MUW Founders

The 1884 charter named the school plainly: the Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls of the State of Mississippi. Sallie Reneau had won legislative approval for such a college in the 1860s and 1870s, without any money. About a decade later Olivia Hastings and Annie Peyton joined the push, lobbying legislators and editors, and one of their arguments was that Black women were already being educated in Reconstruction-era colleges. John McCaleb Martin drafted the bill, which passed the Senate by one vote and the House by two. Classes opened in October 1885.

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 Desegregation — steps away
• Mississippi State College for Women — steps away
• Missionary Union Baptist Church — 0.4 mi
• Walter "Red" Barber — 0.4 mi