Tougaloo College is located in Jackson, Mississippi and sits on 500 acres of a former plantation along West County Line Road. It was founded in 1869 by The American Missionary Association of New York with the purpose to educate newly freed African Americans. Like many HBCUs founded during this time period, it started out as a place to train African Americans to become teachers. The school writes of its own origins,
The roots of Tougaloo’s story stretch back to the freedom struggle aboard La Amistad. In 1846, the American Missionary Association (AMA) was founded from that same abolitionist movement, linking education with liberation and establishing Black colleges across the South. With support from Reconstruction-era agencies, the AMA acquired 500 acres of the former Boddie plantation to create a school “irrespective of religious tenets and conducted on the most liberal principles.” Chartered by the Mississippi Legislature in 1871, Tougaloo University grew from its first classrooms and cultivated fields into a lasting college of learning and liberation.
The school summarizes its history during the 1900s – 1960s, writing,
By the turn of the twentieth century, Tougaloo had transformed from a small missionary school into a flourishing community of scholarship, culture, and social life. Its campus expanded in both spirit and scale—new halls, chapels, and laboratories rose alongside growing traditions in music, athletics, and civic engagement. Students trained not only for teaching but for leadership, creativity, and public service. Through the first half of the century, Tougaloo’s classrooms, choirs, and courts reflected a larger purpose: the building of minds and movements that would one day change Mississippi, and the nation.
It was also in the 1960s Tougaloo had become a civil rights powerhouse. In 1961, a group of Tougaloo College students dubbed the Tougaloo Nine engaged in a series of powerful demonstrations of civil disobedience by staging sit-ins at several public segregated institutions around Mississippi. These students were assembled by Civil Rights Legend Medgar Evers and trained in nonviolent resistance and members of the NAACP Youth Council. More about the Tougaloo Nine (The Neglected Tale of the Tougaloo Nine and their 1961 Read-In)
On May 28th, 1963, Tougaloo faculty a students staged what would become the most violently attacked sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. Tougaloo Professor John Salter speaks of the violence of that sit-in, stating, “I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. FBI agents were observing inside but took no action.” Learn more here May 28, 1963: Woolworth Sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi – Zinn Education Project
Today, Tougaloo College offers 27 majors with modern minors like Data Science and Cybersecurity. Tougaloo is the home of the Bulldogs! The college offers sports like basketball, baseball, track and field, cross country, golf, tennis, softball, and volleyball.
Notable Alumni:
Reuben V. Anderson: The first Black judge to sit on the Mississippi State Supreme Court.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: A-List Actress that has appeared in over 20 major motion pictures.
Zeita Merchant: Current sitting Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Personnel Service Center. In 2024 she became the first female African-American to be appointed rear admiral lower half.
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland: Civil Rights Activist and First White student to enroll at Tougaloo College
Constance Slaughter-Harvey: First Black female judge in the state of Mississippi.
Hakeem Oluseyi: Astrophysicist, Cosmologist, Inventor, Educator, Veteran, Author
