For almost 50 years, Medgar Evers College has been educating the central Brooklyn area. In celebration of Black History Month, News 12 takes a look back at how the school got off the ground.

Medgar Evers was founded just seven years after its namesake civil rights activist was assassinated in Mississippi. Many area residents at the time voiced the need for higher education.

"The city was predominantly, in a lot of communities, black and Latino, but when you look into high education, they were low enrolled ... and really there was not a school in central Brooklyn, where it really reflected what Brownsville was looking like, what Bedford-Stuyvestant was looking like," says Director of Student Enrollment Jeffrey Sigler.

The school started off with 1,000 students enrolled, and now has close to 7,000. It welcomes all students but focuses on students of color.

The diversity of major has also changed since the 1970s.

"When you think about what really is hurting many of our communities of color, something like an environmental science program where you're studying all those issues that affect us as a people," says Sigler.

The school continues to focus on the activism for which Evers was known, keeping his legacy alive through its students.