Until the civil rights movement, most American blacks could get a college education only from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). These institutions became the primary source of community leaders and centers of African-American intellectual life. They now graduate over 50 percent of African-American professionals and public school teachers. Half of their graduates go on to graduate or professional schools. Today there are 105 HBCUs in the nation, and they count many distinguished American artists and leaders among their alumni. See related article: Many U.S. Leaders Are Graduates of Historically Black Colleges

Edwin Moses, a graduate of Morehouse College, waves to the crowd after winning the 400-meter hurdles at the Olympics in Los Angeles on August 6, 1984. Over a period of nearly 10 years (1977-1987), Moses collected 122 straight victories in the hurdles. He attended Morehouse on an academic scholarship in engineering, not a sports scholarship. He also came up with the idea of an Athletes Trust Fund program to provide a stipend to athletes for training and other expenses without jeopardizing their Olympic eligibility. (© AP Images)

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, greets the crowd gathered at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington August 28, 1963. The march was organized to support proposed civil rights legislation and end segregation. King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, advocating nonviolent action against America's racial inequality. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968. (© AP Images)

Ruth Simmons, a graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans, became the first black person to head an Ivy League school when she was named president of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2000. Simmons completed her Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures at Harvard. A former Fulbright scholar in France and French professor, she has written on the works of black Francophone writers David Diop and Aimé Césaire. Simmons was president of Smith College -- the largest U.S. women's college -- from 1995 until being appointed to Brown. (© AP Images)

Poet Nikki Giovanni graduated with honors in history from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, which her grandfather also attended. She first became well-known in the 1960s for her poetry about African-American identity and was a leader of the Black Art Movement. She has been named Woman of the Year by several magazines, including Essence, Mademoiselle, Ebony and Ladies' Home Journal. Since 1987, Giovanni has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she is a university distinguished professor. (© AP Images)

Alcee Hastings, a graduate of Fisk University, earned a law degree from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee and then became an attorney, civil rights activist, judge and member of Congress. He is chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe -- the Helsinki Commission -- which monitors compliance with the human rights and democracy-building treaty signed in Finland in 1975. He is also a member of the powerful House Rules Committee and chairman of the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process. (© AP Images)

As a Fisk student majoring in religion and philosophy, John Lewis organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1961, as a Freedom Rider, he challenged segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South. Despite some 40 arrests, physical attacks and serious injuries, he remained faithful to the philosophy of nonviolence. From 1963 to 1966, Lewis was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a major organizer of student activism, especially sit-ins. He was elected to Congress in 1986. (©AP Images)

Actor Samuel L. Jackson attended Morehouse College, where he majored in drama, founded a theater group and became involved in the Black Power movement. His breakthrough role came in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, for which his portrayal of a crack addict was awarded a special jury prize by the judges at the Cannes Film Festival. Some of Jackson's best-known roles have been in the popular Quentin Tarantino films Pulp Fiction -- for which he received an Academy Award nomination -- and Jackie Brown. (© AP Images)

Spike Lee's debut film, She's Gotta Have It, earned the Prix de la Jeunesse award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986. Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X and others also earned critical acclaim. A graduate of Morehouse College, Lee also has made award-winning documentaries, including 4 Little Girls, about the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, which shows New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Lee has been nominated for two Academy Awards. (© AP Images)

Morehouse graduate and civil rights activist Julian Bond began leading sit-in demonstrations as a student in 1960, winning integration of Atlanta's movie theaters, lunch counters and parks. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court required the Georgia House of Representatives to award Bond the seat to which he had been elected; it had been denied because of Bond's position on the Vietnam War. Bond has served as chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation's largest civil rights organization, since 1998. (© AP Images)

Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as Little Richard, was 18 in 1951 when he first won a talent contest and recording contract. But it was not until he recorded "Tutti Frutti" in 1955 that he began the string of hits that influenced artists as different as Elvis Presley, James Brown and Bob Dylan. He quit rock 'n' roll for several years to attend Oakwood College and become a minister in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He has since alternated between periods of flamboyant rock 'n' roll performances and the ministry and gospel singing. (© AP Images)

Alice Walker attended Spelman College in Atlanta for two years, becoming active in the civil rights movement, then transferred to Sarah Lawrence in New York City. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her novel The Color Purple and has won many other awards for her poetry, fiction and essays. Walker has taught African-American women's studies to college students at Wellesley, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Yale, Brandeis and the University of California at Berkeley. (© AP Images)

Ralph Ellison grew up in Oklahoma and attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama on a music scholarship. Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953 and made him famous. Ellison's articulate, educated narrator finds his identity in the complex, cohesive history and culture of black America, providing -- in the view of some observers -- a road map for all Americans. An important essayist and accomplished sculptor, musician and photographer, Ellison died in 1994 without completing his much-anticipated second novel, Juneteenth. (© AP Images)

Born the grandson of slaves, Douglas Wilder graduated from Virginia Union University in Richmond with a degree in chemistry. During the Korean War, he won the Bronze Star for heroism in combat. He studied law at Howard University in Washington and passed the bar in Virginia. He entered state politics in 1969. In 1990, Wilder became the first elected African-American governor in United States history, serving as governor of Virginia until 1994. On January 2, 2005, he was sworn in as mayor of Richmond, the state capital. (© AP Images)

As a student at Spelman College, Marian Wright Edelman was involved in the civil rights movement and voter registration drives. She studied law at Yale and became the first African-American woman to practice law in Mississippi. In 1973 Edelman established the Children's Defense Fund as a voice for poor, minority and handicapped children. She has received many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize and a MacArthur "genius" grant. (© AP Images)