Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 118

The present-day Alcorn State University in Mississippi began on the site of Oakland College, a school for whites established by the Presbyterian Church. This school was closed at the beginning of the Civil War to allow its students to fight for the Confederacy. After the war, the property was sold to the state and renamed Alcorn University in 1871 to honor Mississippi Governor James L. Alcorn. Hiram R. Revels, the first African American senator, resigned from Congress to become the school’s first president. There were eight faculty members and 179 students at the time. Early financial support included $50,000 cash for 10 consecutive years from the state legislature and $113,400 for agricultural and mechanical programs, making the school a land-grant college from its earliest days. The name of the institution was changed to Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1878, as the state emphasized industrial training as the primary role for the institution. Originally intended for black men only, the college began admitting women in 1895. In 1974 university status was granted and the name was changed to Alcorn State University. During the 1960s many Alcorn students and alumni made great sacrifices to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. Conservative president J.D. Boyd dismissed over 700 students in April 1964 after a non-violent demonstration; former student Charles Moore was murdered during Freedom Summer of the same year, while Alcorn alumni Ernestine Denham Talbert, C.J. Duckworth, Professor N. R. Burger, and Ariel Burns were educators as well as key activists. In February 1968 Alcorn students Percell Rials and James Bishop were expelled by Boyd for supporting the congressional campaign of Charles Evers; subsequent protests led to beatings and shootings of other students when the Mississippi Highway Patrol was called to the campus. Two months later the campus erupted again after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the school closed for the remainder of the spring semester.

Fletcher F. Moon