Our History

Tougaloo College

Where History Meets the Future

Tougaloo College is a nationally respected HBCU and liberal arts college on 500 acres along West County Line Road at the northern edge of Jackson, Mississippi. Rooted in faith, sustained by independence, we’ve paired intellect with moral courage since 1869—teaching, organizing, and opening doors far beyond our gates. From chapel talks to laboratories, from porches to picket lines, Tougaloo made learning a practice of freedom—and still does.

Founding (1841-1900)

A Founding Rooted in Freedom

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.

Growing (1900-1960)

Growth, Resilience, and Renewal

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.

Civil Rights (1960s)

Campus as Catalyst

Between 1960 and 1970, Tougaloo College became far more than a campus—it was a command center for conscience. In an era when Mississippi stood at the heart of segregation’s resistance, Tougaloo stood at the heart of freedom’s advance. Students, faculty, and allies transformed classrooms into workshops for democracy, dormitories into safe houses for activists, and Woodworth Chapel into a sanctuary for the nation’s moral debate. Here, young people risked expulsion, arrest, and violence to test the limits of justice. National leaders—from Martin Luther King Jr. to Robert F. Kennedy and Fannie Lou Hamer—found in Tougaloo a rare meeting ground where intellect, faith, and protest converged. Out of this crucible of courage emerged not only landmark demonstrations—the Tougaloo Nine, and the Woolworth Sit-In, but also enduring partnerships and academic innovations that redefined the meaning of higher education.