Eighteen contributing buildings and one contributing site fill the 26-acre heart of campus you have entered, the Alabama State University Historic District. Many of the buildings you see embrace the Colonial Revival style, and this ensemble was recognized on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on August 25, 1994, and added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 8, 1998. The story here reaches back to 1867, when former slaves Joey Pinch, Thomas Speed, Nickolas Dale, James Childs, Thomas Lee, John Freeman, Nathan Levert, David Harris, and Alexander H. Curtis founded a school for African Americans in Marion called the Lincoln Normal School.
That institution became the direct predecessor of the State Normal School and University for the Education of Colored Teachers and Students established by the Alabama Legislature in 1873. In 1887 the school moved to Montgomery and was renamed the Alabama Colored Peoples University; classes were initially held at Beulah Baptist Church. After legal wrangling about state funding, the name changed to State Normal School of Colored Students in 1889.
Notice the Colonial Revival facades and campus landscape that still hold this layered history.