Alcorn State University (1871)

Alcorn State University (1871). Windsor Battlefield Tour. , Oakland College managed to continue operation until 1861. In 1871 the buildings were purchased for $42,500 by the State in order that a school might be established for blacks. Oakland College reorganized as Chamberlain-Hunt Academy and relocated to Port Gibson. Incorporated on May 13, 1871, Alcorn University was named for James Alcorn, the twenty-eighth governor of Mississippi, who first suggested that Oakland College be acquired to establish a normal school for training black teachers. Hiram Reveis, the first Negro to be elected to the United States Senate, was selected as the school's first president, serving from 1871 to 1882. Under Reveis, an agricultural department was created, and the name was changed to Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, the first land grant college for blacks in the United States (1878). Alcorn became the first college which had awarded degrees to black as well as white students. The school continues to be maintained as one of Mississippi's three land grant institutions and was awarded university status in 1974.