Congregational Church founded Straight University on June 12, 1868.
Straight University also offered professional training, including a law department from 1874 to 1886. Its graduates participated in local and national Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction era civil rights struggles.
Straight University was renamed Straight College in 1915, to better reflect the limitations of its curriculum.
=== Union Normal School/New Orleans University ===
The Union Normal School was established on July 8, 1868, by the Freedman's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to train teachers. The Society also recruited teachers in the North to work in the South educating freedmen and their children.
In addition to Straight University, the AMA helped found several other historically black colleges and universities, such as Clark Atlanta University, Fisk University, Hampton University, Howard University (with Freedmen's Bureau), Huston-Tillotson University, LeMoyne-Owen College, Talladega College, and Tougaloo College. …
