Millsaps College - Important Dates in Millsaps History

Important Dates in Millsaps History

• 1890 - Major Reuben Webster Millsaps founds the college with a personal gift of $50,000.
• 1901 - Millsaps builds the first golf course in Mississippi.
• 1902 - Mary Letitia Holloman becomes the first female graduate of Millsaps.
• 1908 - Sing-Ung Zung of Soochow, China, becomes the first international student to graduate from Millsaps.
• 1914 - Old Main, one of the first buildings on campus, burns and is replaced by Murrah Hall.
• 1916 - Major Millsaps dies and is buried on campus.
• 1931 - The first night football game in Mississippi is played on the Millsaps campus between the Majors and Mississippi A&M (now Mississippi State University).
• 1936 - Millsaps College absorbs bankrupt Grenada College.
• 1943 - Johnny Carson attends Millsaps for V-12 naval officer training, entertaining his comrades with a magic and humor act.
• 1944 - Louis H. Wilson, born in Brandon, Mississippi and who graduated from the college in 1941, receives the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Guam during World War II. Wilson was also promoted to General and became the 26th Commandant of the Marine Corps in 1975. He was the first Marine Corps Commandant to serve full time on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• 1953 - Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis judge a Millsaps beauty contest.
• 1965 - Millsaps becomes the first all-white college in Mississippi to voluntarily desegregate.
• 1967 - Robert Kennedy speaks at the college about obligations of young Americans to give back to their country.
• 1975 - Jimmy Carter speaks to Millsaps students about the crisis in the Middle East.
• 1988 - Millsaps initiates the first campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi.
• 1989 - Millsaps becomes the first school in Mississippi to have a chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.