The University provides baccalaureate and graduate studies that are compatible with the times to all qualified, capable individuals who are interested in further developing their professional, technical and scholastic skills and competencies.

It operates in the 3-fold function of research, teaching and public service, including extension. A center of substance and excellence, Alabama A&M University provides a setting for the emergence of scholars, thinkers, leaders, and other contributors to society.

Alabama A and M is a 4-year, state-supported, coed, liberal arts institution. Organized through the passage of a bill by the Alabama State Legislature, Alabama A and M opened as the Huntsville Normal School in 1875. The 1st president was William Hooper Council, a former slave. The name was changed to State Normal Industrial School at Huntsville in 1878. An appropriation from the Morrill Act, the 2nd land grant act that Congress passed in 1890, gave the institution the status of a land-grant institution. It was renamed the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in 1891.