Qualla: Fayetteville State University

Fayetteville State University: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LTreadwell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The deed reads $136 for two lots on Gillespie Street. The seven men who signed it - Matthew Leary, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt, Robert Simmons, George Grainger, Thomas Lomax, Nelson Carter, and David Bryant - were Black residents of Fayetteville two years out from emancipation, putting their money together to build a school for the Black children of the city. Most of them had been born before the Civil War. Some had been enslaved. In 1867, they did what they could afford to do: bought land, formed a self-perpetuating board of trustees, and trusted the building to come later. From that purchase grew Fayetteville State University.

Image: LTreadwell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fayetteville State University: The Howard School

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LTreadwell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The school they built was named for General Oliver O. Howard, head of the Freedmen's Bureau, who supplied the building that went up on the Gillespie Street lots. The Howard School absorbed two earlier institutions, the Phillips and Sumner Schools, both founded in 1865 to teach pr...

Image: LTreadwell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fayetteville State University: Dr. Smith's Fifty Years

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LTreadwell, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1883, the State Colored Normal School appointed a new principal: Dr. Ezekiel Ezra Smith, a graduate of Shaw Collegiate Institute in Raleigh. He stayed for fifty years. During that span, Smith left twice on assignments that reflected the wider arc of Black achievement in the po...

Image: LTreadwell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fayetteville State University: Charles W. Chesnutt's Library

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LTreadwell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The campus library bears the name of Charles W. Chesnutt - son of Andrew Jackson Chesnutt, one of the seven founders who had bought those Gillespie Street lots. Charles W. Chesnutt grew up to become one of the first major African American novelists in American literature, author ...

Image: LTreadwell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fayetteville State University: Broncos

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asu1012906, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today FSU is part of the University of North Carolina System and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. It offers bachelor's degrees in more than 40 areas, master's in roughly a dozen fields, and one doctoral program in educational leadership. It participates in 10 NCAA sports as a ...

Image: Asu1012906 | CC BY-SA 3.0