public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Houston, Texas, U.S. A historically black university, it continues to have an enrollment that is predominantly African American. It grants undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees within colleges of liberal arts and behavioral sciences, science and technology, education, and pharmacy and health sciences; the Graduate School; the Jesse H. Jones School of Business; and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law. The Robert James Terry Library houses the Heartman Collection of African American history as well as the archives of alumna Barbara C. Jordan (Jordan, Barbara C.), U.S. congresswoman in 1972–78. Research is conducted at the Center for Excellence in Urban Education, the Research Centers in Minority Institutions, and the Mickey Leland Center on World Hunger and Peace. In 1973 the university redefined its mission to include an emphasis on urban issues. Total enrollment is approximately 7,000 students.

The state legislature established the institution in 1947 as Texas State University for Negroes, replacing Houston College for Negroes, which had been founded in 1927. The institution was renamed Texas Southern University in 1951. When Heman M. Sweatt, a black postal worker from Houston, filed suit in 1946 after being denied admission into the University of Texas (Texas, University of) School of Law, the state legislature responded by creating a “separate but equal” law school for blacks at Texas State University in 1947. The law school opened in Austin and moved to Houston after one year; in 1976 it was named for Thurgood Marshall (Marshall, Thurgood), the U.S. Supreme Court justice who, as a lawyer, successfully argued Sweatt's case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1950.