Tougaloo College

History

Tougaloo College was founded in 1869 by the American Missionary Association on 500 acres of land purchased from the Davis Bend plantation near Jackson. Its original mission was to educate freedpeople in Mississippi — to provide the basic education, teacher training, and agricultural knowledge that the formerly enslaved population had been systematically denied. The AMA established Tougaloo with a commitment to racial equality unusual even among Northern religious organizations of the period.

Tougaloo's location in the heart of Mississippi's Black Belt gave it a unique position in the landscape of Black education in the Jim Crow South. The college maintained its commitment to academic rigor and to the free exchange of ideas at a time when such commitments were actively dangerous. Its library was one of the few places in Mississippi where Black Mississippians could read books freely and without harassment.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Tougaloo became the center of civil rights organizing in Mississippi. The college's students, faculty, and administration worked alongside the NAACP, SNCC, CORE, and the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) to register Black voters, challenge segregation, and document white supremacist violence. Tougaloo students conducted the first sit-in in Mississippi history in 1961 at the Jackson Public Library.

Medgar Evers and other NAACP leaders visited Tougaloo frequently, and the campus served as a refuge for civil rights workers who could not safely stay in Jackson's Black neighborhoods. Anne Moody, whose memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi is one of the essential documents of the movement, was a Tougaloo student.

The 1961 Tougaloo Nine and the Library Sit-In

On March 27, 1961, nine Tougaloo College students walked into the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library and asked for books. They were arrested. The 'Tougaloo Nine' — as they became known — were charged with breach of the peace and held in jail. Their action was the first sit-in in Mississippi history. Bail was posted by the NAACP. The students were convicted. Their conviction was eventually overturned. The action they took — nine students in a state library, asking to read — was an act of extraordinary courage in a state where Black people were routinely murdered for far less.

Notable Alumni

A representative selection. Alumni records are verified against institutional and published sources. Unverified entries are flagged explicitly — we do not fabricate records.

Recent Developments

In March 2026 Tougaloo named Dr. Corey Wiggins as its fifteenth president, the culmination of a national search to succeed Dr. Donzell Lee. A Mississippi native and Alcorn State University alumnus, Wiggins took office on July 1, 2026, charged with expanding enrollment, securing the college's long-term financial sustainability, and elevating its national profile. In his first weeks he convened enrollment-focused events and public remarks emphasizing that the college's civil-rights legacy and its growth agenda are complementary rather than competing priorities (Mississippi Today, July 2026).

Tougaloo enrolled roughly 1,300 students (1,286 undergraduates) in fall 2024 across more than thirty programs, a scale typical of small private liberal-arts HBCUs. Its outsized historical significance — as the intellectual headquarters of the Mississippi civil rights movement — continues to anchor an institutional identity that far exceeds its size.

Source notes: John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (1994); Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968); Tougaloo College archives; Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (1995); Tougaloo College presidential search announcements (2025–2026); Mississippi Today reporting on the 2025–2026 presidential transition.