"Where Courtesy Counts!" Only a select few individuals across the globe are privileged to become alumni of Southern University, and fully grasp the meaning of the university's time-honored hymn, "I'm so glad I go to Southern U." Until you have lived the Southern University experience, everything else in life is, simply, unfulfilling.

Southern is among the most diverse campuses of higher education in the United States and that diversity is the essence that this great institution was founded on.

Southern University is the nation's only historically black land-grant university system in the United States. Delegates P.B.S. Pinchback, T.T. Allain, T.B. Stamps, and Henry Demas sponsored the movement in Louisiana for an equal opportunity institution of higher learning in the 1879 Louisiana State Constitutional Convention. Their efforts resulted in Legislative Act 87 in April 1880, establishing a university charter that provided for a faculty of "arts and letters" competent in "every branch of liberal education." The charter sought to open doors of state higher education to all "persons competent and deserving." Southern opened in New Orleans with 12 students and later, with the passage of the 1890 Morrill Act, was reorganized to receive a federal land-grant, providing for the University's reestablishment at a new site.

In 1912, Legislative Act 118 authorized the closing of Southern University in New Orleans and, in 1974, the "new" Southern University opened, just north of Baton Rouge in what was then Scotlandville, Louisiana. Since then new campuses in New Orleans and in Shreveport have been authorized, through Legislative Act 28 and 42 in 1956 and 1964, respectively.

Southern University, Baton Rouge, today is a comprehensive institution providing four-year baccalaureate, graduate, professional, and doctoral degree programs.

Southern offers 42 bachelor's, 20 master's, five doctoral and three associate degree programs. On average, an estimated 9,000 students are enrolled at Southern University, Baton Rouge. More African American graduates, together in engineering, technology, computer science, and mathematics have earned their degrees from Southern University than from any other university in the nation. The University's Baton Rouge campus maintains a higher rate of the mandatory accreditation than do Louisiana state universities on whole.

Athletically, Southern continues it dominance as the unquestioned leader in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, winning the "Barbara Jacket/Sadie Magee Award" for tops among the women's sports, and tied Jackson State for the "C.D. Henry Award", signifying the top men's program, the during the 2004-05 athletic year. With this accomplishment, Southern was awarded the SWAC's coveted Dr. James Frank Commissioner's Cup, awarded to the conference's most outstanding athletic program, for the fourth consecutive year. In the 13-year history of the Commissioner's Cup, Southern's Department of Athletics has received this distinction of the SWAC's elite program 11 times.