Mississippi State College for Women

The college carried this name from 1920 to 1974, and its best-known lawsuit came five years after the name changed. In 1979 Joe Hogan, a registered nurse in Columbus, applied to the nursing school's bachelor's program and was refused because he was a man. The Fifth Circuit ruled for him, and on July 1, 1982, the Supreme Court agreed, 5 to 4, in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, with Sandra Day O'Connor writing. The ruling did not make the school coeducational by itself; its trustees then ordered it to admit qualified men to every program.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — 0.6 mi
  The 1875 Episcopal rectory where Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, moved to Main Street in the 1990s and now Columbus's welcome center and a National Literary Landmark.
• Waverley Mansion — 7.0 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 15 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  A 48,000-acre refuge of bottomland forest and lakes in Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston counties, rebuilt from worn-out farmland, with red-cockaded woodpeckers, alligators and winter eagles.

More markers nearby

• MUW Founders — steps away
• MUW Desegregation — steps away
• Friendship Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• Walter "Red" Barber — 0.4 mi