Lorman, Mississippi · Founded 1871 · Braves and Lady Braves (mascot character: Bravehawk)
“The nation's first Black land-grant college, on a quiet reservation in southwest Mississippi — 150-plus years of Braves, Dyn-O-Mite, and civil rights history.”
SOD performs 'One Chance' at the 2025 Louis Crews Classic — the band in peak modern show-style form.
Full halftime show from the 2025 home game against Mississippi Valley State in Lorman.
SOD performs T-Lo's 'All Day' at the 2016 home game vs. Southern — a mid-2010s snapshot of the band at its biggest.
The band marches Mardi Gras' Endymion Parade in New Orleans, continuing a Big Easy tradition that goes back to the 1975 Superdome first.
Episode 3 of the band's own 2025 documentary series — freshmen meet 'Big Zee,' Golden Girls talk about the grind of band life.
The post-game fifth-quarter stand battle against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, shot by the band's own Dyn-O-Mite Media crew.
SOD at the 2026 HBCU Labor Day Classic Battle of the Bands — the crowd reaction that built their national reputation.
Full field show from a 2026 Battle of the Bands, filmed by the band's official media team.
2026 halftime show against Southern Miss with the Golden Girls front and center.
Fifth-quarter battle vs. Texas Southern — the SWAC band-rivalry culture at full volume.
The 1994 Heisman campaign reel for 'Air' McNair — the season that put a tiny Mississippi HBCU on the national map.
Career highlight reel spanning the Alcorn State years through the NFL MVP season — the school's most famous alumnus.
Class of 1952 (business administration) — NAACP's first Mississippi field secretary; assassinated June 12, 1963; the university's Heritage Village residence halls bear his name.
Enrolled at Alcorn A&M as a freshman, met Medgar on her first day, married him in 1951; after his assassination she became a civil rights leader in her own right and the first woman to chair the NAACP.
Quarterback 1991–94 — 1994 Walter Payton Award winner, third in Heisman voting, all-time FCS leader in total offense (16,823 yards); drafted 3rd overall in 1995 by the Houston Oilers, 2003 NFL co-MVP with the Tennessee Titans.
Class of 1999 (seventh-round pick, Packers) — Green Bay's all-time leader in receptions (743) and receiving yards (10,137); inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in 2017.
Class of 1980 — second in school history with 20 interceptions; head coach of the Minnesota Vikings (2010–13) and longtime NFL defensive coordinator.
Played 1977–79, helped win the 1979 SWAC title; the 23rd overall pick in the 1980 NFL Draft — the first Brave ever taken in the first round; played in Super Bowl XV with the Eagles.
Class of 1977 — longtime NFL tight end with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Class of 1994 — 11th overall pick in the 1994 NFL Draft (Chicago Bears), the highest-drafted defensive Brave before McNair.
Class of 1952 — former NFL player with the New York Giants; the football stadium that bears his name alongside coach Marino Casem.
Class of 1992 — NFL wide receiver, fifth-round pick of the New Orleans Saints.
Class of 1992 — NFL wide receiver with the Denver Broncos.
Class of 1971 — former NFL defensive back with the Houston Oilers.
Class of 2009 — CFL star and former NFL receiver.
Enrolled at Alcorn A&M after graduating high school at 15, spent one year before transferring to Elizabeth City State; went on to write Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
1870s — attorney, voting-rights activist, and Mississippi legislator; one of the first African American lawyers to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court.
c. 1880s — journalist and politician, one of the first Black people to serve on county and state delegations in Seattle, Washington.
Class of 1958 — mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.
Class of 1970 — Mississippi state senator.
Class of 1987 — executive director of the Mississippi NAACP.
Member of the North Carolina Senate from the 28th district.
Presbyterian educator Jeremiah Chamberlain founded Oakland College in 1830 as a college for white men, on the high ground of what is now Claiborne County. Its Greek Revival buildings — Oakland Chapel, Belles Lettres Hall, and two dormitories — still line the campus ridge and remain some of the oldest college structures in Mississippi. The school never recovered from the Civil War and closed for good in 1861, unable to reopen afterward.
On May 13, 1871, Mississippi's Reconstruction-era Republican legislature chartered Alcorn University on the abandoned Oakland College grounds, making it the first Black land-grant college established in the United States. The school was named for sitting governor James L. Alcorn. U.S. Senator Hiram R. Revels, the first African American to sit in the U.S. Senate, resigned his seat to become Alcorn's first president, and the legislature appropriated $50,000 a year for ten years plus three-fifths of the proceeds from 30,000 acres of federal land scrip — Alcorn's share was $113,400, dedicated to the agricultural and mechanical programs Congress wanted built nationwide.
Alcorn opened with just eight faculty members and 179 students, almost all of them local Black men, many of them the sons of formerly enslaved people. From the start the school carried a dual identity: a classical university chartered by idealists, and a land-grant institution meant to train farmers and mechanics. That tension between liberal education and vocational training would shape the school's politics for the next century.
When white Democrats known as Redeemers seized the state legislature, they slashed Alcorn's annual appropriation by nearly 90 percent — from $50,000 down to $5,500 a year — and installed an all-white board of trustees. The message was plain: the state would keep the school alive but starve it. Alcorn learned early how to survive on almost nothing, a habit of making do that alumni still talk about with pride.
In 1878 the legislature made Alcorn a formal land-grant institution and renamed it Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. The post-Reconstruction legislature's stated goal was blunt: train Black Mississippians for the agricultural economy rather than give them an academic education. Like other Black schools of the era, Alcorn functioned less as a college than as a vocational school preparing students for farm and trade work — a ceiling the school spent the next century pushing upward.
Women were first admitted to Alcorn in 1895, more than two decades after the school opened as an all-male institution. The school became fully coeducational in 1903. Among the women who would walk those dorm halls: Myrlie Beasley, who enrolled as a freshman in the early 1950s and met her future husband Medgar Evers on her very first day on campus.
Alcorn alumni Levi John Rowan and John Adams Martin took the presidency in the early 1900s and became the school's great builders. Rowan served from 1905 to 1911 and again from 1915 to 1934 — a 25-year run matched only once in school history — while Martin led from 1911 to 1915. Together they greatly improved the physical campus, adding classrooms and dormitories that carried the school through the leanest decades of Jim Crow.
Alcorn fielded its first football team in 1921, playing as an independent in the earliest years. The program drifted through the Gulf Coast Athletic Association and the South Central Athletic Conference before finding its permanent home in the Southwestern Athletic Conference in the early 1960s. Over a century later the Braves carry an all-time record above .500 — 502 wins against 396 losses and 38 ties.
Medgar Evers, a World War II Army veteran from Decatur, entered Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1948 and majored in business administration. He threw himself into campus life: debate team, college choir, football and track, editor of the campus newspaper and the yearbook, and a spot in Who's Who in American Colleges. As a junior he met freshman Myrlie Beasley; they married on December 24, 1951, and he graduated in 1952 — then went to Jackson in 1954 as the NAACP's first Mississippi field secretary, the job that made him a civil rights legend and cost him his life on June 12, 1963.
Alcorn joined the Southwestern Athletic Conference in the early 1960s (the school's records cite 1961; conference play followed immediately after), anchoring itself to the Black college football world for good. The Braves would go on to win more than a dozen SWAC championships and five Black college national titles. The league gave Alcorn its fiercest rival too: Jackson State, 80 miles up the road, in a feud the schools call the Soul Bowl.
Samuel Griffin arrived at Alcorn in the late 1960s and transformed a 35-to-40-member marching band into the show-style powerhouse he renamed the 'Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite' — he wanted, in his words, a catchy phrase that would catch the public's attention. The same year he founded the World Renowned Golden Girls, the first HBCU danceline to perform without twirling batons, who still call themselves 'The Mother of HBCU dancelines.' On the field that fall, the football Braves won the first of their Black college national championships.
Walter Washington took office in 1969 and stayed until 1994, the longest continuous presidency in Alcorn's history. He steered the school through desegregation's aftermath, the expansion of graduate programs, and the slow diversification of the student body. By the time he retired, Alcorn had grown from a small teachers-and-farmers college into a multi-school university with real research ambitions.
Governor William L. Waller signed House Bill 298 in 1974, granting university status to Alcorn and the state's other public colleges, and Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College became Alcorn State University. The new name matched reality: graduate programs were already running, and the school offered a full undergraduate education aimed at graduate school, teaching, and the professions. On the football field the Braves celebrated with another Black college national championship that same year.
The Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite became the first college band ever to perform in the New Orleans Superdome in 1975, the opening chapter of a decade of showcase appearances. Under Griffin the band marched Soldier Field in Chicago, the Astrodome in Houston, the Los Angeles Coliseum, Texas Stadium in Dallas, the Orange Bowl in Miami, and Giants Stadium in New Jersey. In 1977 the band marched in President Jimmy Carter's inaugural parade and performed at halftime for the Saints, Falcons, and Lions.
The 1984 Braves swept the SWAC championship and claimed another Black college national title, the program's fourth. The season ended in the NCAA Division I-AA quarterfinals with a 44-21 loss to Louisiana Tech — still one of the deepest playoff runs in school history. Alcorn's 1980s teams were loaded with future pros, including first-round draft pick Roynell Young (1980, Eagles) and Vikings cornerback Issiac Holt.
Quarterback Steve 'Air II' McNair arrived from Mount Olive, Mississippi, and turned tiny Lorman into the center of the college football world. He led Alcorn to SWAC titles in 1992 and 1994, never lost a home game at Jack Spinks Stadium in Lorman, and in 1994 threw for a then-FCS-record 5,799 yards with 57 touchdowns — winning the Walter Payton Award as the best player in the FCS and finishing third in the Heisman Trophy voting, the highest finish ever by an HBCU player at the time. He left as the all-time FCS leader in passing yards (14,496) and total offense (16,823), then went third overall in the 1995 NFL Draft to the Houston Oilers — the highest-drafted offensive player in HBCU history — and later co-won the 2003 NFL MVP with the Tennessee Titans.
Clinton Bristow Jr. became president in 1995 and led Alcorn through the payoff of the Ayers v. Mississippi desegregation lawsuit, which found the state had systematically underfunded its Black universities. Because Alcorn met the settlement's 10-percent diversity standard, it was the first of the three Black schools to draw money — nearly $28 million guaranteed over 20 years. Bristow broke ground on a $12 million dining hall, a new biotechnology facility, a redesigned business school, and an ecology research center, calling the dining hall the centerpiece of 'the new Alcorn.'
The Braves won the 2014 SWAC championship — the program's first in two decades — and claimed another Black college national title, their fifth. It launched the most dominant stretch in modern school history: SWAC championships in 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019, division titles in six of seven seasons, and three Celebration Bowl berths (2015, 2018, 2019) against North Carolina A&T. The Reservation was, for a half-decade, the capital of Black college football again.
Dr. Felecia M. Nave became Alcorn's 20th president in 2019, arriving with an engineering background and a facilities-first agenda. Her first fall brought a Home Depot-backed campus cleanup, a new WOW Café in the James L. Bolden Campus Union, a renovated Morris/Boykin Agricultural Science Building, and construction starts on a new Technology Classroom Building and a faculty-staff housing complex. She made the case plainly: a beautiful campus recruits students.
In 2020 philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donated $25 million to Alcorn State — then the largest single gift in the university's 149-year history. The unrestricted money landed as HBCUs nationwide were seeing a long-overdue wave of major giving, and Alcorn put it toward student success and institutional strength. Five years later Scott came back with $42 million more, the largest gift in school history by far.
Alcorn celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2021, with Congressman Bennie Thompson entering a tribute into the Congressional Record on the exact founding date, May 13. The citation ran through the milestones: the nation's first Black land-grant university, Hiram Revels resigning his Senate seat to lead it, Medgar Evers' class of 1952, Steve McNair's 1995 draft slot, and the only nursing program at an HBCU in Mississippi. The school marked the sesquicentennial as the second-oldest state-supported institution in Mississippi.
Dr. Tracy M. Cook, interim president through 2023, was named permanent president in 2024. The same year, band director Dr. Everson Martin learned the Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite had been selected to march in the 2025 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade — representing the entire state of Mississippi, the band's first time on that stage in its 55-plus-year history. Macy's handed the band $10,000 on the spot to kick off fundraising for the trip to New York.
Alcorn vs. Jackson State is the Soul Bowl, one of the SWAC's defining rivalries — two Mississippi HBCUs about 80 miles apart, playing for state bragging rights every fall. The game was once staged as the Capital City Classic in Jackson, but Alcorn ended the classic in 2012 and brought its home games back to Lorman. The McNair-era Braves tormented the Tigers in the 1990s, and the 2022 meeting drew national attention when Deion Sanders' undefeated Jackson State team rolled into Lorman to close the regular season. No Alcorn season feels complete without beating JSU.
🥁 Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite · since 1968
The Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite (SOD) run 190-plus members under four or five drum majors, with the current 'Funky Four' drum-major line dating to 1985. The Golden Girls have marched with the band since 1968 and bill themselves as the mother of all HBCU dancelines. SOD's identity is big brass, relentless percussion, and showmanship that made Alcorn a household name in Black college band culture — from NFL halftimes to the 2025 Macy's parade.
Founded the Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite name, the World Renowned Golden Girls (1968) — the first HBCU danceline without batons — and the Lady Purple Flashers (1977). He took a 35-member band to 200-plus, made it the first college band in the Superdome (1975), and marched Carter's 1977 inaugural parade. Retired December 2012 after 46 years, was named Director Emeritus, and died August 4, 2017.
An Alcorn alumnus (B.S. music education, 1995) who came over from Jackson State, Murray rebuilt the band to 250-plus members and got it voted into the Honda Battle of the Bands in 2013 and 2016. He later became associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, was Alcorn's 2023 Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year, and is now dean of graduate studies.
Rose from assistant director to interim director of bands in 2019 and then permanent director. A Southern University and UL-Lafayette trained educator, he sold Macy's on Alcorn's story and won the band its first-ever slot in the 2025 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, representing Mississippi.
Alcorn hosts eight of the nine NPHC organizations, and Greek life is a visible part of homecoming and the yard scene on the Reservation. The Omega Psi Phi chapter Eta (Third) is known as the 'Mighty Mother Chapter.'
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The 10-acre Alcorn State University Historic District — Oakland Chapel, Belles Lettres, Dormitories No. 2 and 3, Harmon Hall, Lanier Hall, the Administration Building and the President's House — was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Oakland Chapel itself is a National Historic Landmark, the 1838–1853 Greek Revival temple-front building with a hexastyle Doric portico that is the visual signature of the campus.
Flush with the first Ayers desegregation-settlement payments, Alcorn broke ground on a $12 million dining hall across from the library — billed as the centerpiece of 'the new Alcorn' — plus a biotechnology facility, a full redesign of the business school, and a USDA-funded ecology and research center. Three Natchez historic structures were also slated for renovation, and the old police station became an honors college.
Alcorn opened the Medgar Wiley Evers Heritage Village residential complex, named for the class-of-1952 civil rights martyr. Complexes A and B house men, C and D house women, putting Evers' name at the center of daily student life on the Reservation.
President Felecia Nave's first year brought two multi-million-dollar construction starts: a new Technology Classroom Building and a Faculty and Staff Housing Complex. Both were framed as recruiting tools — a campus that looks like the future keeps students and keeps faculty in remote Lorman.
A new retail dining option, the WOW Café — a casual American grill built around fresh chicken wings and global sauces — opened in the James L. Bolden Campus Union, with help from a Home Depot campus-beautification partnership that also refreshed grounds ahead of the fall semester.
The Jesse A. Morris Sr./W.C. Boykin Agricultural Science Building got a full refresh: refurbished classrooms, new paint and flooring, renovated restrooms, and new branding finishes — part of the same 2019 facilities push.
In fall 2023 Alcorn solicited bids to renovate two classic residence halls — Revels Hall (1968) and Robinson Hall (1964) — using $5 million in state bond funds. The average bid came back at $10 million, so the university went to the legislature for another $5 million to fully fund the work.
The state appropriated $8,311,736 to Alcorn for repairs, renovation, and expansion of the Davey L. Whitney Complex — home to Braves and Lady Braves basketball and volleyball, named for the legendary men's basketball coach. It was part of a statewide capital package that also sent millions to Jackson State and Mississippi Valley State.
The state College Board approved Alcorn's plan to hire an architect to design a new 500-bed dormitory on the Lorman campus, where more than 1,600 students typically live on site. The university paid $200,000 for the design work; the building itself was projected to cost well over $3 million.
Trustees approved design work on a $10 million, 50-unit faculty and staff housing project — 14 townhome structures near a campus entrance, paid for with state bond money. Because Lorman is remote, employees have long lived on campus; the master plan calls the new townhomes a low-maintenance, long-term replacement for aging vacant housing, some of it slated for demolition.
Alcorn put the renovation of the Matt Thomas Garden Apartments out for bid in 2025, continuing the multi-year overhaul of student housing stock that began with Revels and Robinson halls.
The Alcorn State University Foundation solicited bids in fall 2025 for renovations to the President's House, including a carport addition — steady stewardship of a residence that traces back to the two-story clapboard house Hiram Revels himself lived in, now the Alumni House.
Alcorn's faculty and staff number more than 500 serving roughly 4,300 students. The School of Nursing operates from the Natchez campus — the only comprehensive nursing program at an HBCU in Mississippi — and the university also runs technology centers at the Thad Cochran Mississippi Center for Innovation and Technology in Vicksburg.
Interim 2023–24, permanent since 2024; opened his tenure with the $42M MacKenzie Scott gift.
Leads an athletics program coming off the most dominant SWAC stretch in school history (2014–2019) and the 2024–25 facilities upgrades.
In his third season leading the Braves, charged with returning Alcorn to the SWAC championship form of the late 2010s.
Rebuilding the Braves in the Davey L. Whitney Complex after signing 11 new players in a single class.
Leads the Sounds of Dyn-O-Mite; won the band its 2025 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade invitation.
Alcorn sits 45 miles south of Vicksburg and 40 miles north of Natchez, deep in Claiborne County — genuinely rural, which is why students call it the Reservation and why campus life is everything. More than 1,600 students live on site, and the social calendar runs through the band, the Greeks, and football Saturdays in the 22,500-seat stadium. The Myrlie Evers-Williams Honors Program gives top students a leadership track, and the student body — 96 percent Black — treats homecoming week like a family reunion that happens to have a football game in it.