North Carolina Central University was founded by James E. Shepard as the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua in the Hayti District. It was chartered in 1909 as a private institution and opened on July 5, 1910. Along with other progressives, Woodrow Wilson, the future U.S. President, contributed some private support for the school's founding. The school was sold and reorganized in 1915, becoming the National Training School; it was supported by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, a philanthropist of New York who was particularly concerned about education. It supported Black teacher development in the Jim Crow era, a time when funding and support for Black education by southern states was severely limited.