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Tuskegee Trains the Majority of the United States’ Black Veterinarians

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Veterinary students examine a Doberman pinscher dog at Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive—Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ( LC-DIG-highsm-05955 )

Of the country’s 33 accredited veterinary colleges, only one is on a historically Black campus: Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine in Alabama. According to Tuskegee, more than 70 percent of Black veterinarians in the United States received a degree from its veterinary college.

But that statistic tells only part of the story. Of the United States’ more than 124,000 veterinarians, the percentage who are Black hovers around 2 percent, despite a Black population in the United States of about 14 percent. Roughly 70 percent of American households have at least one pet.

The Tuskegee program was founded in 1945 by Frederick Douglas Patterson to provide opportunities to Black students who wanted to study veterinary medicine but could not because of segregation.

Today Tuskegee’s veterinary medicine program is one of the most diverse in the country. In addition to producing 70 percent of Black vets, it also graduates about 10 percent of veterinarians of Hispanic heritage in the country.