Kentucky State University has the most culturally diverse student body and faculty among all higher education institutions in Kentucky and one of the most diverse in the nation. In a typical year, the institution's student body is equally divided between African American and White students. About two percent of the students come from 14 countries. The faculty is comprised of 35 percent African Americans, 50 percent White and 15 percent from other ethnic groups.

In 1636, the Harvard School opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to provide education for divinity students in the Massachusetts colony. In a similar but different fashion, another institution of higher learning opened 251 years after that important occasion in American intellectual and cultural history.

On October 22, 1887, dedicatory exercises were held in Frankfort, Kentucky for the State Normal School for Colored Persons, which had been sanctioned by the 1886 Kentucky General Assembly. The opening of the school and its successive evolution into Kentucky State University in 1972 is another saga that is largely untold. Its progress amid criticism from unfriendly quarters is not unusual for historically black institutions. However, it is unusual for such an institution to serve in a state that persistently lost its black population from 1900 forward.

It is also unusual for what was founded as a black institution to thrive and prosper despite repeated efforts to close it, thus depriving students of all races, whom Kentucky State University now serves, of an opportunity to acquire a college education based on academic excellence.

Excerpt from Onward and Upward: A Centennial History of Kentucky State University 1886-1986 by John A. Hardin.