Longwood University

Longwood University is a public university in Farmville, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1839 as Farmville Female Seminary and colloquially known as Longwood or Longwood College, it is the third-oldest public university in Virginia and one of the hundred oldest institutions of higher education in the United States. Previously a female seminary, normal school, and college, Longwood became coeducational in 1976 and gained university status on July 1, 2002.

Three undergraduate academic colleges—the Cook-Cole College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business and Economics, and the College of Education and Human Services—supported by the Cormier Honors College and coupled with the College of Graduate and Professional Studies serve an enrollment of 5,096.

In early April 1865, armies under the command of Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant marched past the north end of campus on Lee's retreat to Appomattox just days before the end of the American Civil War. At the south end of campus lies the former Robert Russa Moton High School, site of the historic 1951 student strike that became one of the five court cases culminating in the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. And Israel Hill, a community of free African Americans that formed around the turn of the 19th century, is two miles from campus.