to avoid any confusion at all. The college awarded its first degrees in 1898. The name kept changing. In 1948 it became Delaware State College. In 1993 it became Delaware State University. The institution's history of renaming traces a country's slow vocabulary shift on race. The mission has held. The school has spent 134 years educating Black students from Delaware.

Image: Lowell Silverman | CC BY-SA 2.5

Delaware State University: The Land Grant and the Long Climb

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Holzman Moss Bottino Architecture, CC BY-SA 4.0. Delaware State was one of seventeen 1890 land-grant HBCUs established under the Second Morrill Act of 1890, which required states that received federal land-grant funding to either admit Black students to existing land-grant colleges or build separate ones. Delaware built a separ...

Image: Holzman Moss Bottino Architecture | CC BY-SA 4.0

Delaware State University: The Wesley Acquisition

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The White House, Public domain. On July 1, 2021, Delaware State University officially acquired Wesley College, a 157-year-old private Methodist institution founded in Dover in 1873. The transaction made DSU the first HBCU ever to acquire an institution that was not itself an HBCU. The deal was driven by Wesley'...

Image: The White House | Public domain

Delaware State University: The MacKenzie Scott Gifts

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The White House, Public domain. In December 2020, MacKenzie Scott - the philanthropist and former wife of Jeff Bezos - donated $20 million to Delaware State University. The gift was unrestricted, no naming required, no strings attached. Scott had built her giving practice around identifying organizations doing ...

Image: The White House | Public domain

Delaware State University: The Aviation Program

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Air Force from USA, Public domain. Delaware State University operates the only full-service, university-based flight school in the mid-Atlantic region. The aviation program is housed at Delaware Air Park in Cheswold, a small airport about ten miles north of the main campus. Students pursue B.Sc. degrees with conce...

Image: US Air Force from USA | Public domain

Delaware State University: Dover and the Capital

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Codenamesam, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 400-acre main campus sits on the southern edge of Dover, the Delaware state capital. The location matters: DSU is the only major university in the state's capital, which gives it unusual access to state government internships, legislative testimony opportunities, and direct p...

Image: Codenamesam | CC BY-SA 4.0