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Alcorn State University (Alcorn State, ASU or Alcorn) is a public historically black land-grant university adjacent to Lorman, Mississippi. It was founded in 1871 and was the first black land grant college established in the United States. The university is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

Alcorn State’s athletic teams known as the Braves and compete in the NCAA’s Division I. All teams compete as members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC).

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History

Alcorn State University was the first black land grant college in the country. Mississippi’s Reconstructionist legislature, dominated by Republicans sympathetic to the cause of educating the formerly enslaved, was established on the site of Oakland College, a college that had gone defunct due to the Civil War. Alcorn University started with what is recognized as three historic buildings.

United States Senator Hiram R. Revels resigned his seat when he accepted the position as Alcorn’s first president. The state legislature provided $50,000 in cash for ten successive years for the establishment and overall operations of the college. The state also granted Alcorn three-fifths of the proceeds earned from the sale of 30,000 acres (12,000 ha) of land scrip for agricultural or land grant colleges under federal legislation. The land was sold for $188,928 with Alcorn receiving a share of $113,400. This money was to be used solely to support the agricultural and mechanical components of the college, which Congress wanted to develop nationally. From its beginning, Alcorn State University was a land-grant college. After a group of white Democrats known as Redeemers took over the legislature, Alcorn’s appropriation was slashed by almost 90 percent, to $5,500 per year, and an all-white board of trustees was appointed.

In 1878, the name Alcorn University was changed to Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. The university’s original 225 acres (0.91 km) of land have been expanded to develop a 1,700 acres (6.9 km) campus. The goals for the college set by the Mississippi legislature following the Reconstruction era emphasized training for blacks rather than academic education. The school, like other black schools during these years, was less a college than a vocational school intended to prepare students for the agricultural economy of the state and of most of their hometowns.

At first the school was exclusively for black males, but women were admitted in 1895. Today, women outnumber men at the university 1800 to 1200. Alcorn began with eight faculty members in 1871. Today the faculty and staff number more than 500. The student body has grown from 179 mostly local male students to more than 4,000 students from all over the world.

In 1974, Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College was renamed Alcorn State University, representing the development of its programs. Governor William L. Waller signed House Bill 298 granting university status to Alcorn and the other state-supported colleges. Alcorn had already become a more diversified university, with graduate programs. It provides an undergraduate education that enables students to continue their work in graduate and professional schools, engage in teaching, and enter other professions. It also provides graduate education to equip students for further training in specialized fields.

In 1994 Jay Searcy of the Philadelphia Inquirer said that except for its football team, Evers, and “an occasional Olympic athlete,” “Alcorn rarely gets mentioned outside the state of Mississippi” although attention on the university increased after Steve McNair made athletic successes.

In 2020, MacKenzie Scott donated $25 million to Alcorn State. Her donation is the largest single gift in Alcorn State’s history.

Alcorn State is accredited, with seven schools and degree programs in more than 50 areas, including a nursing and a Master of Business Administration program. The facilities number approximately 80 modern structures with an approximate value of $71 million.

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See also