Tillotson College

Tillotson College was founded in 1875 in Austin, Texas with the help of George Jeffrey Tillotson, a Congregational minister from Connecticut. In 1877, the American Missionary Association of Congregational Churches (currently operating as the United Church of Christ) issued a charter for the newly named Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute as a co-educational school, but the name change only lasted until 1897 when it was once again named Tillotson College. The college was recognized as a junior college in 1925, and then a senior college in 1931 when it discontinued teaching high school level courses. Tillotson served the African Americans in Austin as a women’s college from 1926 through 1935.

Tillotson College merged with another black college in Austin, Samuel Huston College, in 1952 to form Huston-Tillotson College. The two institutions agreed to be located on the site of the former Tillotson College located on Bluebonnet Hill. Huston-Tillotson College remained a predominately all black college after the merger, although enrollment was not restricted by race. The college operates under both the American Missionary Association of the United Church of Christ, and the Board of Education of the United Methodist Church. Huston-Tillotson reached university status in 2000 under the institutions fifth president and was renamed Huston-Tillotson University.
 

Handbook of Texas Online, "Tillotson College,". ; "Huston-Tillotson University." In Historically Black Colleges and Universities: An Encyclopedia, by F. Erik Brooks, and Glenn L. Starks. Greenwood, 2011.