Accreditation requirement for HBCUs

According to the Higher Education Act of 1965, a school has to have been established and accredited prior to 1964 to be designated as an HBCU. Do any of you know who accredited Virginia University of Lynchburg prior to 2003? They've had a few name changes, but I couldn't find anything under those other names. There's an article from the 2010s that says that their TRACS accreditation is the first time they've been accredited by an organization recognized by the Department of Education. They also were designated an HBCU fairly recently.

 

This is what I could find. Virginia Theological Seminary and College was recognized by the State Board of Education of Virginia as a junior college. According to their application to be designated as a national historical place (which they ended up fighting so they could construct new buildings), the school lost "part of its accreditation" in 1933. I'm not sure what that means.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED542090.pdf

 

I didn't know how old the accrediting bodies were.

NEASC - 1885
MSCHE - 1887
SACSCOC - 1895
NCA (now HLC) - 1895
WASC - 1962

The American Council on Education was established in 1918.

 

Add the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities - 1917

 

Technically the wording isn't that the school needed to be accredited.

https://sites.ed.gov/whhbcu/one-hundred-and-five-historically-black-colleges-and-universities/

…any historically black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans, and that is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting agency or association determined by the Secretary [of Education] to be a reliable authority as to the quality of training offered or is, according to such an agency or association, making reasonable progress toward accreditation.”

Based on this, the Secretary could have considered any other association they felt would have been a reliable authority. Perhaps the state authorization you mentioned was enough.