Located in Baltimore, Maryland, Morgan State University was originally founded in 1867 as the Centenary Biblical Institute by the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, training young men for the ministry. Later, broadening its mission to educate both men and women as teachers, it was renamed and went through several modifications including a name change to Morgan College in 1890, going from a private to a public institution when the state of Maryland purchased it in response to a study by a state commission that found that Maryland needed to provide more opportunities for its black citizens (1939), to receiving university designation (1975), to becoming part of the University of Maryland System in 1988.

   Nevertheless, Morgan State University has always played been an important role in the higher education system in Baltimore, earning the distinction as one of the top ten public campuses nationally in receipt of applications from African-American students, it is one of the leading public campuses nationally in awarding bachelor's degrees to Blacks who go on to receive a doctorate from a U.S. university, and it awards the highest number of baccalaureates to Black students of all institutions of higher learning in the state.