Named after Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Cultural House is used for sponsored activities and functions of MSU and the African American Alumni Association.

About Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was born in 1883 in Henderson North Carolina. In 1888 her family moved to Massachusetts where she attended a teachers college before returning to North Carolina to work at the Bethany Institute, in Guilford County.

In 1902, after the Bethany Institute closed, Charlotte Hawkins Brown established the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, near Greensboro, NC. Early on, Palmer Institute’s primary function was to prepare students in agricultural and manual training, however the school later evolved into a well known elite school for the sons and daughters of affluent African Americans.