MUW Desegregation

The six women who integrated the college in 1966 came from one school. Three, from R. E. Hunt High School, entered as undergraduates, and three Hunt teachers enrolled as graduate students; the university remembers the group as the Fabulous Six. The residence halls stayed segregated until 1968, so the undergraduates lived off campus, apart from the community they had come to join. The college they entered had been chartered in 1884 for white girls only. Jacqueline Edwards, who finished a master's in 1968, became its first Black graduate.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — 0.7 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 — 7.1 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
• Mississippi State College for Women — steps away
• Friendship Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Missionary Union Baptist Church — 0.4 mi