Frankfort, Kentucky · Founded 1886 · Thorobreds & Thorobrettes
“The little land-grant HBCU on the bluff above Frankfort — Kentucky horse country, so of course the teams are the Thorobreds — home of a basketball three-peat, a Pulitzer, and a marching band that played Monday Night Football.”
Directly verified via the watch page: the MMT's 2026 Circle City Classic pep rally set at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis — the band's current-era showcase.
Embedded in KSU's official 2014 Colts-game article — the band's performance reel from the Monday Night Football era.
Embedded in KSU's official recap: a brief clip of the MMT's Monday Night Football halftime show at Lucas Oil Stadium, September 15, 2014.
Embedded in KSU's official recap of the 2022 Pepsi National Battle of the Bands — the MMT before a record 55,000 fans at NRG Stadium in Houston.
Embedded in KSU's official 2016 Circle City Classic recap — the weekend the Thorobreds beat Central State 17–14 in overtime and the band took top battle-of-the-bands honors.
The MMT at the 2012 Chicago Classic — vintage footage of the band a decade before the 'Best Band in the Land' run.
HBCU Pride Network upload of the MMT performing SZA's 'Snooze/Kill Bill' — the band's stands repertoire in the social-media era.
DamWillis Media footage: the MMT facing Simmons College's 'Empire of Sound' at the 2025 Linden Halloween Gym Jamboree — battle culture up close.
ShowtimeWeb footage of the MMT at the Music Through the Streets high-school battle of the bands in Cleveland, September 17, 2022.
DamWillis Media: fifth-quarter battle between the MMT and Lane College's 'Quiet Storm' — SIAC band rivalry after the game.
Vintage halftime footage: UAPB's Marching Musical Machine of the Mid-South vs the MMT in 2000 — a time capsule of the band at the turn of the millennium.
Pepsi's official NBOTB documentary 'The Road to Houston: Preparing to Battle' — behind-the-scenes with all eight 2022 bands including the MMT.
Class of 1941; executive director of the National Urban League 1961–1971 who turned it into an aggressive civil rights force; Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. His statue stands on campus — new students rub his foot for luck.
Class of 1947; Ebony staff photographer for 41 years and the first Black man to win the Pulitzer Prize — 1969 Feature Photography for his image of Coretta Scott King at Dr. King's funeral.
Class of 1941; in February 1943 she became the first Black WAAC to command an all-white unit, as platoon leader of the Fourth Company, Third Regiment.
Class of 1942; appointed by President Carter to the U.S. Civil Service Commission in 1977 — one of the highest-ranked women in the federal government.
Part of the 'Concerned Student 1950' group — the first Black students admitted to the University of Missouri, entering the economics graduate program after a desegregation court ruling.
Class of 1938; in 1968 became the first Black mayor of a Kentucky city (Glasgow) and the first Black American to serve on the U.S. Commission on Human Rights.
Class of 1973; the first Black justice appointed to — and to serve on — the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Class of 1960; accepted into the UK College of Dentistry's second class in 1963 and became its first Black graduate in 1967.
Class of 1991; the 28th prime minister of Thailand and its first woman prime minister (2011–2013).
Star of the 1970–72 NAIA three-peat; scored 4,045 career points, the all-time all-division college record; first-round pick of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1972; played in the NBA and ABA.
Seven-foot center on the 1970 and 1971 title teams; the No. 3 overall pick in the 1971 NBA draft (Buffalo Braves); eight NBA seasons; holds NAIA rebounding records including 799 in a season.
Class of 1938; quarterback who led KSU to the 1934 Black college football championship; the first KSU player inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Class of 1950; legendary head football coach at Jackson State and Tennessee State, one of the winningest coaches in HBCU history; College Football Hall of Fame. The John A. Merritt Classic is named for him.
Class of 1953; head basketball coach at Texas Southern and Alcorn State, one of the winningest coaches in HBCU history; National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
Class of 1950; became the second president of Norfolk State College in 1975.
Class of 1942; the first Black man to play in the Canadian Football League — Montreal Alouettes 1946–1957, seven-time All-Star, 1949 Grey Cup champion; Canadian Football Hall of Fame 1975.
Defensive back who played six NFL seasons (1982–1987) and later starred in the CFL.
Defensive lineman who played six NFL seasons (1999–2004).
Ca. 1900; educator and poet whom James Still called 'Kentucky's Emily Dickinson.'
Sculptor of the 'Spirit of Freedom' African-American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C. — and of the Whitney M. Young Jr. statue on KSU's campus; KSU alumnus and Alpha Phi Alpha member.
The Kentucky legislature chartered the State Normal School for Colored Persons in May 1886 — only the second state-supported institution of higher learning in Kentucky. Frankfort was celebrating its centennial that year, and with vivid Civil War memories still fresh, the city's 4,000 residents campaigned hard to land the school: they donated $1,500, serious money in 1886, plus a site on a scenic bluff overlooking town. Several other cities wanted it; Frankfort's united pitch won the day. The mission was specific from the start: train Black teachers for Kentucky's Black schools.
The school opened on October 11, 1887 with three teachers, 55 students, and John H. Jackson as president. Recitation Hall — now Jackson Hall — went up that same year, built by stonemason James C. Brown as the first permanent building on campus. Jackson had headed Kentucky's Black teachers' association and lobbied the legislature into creating the school. The bluff above Frankfort the city donated is still the campus today — 'The Hill.'
KSU became a land-grant college in 1890 under the second Morrill Act, and home economics, agriculture, and mechanics were added to a curriculum that had been purely teacher training. That spring the school produced its first graduating class: five students. The land-grant designation plugged KSU into the federal agricultural research system — the root of the pawpaw orchards and aquaculture labs that define the school more than a century later.
The name changed to the Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons, reflecting the industrial-education mission the land-grant money demanded. 'Colored Persons' stayed in the title — this was the Jim Crow era, and the state's support came segregated by law. The school kept expanding in both name and program into the 20th century.
Hume Hall went up in 1909, designed by William Sidney Pittman — the former head of architecture at Tuskegee Institute (1900–1905) who had just designed the Negro Building for the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial and would later design Washington's 12th Street YMCA. A $40,000 appropriation from the 1908 General Assembly paid for Hume Hall and the Hathaway Hall dormitory. For fifty years Hume was the most important building on campus — administration, library, chapel, and a 500-seat auditorium for commencements and drama productions — the visual symbol of Kentucky's only state-supported Black college.
The name changed again to the Kentucky State Industrial College for Colored Persons, during Green P. Russell's second administration. It tracked the school's evolution from normal school to industrial college. The 'for Colored Persons' language still marked the segregated bargain the school lived under.
Rufus B. Atwood took office in 1929 and stayed until 1962 — thirty-three years, the longest presidency in school history. His first act was discontinuing the campus high school, which had run since 1893, judging that students were finally arriving with secondary educations in hand. He steered the college through the Depression and World War II, winning accreditation as a four-year college in 1931.
The state historical marker on campus records 1931 as the year Kentucky State was accredited as a four-year college. Won during Atwood's Depression-era tenure, the credential is what let KSU degrees carry weight beyond Kentucky. It came just as the school was settling into the 'Industrial College' identity.
Quarterback Joseph 'Tarzan' Kendall led Kentucky State to a Black college football championship in 1934, dominating Black college football in that era. Kendall became the first person in KSU history inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, and entered KSU's own athletic hall of fame in 1975. He went on to a career as a teacher, coach, and parks administrator in Owensboro, Kentucky.
The school was renamed the Kentucky State College for Negroes in 1938. The terminology of the era is jarring now, but the name held for fourteen years — through World War II and into the early civil rights era. It was the name on the diplomas of Whitney Young ('41), Anna Mac Clarke ('41), and Moneta Sleet ('47).
The civil engineering program started in 1942 — but only after the NAACP threatened a lawsuit on behalf of a Black student who wanted to study engineering at the University of Kentucky. Rather than integrate UK, the state built the program at Kentucky State. It is a textbook case of how 'separate but equal' expanded Black institutions by pressure, not generosity.
Kentucky State and Central State met on the football field for the first time in 1947, starting a rivalry now in its eighth decade. Two public HBCUs — one in Frankfort, one in Wilberforce, Ohio, about 200 miles apart — both SIAC members today. Central State dominated the early decades; KSU owns the modern era, and the series has produced classics in Ohio Stadium and Ford Field.
The school dropped 'for Negroes' from its name in 1952, becoming Kentucky State College. The change came two years before Brown v. Board of Education, as the language of segregation started to crack. The core name — Kentucky State — has held ever since.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the 1957 commencement speech, titled 'Facing the Challenge of a New Age.' King was 28, two years past the Montgomery bus boycott, at the height of his early national rise. The school's own history counts it among its proudest days — the future Nobel laureate on the bluff at Frankfort.
In 1960 the first white student enrolled at Kentucky State — a quiet integration milestone at a school founded for Black Kentuckians. The same year the Paul G. Blazer Library was built, named for the Ashland Oil founder, now holding more than 700,000 items. The campus was growing into a full college in brick as well as in name.
Coach Lucias Mitchell's Thorobreds won the first of three straight NAIA national basketball championships in 1970, then repeated in 1971 and 1972 — one of only three programs across all divisions ever to three-peat. The 1970–72 teams went 88–10 combined, and from 1970 to 1975 KSU won more college basketball games than everyone except UCLA. Travis 'Machine' Grant scored 4,045 career points, the all-time all-division college record; Elmore Smith went No. 3 overall in the 1971 NBA draft to Buffalo, Grant No. 13 in 1972 to the Lakers. The 102–82 demolition of George Gervin's Eastern Michigan team in the 1971 final still gets talked about — and Grant once hung 68 on Gervin's crew in Frankfort. Mitchell, a two-time national coach of the year, the first Black officer of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and a 1972 Olympic lecturer, got the court named for him in 2008 and entered the NAIA Hall of Fame in 2015.
Kentucky State College became Kentucky State University in 1972. The next year the first graduate students enrolled in the School of Public Affairs. The school had traveled from a normal school to a full university in 86 years — and the Thorobreds name traveled with it.
A fire gutted the interior of historic Hume Hall in 1983, destroying the Pittman-designed spaces inside the 1909 limestone shell. The building was rebuilt shortly afterward and now houses the university president's offices. What visitors see today is the original exterior around a 1980s reconstruction.
KSU launched its pawpaw research program in 1990 to develop America's largest native fruit as a commercial tree-fruit crop for Kentucky. It worked: the school now holds the world's largest pawpaw research planting, hosts the USDA National Clonal Germplasm Repository for Asimina species, and tends more than 1,700 trees. KSU-bred cultivars — 'KSU-Atwood,' 'KSU-Benson,' 'KSU-Chappell' — carry a president's name and the research farm's. Alongside Kentucky's only aquaculture program, it is the land-grant mission made visible.
Mary L. Smith became president in 1991 — the first woman to lead Kentucky State, after already serving as interim in 1989–90. She led through 1998, seven years across a turbulent decade for HBCU funding. Her tenure opened the modern era of KSU leadership.
The Mighty Marching Thorobreds played halftime of the Indianapolis Colts' Monday Night Football home opener at Lucas Oil Stadium on September 15, 2014, under interim director Robert Griffin — the Colts covering 150 tickets plus transportation, food, and drink. The band came back to Indianapolis three weeks later for the Circle City Classic. For a ~2,000-student school, an NFL halftime show was a statement.
At the 2016 Circle City Classic in Lucas Oil Stadium, the Thorobreds trailed Central State all afternoon, then scored 17 straight points in the fourth quarter and overtime to win 17–14. The Mighty Marching Thorobreds took top honors in the battle of the bands the same weekend. KSU's own recap called it one to remember — and promised to go for four in a row the next year.
The MMT's peak run: voted the 2019 'Best Band in the Land' by the national HBCU Awards Committee, No. 1 in ESPN The Undefeated's final 2021 HBCU band rankings, then one of eight bands at the 2022 Pepsi National Battle of the Bands in Houston — 900 miles each way to play for a record 55,000 fans at NRG Stadium. Director Alvin Level, the former Detroit high school band director who'd always wanted a college band, had been building toward exactly this.
Enrollment fell to 1,726 in fall 2022, down from 2,290 just two years earlier — a roughly 25 percent collapse that capped a decade of financial strain and leadership churn. The school cycled through interim leadership after M. Christopher Brown II's 2021 departure, with Dr. Clara Ross Stamps holding the presidency as acting president. It was the existential stretch everything since is measured against.
On August 4, 2023 the community cut the ribbon on the Whitney M. Young Jr. Hall — a $50M+, 165,000-square-foot, 408-bed residence hall, the first new dorm since 2008, financed privately through KSU Campus Housing LLC. Dr. Koffi C. Akakpo arrived as the 19th president the same year. State leaders packed the standing-room-only crowd; the Council on Postsecondary Education president called it 'a new day, with 137 years backing it up.'
The football Thorobreds went 9–3 in 2025, ripped off nine straight regular-season wins, and earned the program's first-ever NCAA Division II playoff appearance. Along the way they beat rival Central State 34–24 in the Detroit Football Classic at Ford Field, erasing a halftime deficit behind two long Torrence Bardell touchdown strikes. After the enrollment-crisis years, it was the loudest possible proof of the turnaround.
The series dates to 1947 — two public HBCUs, Frankfort and Wilberforce, Ohio, both SIAC members now. The August 2026 meeting was the 68th; Central State leads 39–27–1 all-time, but Kentucky State owns the modern era at 17–4 since the rivalry resumed in 2005, including ten straight from 2008–17. KSU's largest win came in 2021 (63–0 — the only year they met twice). The rivalry has headlined neutral-site classics: the 2021 Classic for Columbus at Ohio Stadium (KSU 20–6) and the 2025 Detroit Football Classic at Ford Field (KSU 34–24).
KSU meets Tennessee State in the John A. Merritt Classic — named for the KSU class of 1950 alumnus who became a College Football Hall of Fame coach at Jackson State and Tennessee State. Tennessee State took the 2021 edition 41–7 in Nashville. The game ties KSU's past (Merritt) to one of the biggest stages in Black college football.
Fellow public, land-grant HBCU in the SIAC footprint — West Virginia State is listed among KSU's main rivals. Two 1890s land-grant schools fighting over the same regional recruiting ground and conference positioning.
🥁 Mighty Marching Thorobreds
The Mighty Marching Thorobreds are one of the largest student organizations on campus with 200+ members, marching with the K-Rettes danceline and the Silk Flag Corps. Their trophy case is real: 2019 'Best Band in the Land' from the national HBCU Awards Committee, No. 1 in ESPN The Undefeated's final 2021 HBCU band rankings, a Monday Night Football halftime show for the Indianapolis Colts (2014), three Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans (2018), and the 2022 Pepsi National Battle of the Bands in Houston before a record 55,000 fans at NRG Stadium. They're Circle City Classic regulars — and the band that storms the yard at homecoming playing the KSU classic 'That Butt.'
Named as 'the Band's Director' in HBCU Buzz coverage of a Colts halftime appearance; the article's event details conflict with KSU's official 2014 account (which names interim Robert Griffin), so tenure dates are unverified.
Interim director of bands in 2014 — he led the Mighty Marching Thorobreds' Monday Night Football halftime show at Lucas Oil Stadium on September 15, 2014. He had been associate director and was the one who recruited Alvin Level to KSU when the director's chair opened.
Came to KSU from leading the band at Oak Park High School in Detroit, where he'd been a school administrator who couldn't stay out of the band room — he'd always wanted a college band. Directed the MMT's three Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans (2018), the 2019 'Best Band in the Land' award, the 2021 ESPN The Undefeated No. 1 HBCU band ranking, and the 2022 National Battle of the Bands in Houston. He set a goal of 240 members and national-powerhouse status; his wife Churi Level served as auxiliary director, and the students called them mom and dad.
Assistant professor of music and current director of bands. In 2026 he earned professional certification in band instrument repair so the MMT can diagnose, maintain, and overhaul brass and woodwinds in-house instead of shipping horns off campus.
The Divine Nine run the yard at KSU like everywhere on the HBCU circuit — step shows are a homecoming-week staple (the 1996 yearbook's step show coverage is all org pride and competition), and Greek paraphernalia fills the homecoming pop-up shops. Alpha Phi Alpha's presence is directly documented: sculptor Ed Hamilton, who made the Whitney Young statue on campus, is a KSU alumnus and Alpha man. The full chapter roster is not confirmed against an official KSU list, so this entry stays thin and honest.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
Completed in 1887 by stonemason James C. Brown as Recitation Hall — the first permanent building on campus, enlarged in 1897, later renamed for first president John H. Jackson. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973; interior renovated during President Hill's administration in 1975–76. Now houses the Center of Excellence for the Study of Kentucky African Americans (CESKAA), classrooms, and a gallery.
Designed by William Sidney Pittman — former head of architecture at Tuskegee (1900–1905), architect of DC's 12th Street YMCA and the Jamestown Tercentennial Negro Building — and built with a $40,000 appropriation from the 1908 General Assembly. For fifty years it was the most important building on campus: administration, library, chapel, and a 500-seat auditorium. A 1983 fire gutted the interior; it was rebuilt and now houses the university president's offices. On the National Register.
Dormitory built alongside Hume Hall with the same 1908 $40,000 state appropriation — the school's early residential core on the bluff. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places with Jackson and Hume Halls.
Built in 1960 and named for Paul G. Blazer, founder and CEO of Ashland Oil and Refining Company and a strong supporter of education. Houses more than 700,000 items — reference, periodical, and circulating collections plus videos, microforms, and sound recordings.
The university's athletic and recreational complex, named for William Exum — hired to head KSU's physical education department in 1949, later head of athletics, then manager of the U.S. Olympic track and field teams in 1972 and 1976 before retiring from KSU in 1980. Home of Thorobred basketball, including the court named for Lucias Mitchell in 2008.
Home of Thorobred football on the Frankfort campus — the field where the 2025 playoff team defended its nine-game regular-season win streak, including the home opener against Albany State.
The university's 203-acre agricultural research farm, part of the campus footprint. Home to the pawpaw orchards — the world's largest pawpaw research planting with 1,700+ trees — and the land-grant field research that underpins KSU's agriculture programs. The 'KSU-Benson' pawpaw cultivar carries the farm's name.
Kentucky's only aquaculture program, run through the College of Agriculture, Food Science, and Sustainable Systems. Fish-farming research that directly supports the commonwealth's aquaculture industry — the other half of KSU's land-grant science identity alongside the pawpaw work.
The $50M+, 165,000-square-foot, five-story, 408-bed residence hall opened August 4, 2023 — the first new dorm on campus since 2008. Built with privatized financing through KSU Campus Housing LLC (bonds sold by CRM Companies), with a 12,000-square-foot dining facility, study lounges, and a multipurpose classroom in a living-learning layout. Students signed the final truss at a May 2022 beam-signing ceremony; the August 2023 ribbon-cutting drew the Frankfort mayor, state legislators, and the CPE president.
State support for capital work is expected to total roughly $165 million from 2024 through 2028: $110 million for asset preservation, $5 million for design of a new Health Sciences Building, and $50 million for its construction proposed for authorization in the next legislative session — the biggest facilities investment in school history.
A $30.7 million renovation in the 2022–2024 capital plan — one of the largest single-building renewals on campus, part of the asset-preservation wave.
A $5.9 million renovation in the 2024–2026 capital plan, renewing the campus health building alongside the broader facilities overhaul.
The coaching legend is Lucias Mitchell — three straight NAIA titles 1970–72, the court in the Exum Center named for him in 2008, NAIA Hall of Fame 2015. William Exum ran physical education and athletics from 1949 to 1980 and managed the U.S. Olympic track teams in 1972 and 1976. On the faculty side, Wikipedia lists musician-educator Frederick C. Tillis and professor-author Wilfred Reilly among notable faculty.
19th president, in office since 2023
Quoted as athletic director in 2025 football coverage on kysu.edu
Listed as interim provost on Wikipedia; confirm against kysu.edu directory
It's small — about 2,000 students on the bluff above Frankfort — and that shapes everything: everybody knows everybody on 'The Hill.' The band and the Greeks are the social engine; homecoming week (late September) is the family reunion, with the yard show, the step show, the tailgate, and the MMT storming the yard playing 'That Butt' while the K-Rettes and Silks dance. New students rub the foot of the Whitney Young statue for luck when they arrive, and again before big exams. The land-grant science identity — pawpaw orchards, fish labs — gives the place a flavor most small HBCUs don't have.