What began as a dream more than 146 years ago is today a living legacy of determination, commitment and success. The Southern University System was created in 1974 by Louisiana constitutional mandate, which fashioned it into the nation’s only historically Black 1890 Land-Grant University system. Presently, the system is composed of five institutions: Southern University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Baton Rouge (SUBR), founded in 1880; Southern University Law Center (SULC), founded in 1947; Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO), founded in 1956; Southern University Shreveport (SUSLA), founded in 1964; and the Southern University Cooperative Extension Program, founded in 1972; which became the fifth component of the system in 2001 and is now the Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center (SUAREC).