By that time, Tuskegee University had burst beyond its historic role as a rural school for teachers, veterinarians, agronomists, and business executives. Within its sprawling campus today, one finds the nation's only aerospace-science program at a historically black college, as well as a renowned center for bioethics in research and health.

The latter was established following the discovery of a 40-year-long experiment by the U.S. Public Health Service in which 399 mostly illiterate black men in the county that includes Tuskegee were deliberately infected with the venereal disease syphilis.

Modern times

University president Payton says the shock that many people display when they come to the modern Tuskegee campus amuses him.

"I'm not sure what they expected to find," he says. "Chicken coops and pigpens tended by folk with baggy trousers and suspenders?

VOA Photo - T. LandphairThis statue, titled, “Lifting the Veil,” is a centerpiece of the Tuskegee campus. It depicts Booker T. Washington lifting the veil of ignorance from a former slave.

"Clearly they do not come here with the expectation that they will find programs reaching 50 or more sciences and the liberal arts and engineering, biomedicine, veterinary medicine, nursing - the cutting-edge disciplines that relate to research on human beings and the new challenges those very successes present."

Asked to assess the state of black America as he prepares to retire after 29 years on the job, Payton says he rejoices that ever-increasing numbers of African Americans go to, and thrive in, college. But he says this achievement is more than offset by a high-school drop-out rate among African Americans of more than 50 percent.