Sumter, South Carolina · Founded 1908 · Hornets
“A 118-year-old Baptist HBCU on 33 acres in Sumter, where the whole campus still feels like one family and the president throws out the first pitch himself.”
The college's official admissions promo — 'bigger than an academic education,' family-style support — opened live and verified; lays out the whole pitch: 21 majors, HBCU in Sumter, #MakeItMorris.
Student vlogger Rhonda Nikole's homecoming walk-around interviewing Morris alumni — opened live and verified; the best window into what homecoming feels like on the ground.
Official channel footage of the Fall Harvest 2025 campus event — opened live and verified; shows current campus life under President Sewell.
Promo for the Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention's 119th Annual Session hosted at Morris — the founding convention coming home to the campus it created in 1908.
Short welcome video for the 119th Annual Session — Baptist convention delegates arriving on the Sumter campus in July 2026.
Hype video for the 119th Annual Session — 'All Roads Lead to Morris College' became the tagline for the convention's return to campus.
Morris College Athletics short: President Sewell throwing the ceremonial first pitch before Hornets baseball vs Benedict — the president-as-fan tradition.
Full-game footage of the Lady Hornets on the road at Warren Wilson — a look at the women's program in action.
Full-game stream of the Hornets hosting UFTL at the Hornets' Nest — home-court footage from the 2025-26 season.
Georgetown College (KY) hosting Morris College — the Hornets testing themselves against a ranked NAIA power on the road.
Morris College vs Montreat doubleheader (February 17, 2026) — Hornets baseball footage from the spring season.
Lady Hornets on the road at the University of Fort Lauderdale — full-game stream of the women's program.
Class of 1940; original Tuskegee Airman — 36 WWII combat missions over Germany; Congressional Gold Medal 2007
Civil rights activist; CORE field secretary and director of organization for nine years; Freedom Rider; honored in a 2002 Congressional Record tribute by Jim Clyburn
Class of 1975; member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, District 51 (Sumter County); attorney
Class of 1965; member of the Alabama House of Representatives, District 19
Class of 1941; educator and author
Class of 1963; Freedom Rider
Class of 1963; Freedom Rider
Class of 1961; Freedom Rider
Morris alumnus who earned his Ed.D. from Clemson University in December 2023
Morris College was founded in 1908 by the Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention of South Carolina, the state's Black Baptist convention, to give African American youth a Christian education in the Jim Crow South. College histories also credit Jacob J. Durham as the founder. The school opened as a grade school, high school, and college all at once, on two frame buildings — one painted white (Phyllis Wheatley), one unpainted (Brockenton) — on 40 acres at what is now 100 West College Street. It was named for the Reverend Frank Morris, honored for his leadership in South Carolina's African American community.
Dr. Edward M. Brawley became Morris College's first president in 1908 and served until 1912. Under his leadership the college's foundations and ideals were laid, as the school's 1937 historical sketch put it — a new Black-owned college opening its doors while white supremacy was hardening across the South. His name survives on campus in Brawley-Starks Hall, the dormitory that replaced the burned McGowan Hall. Brawley was already a towering Baptist figure, and his brief presidency set the school's Christian-liberal-arts identity.
In mid-November 1912, Dr. John J. Starks arrived on the Morris campus to find the school on the verge of bankruptcy, with creditors repossessing furniture as he hurried to negotiate beds, mattresses, tables, chairs, and desks to keep students from leaving. Thrifty and remembered as a 'born financier and a man of means,' Starks set about retiring the college's $11,000 indebtedness. Over eighteen years he gave Morris seven creditable brick buildings, transforming the campus from two frame structures into a growing institution.
Morris College graduated its first class in 1913, a milestone the school's history book 'Morris: A Noble Journey' preserves in a class photograph with President Starks on the back row. The college's early curriculum was layered: eight years of grammar school ('Normal Course') before entry, then a four-year high school 'Academic Course' preparing students for teaching and preaching careers, then the four-year College Department. Every student took Bible courses, and ministerial students took special theology courses — the Bible was taught as a textbook in every year of study.
Morris College awarded its first bachelor's degree in 1915 under President Starks, the moment the school's collegiate ambitions became real credentials. The same era saw the construction of the original Legare Hall, one of the campus's earliest permanent buildings. For a Black Baptist school founded only seven years earlier in segregated South Carolina, a baccalaureate degree was a defiant statement: this place would produce college graduates, not just tradesmen.
Dr. Ira David Pinson took the presidency in 1930 and steered Morris through the Great Depression, a remarkable feat for a tuition-dependent Black college. The school's own 1937 sketch records 'continuous progress' under his guidance from 1930 to 1937. Even as banks failed and enrollment dollars thinned, Pinson kept the college building — including a seven-room cottage for the Dean of the College. His era proved Morris could survive hard times without surrendering its mission.
In the spring of 1933, McGowan Hall burned — a disaster that could have sunk a Depression-era college. Instead, Morris rebuilt it into a 32-room dormitory, later known as Brawley-Starks Hall, named for the first two presidents. The episode became part of campus lore: fire took a building and the school answered with a better one. Brawley-Starks Hall would house generations of Hornets.
First Lieutenant Leroy Bowman graduated from Morris College in 1940 and went on to become one of the original class of Tuskegee Airmen, the legendary Black pilots of World War II. Bowman flew 36 combat missions over Germany and built a decorated service record. In 2007 he was among the 300 surviving Tuskegee Airmen honored with the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush — Morris's most celebrated military alumnus, remembered in Congressman Jim Clyburn's 2017 tribute to the college.
Henry H. Butler became Morris's fifth president in 1946, serving until 1948 while simultaneously holding the presidency of the Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention itself — the only Morris president to hold both offices at once. During his short tenure the long-planned library project was finished and he helped accumulate over $90,000 to the college's credit, real money in 1940s dollars. Butler's dual role underscored how tightly the college and the Black Baptist convention were bound.
Acting president Jeff W. Boykin briefly held the office in 1948, during which the School of Religion became a separate entity from the college — a major structural change. Then, at just thirty years old, Odell R. Reuben became the seventh president. Reuben was the first African American to earn a Doctor of Religion degree from Duke University, a breakthrough credential he carried back to Sumter. Under his long tenure enrollment climbed to 898 students in 1960-61, and the college settled into its identity as a small, serious, church-supported liberal arts school.
In the early 1960s, Morris students carried the college's ideals into the civil rights movement. Jerry Moore and Herman Harris, both class of 1963, and Mae Francis Moultrie, class of 1961, participated in the Freedom Rides that tested desegregation of interstate travel. James T. 'Nooker' McCain, a Morris graduate, went further — serving nine years as field secretary and director of organization for CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, working in dangerous Southern communities through the 1960s before directing its citizenship education fund. Morris's Baptist training in courage and service showed up on the front lines.
After troubled years following President Reuben's death and a brief 1972-73 presidency by Henry E. Hardin, the trustees elected Dr. Luns C. Richardson in September 1973; he took office in 1974 and stayed 43 years. A Hartsville native, Butler High School's 1945 valedictorian, Benedict College graduate, and former acting president of Benedict, Richardson inherited a college with a $450,000 to $500,000 deficit and wiped it out in three years. What followed was the golden age of Morris College: initial SACS accreditation in 1978, United Negro College Fund membership in 1982, 17 to 18 new campus buildings, library holdings past 132,000 volumes, faculty doctorate rates at 72 percent, at least 16 new majors, an Army ROTC unit, and an endowment grown from $30,000 to more than $12 million. Enrollment passed 1,000.
Morris College athletics entered the Eastern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (EIAC) in the 1983-84 academic year, giving the Hornets a stable conference home for men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball, track and field, and volleyball. The EIAC was a small-college league that fit Morris's scale — NAIA competition without the money games of Division I. The Hornets competed in the league for 22 seasons until the conference dissolved after 2004-05.
The Morris yearbooks of the late 1980s capture a homecoming tradition built around Thanksgiving: a colorful parade with approximately 175 mobile units and several marching bands culminating the holiday festivities, plus the crowning of Miss Morris College. The Homecoming Step Show had 'a long and lively tradition' at the Sumter County Exposition Center, where fraternity and sorority members stomped, clapped, and slapped rhythms for a packed crowd. Campus radio station WQMC was on the air with 'contemporary gospel, jazz, classical' programming, and the Concert Chorale under Gerald R. Knight performed an annual Christmas concert in Neal Jones Auditorium.
When the EIAC dissolved, Morris moved into the Continental Athletic Conference as an NAIA independent beginning in the 2005-06 academic year — a status it still holds. The Hornets' schedule became a patchwork of HBCU rivals and regional opponents: Allen, Benedict, Claflin, Fisk, Voorhees, and money games against Division I programs like South Carolina State, Charleston Southern, and Winthrop. Without a football team, basketball season — and the Hornets' Nest at the Garrick-Boykin Human Development Center — became the center of Morris athletics.
Dr. Luns C. Richardson retired in July 2017 after 43 years as president — the longest-serving college president in South Carolina history, honored with a Congressional Record tribute by Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose own mother graduated from Morris in 1953. Richardson had been a pastor of Thankful Baptist Church in Bamberg for 56 years alongside the presidency, embodying the school's church-college fusion. Leroy Staggers succeeded him as the tenth president in July 2017 and served until July 2024, stewarding the college through accreditation reaffirmation and the post-Richardson transition.
Morris College presented 'The Blueprint' as the theme for its January 20-25, 2020 homecoming week, with the Hornets facing Fisk University on Saturday, January 25. The theme modeled the college's core principles — God, man, and knowledge — and the week opened with a chapel service followed by the MLK Legacy Concert headlined by gospel recording artist Rance Allen. Student Government Association president Dinasia Nathan and Dean of Student Affairs Dr. Juana Davis Freeman framed the week as alumni and students building on the legacy established in 1908. Weeks later the COVID-19 pandemic would shut campuses nationwide.
In 2023 Morris College received funding from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to create plans for preserving the school's historic buildings, some dating back to 1924. For a college whose earliest structures went up when its second president was fighting bankruptcy, the grant was recognition that Morris's bricks are part of Black America's architectural memory. The planning grant set the stage for future restoration of century-old halls. Homecoming that November continued the rebuilt tradition, with tickets on sale for the November 4 weekend.
Dr. Said L. Sewell, a Houston native with a BA and MPA from Texas Southern University and a PhD in political science from Clark Atlanta University, assumed office as Morris College's eleventh president on July 1, 2024, after a national search. A co-author of three books on American politics with fellowships from AASCU, Harvard, and the Carter Presidential Library, Sewell arrived promising enrollment growth, student success, faculty development, and fundraising. His first summer was physical: bathroom renovations in the ADMS, RCJ, and AMMA residence halls, repaired HVAC units and water heaters in Graham Alexander Bowman Clark Hall, new beds in RCJ, 36 new PTAC heat/air units across all dorms, and upgraded lounge furniture and decor. On May 4, New York Times op-ed columnist and MSNBC analyst Charles Blow delivered the commencement keynote at the Sumter County Civic Center.
Morris College's 2025 homecoming carried the theme 'The Rebirth of the Cool,' kicking off October 30 with a Day Party Networking Mixer at The Imperial on Broad Street in Sumter before the weekend's basketball, step show, and alumni events. The Morris College Fall Harvest 2025, preserved on the college's YouTube channel, shows the campus in its autumn rhythm. On the court the Hornets took heavy losses to Division I money-game opponents — 131-90 at Mount Olive, 111-55 at Barton — but beat Johnson & Wales (NC) 81-68 on January 6, 2026 to close the season on a high note.
February 2026 brought Morris College a $1,250,000 HUD grant for a small business entrepreneur incubator center serving Sumter, Clarendon, and Lee counties — Rep. Jim Clyburn presented the ceremonial check on campus, continuing his family's century-long tie to the school. In July, Morris hosted the 119th Annual Session of the Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention of South Carolina, the very convention that founded the college in 1908, with promotional videos declaring 'All Roads Lead to Morris College.' That September the college signed an articulation agreement with Denmark Technical College creating transfer pathways into Morris's cybersecurity, e-sports, and forensic science programs. And the newly branded 'Swarmcoming' 2026 (November 5-8) features October London and Regina Bell in concert, a parade, tailgating, the step show, a distinguished alumni gala, and a gospel brunch — with SC State opening its season at home against Morris on November 2.
Orangeburg's Bulldogs are the annual Division I measuring stick for the Hornets — Morris regularly opens or fills its non-conference slate at Smith-Hammond-Middleton, including SC State's 2026-27 season opener on November 2, 2026. The games have usually gone the Bulldogs' way (102-67 in January 2022; 137-55 in November 2024; the Lady Hornets fell 102-34 in November 2025), but the matchup keeps Morris tied to the state's biggest HBCU and gives Hornet players a Division I stage.
Allen in Columbia is the nearest fellow NAIA HBCU rival, and the schools meet annually in men's and women's basketball. Recent meetings have been tight — Allen edged Morris 90-83 in November 2024 — making this the most competitive of Morris's HBCU rivalries. SC State even opens its 2026-27 exhibition slate against Allen before hosting Morris, linking the three programs in one early-season HBCU circuit.
Fisk of Nashville is Morris's traditional homecoming foil — the Hornets faced Fisk on homecoming Saturday, January 25, 2020 under 'The Blueprint' theme, and twice in the 2017-18 season including homecoming on January 27, 2018. The NAIA HBCU pairing gives Swarmcoming its basketball centerpiece when Fisk is on the schedule.
Benedict, the Baptist HBCU in Columbia, is Morris's natural Midlands rival — including on the baseball diamond, where President Sewell threw the ceremonial first pitch before the Hornets took the field against Benedict (captured on the Morris College Athletics channel). Both schools were founded by Black Baptists and share the NAIA HBCU circuit.
🥁 Morris College Concert Chorale
The Concert Chorale is the documented flagship ensemble — its annual Christmas concert was a campus fixture by the late 1980s, alongside campus radio station WQMC's gospel/jazz/classical programming. With no football program, Morris has no marching band; basketball pep-band presence could not be verified.
Listed as Instructor/Chorale Director in the 1989-90 Morris yearbook; directed the annual Christmas concert in Neal Jones Auditorium.
Morris holds chapters for eight of the nine NPHC organizations (no Iota Phi Theta chapter found). The Greeks anchor homecoming: yearbooks record a long, lively step-show tradition packing the Sumter County Exposition Center, with fraternities and sororities perfecting stomping, clapping routines for a huge homecoming crowd. Service is real too — the 1990 yearbook notes the Alpha Phi Alpha chapter's annual blood drive passing 800 pints donated over eleven years. Charter dates were not verified.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
One of the campus's earliest permanent buildings, the original Legare Hall went up around 1915, preserved in the school history book 'Morris: A Noble Journey.' It stood for the college's pivot from two frame buildings to a real brick campus.
Across his eighteen-year presidency, John J. Starks gave Morris seven creditable brick buildings, growing the campus from the painted Phyllis Wheatley and unpainted Brockenton frame structures to six brick structures plus a president's cottage and a dean's cottage on forty acres. By 1937 the sketch could honestly call Morris 'one of the most attractive locations in the State of South Carolina.'
After McGowan Hall burned in spring 1933, Morris rebuilt it as a 32-room dormitory named Brawley-Starks Hall for the first two presidents. The building kept serving as a residence hall into the modern era.
A seven-room cottage for the Dean of the College was erected during Pinson's Depression-era presidency — still construction when private Black colleges were barely surviving.
Henry H. Butler's short presidency finished Morris's long-planned library project and added over $90,000 to the college's credit — a major capital win in the late 1940s.
Across 43 years, Luns C. Richardson's administration constructed 17 to 18 new campus buildings — more than any other era — while growing the endowment from $30,000 to over $12 million and library holdings past 132,000 volumes. The Garrick-Boykin Human Development Center, the Hornets' home arena (the 'Hornets' Nest'), and the Wilson-Booker Science Building are products of this long expansion.
Morris built a new structure to house a forensic science laboratory, supported in part by a Bureau of Justice grant through the Higher Education Excellence Enhancement program; Reps. Clyburn and Spratt directed $500,000 to the college for the lab. It was the college's first new building in about 15 years.
A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management grant — shared with other SC HBCUs to draw more African American and female students into nuclear technology, science, and math — funded curriculum enhancements and a new wing for the Wilson-Booker Science Building.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund funded Morris to create preservation plans for its historic buildings, some dating back to 1924 — formal recognition that the century-old campus is part of Black America's architectural heritage.
President Sewell's first summer brought a dorm-by-dorm renewal: major bathroom renovations in the ADMS, RCJ, and AMMA residence halls; three repaired HVAC units and new water heaters in Graham Alexander Bowman Clark Hall; new beds installed in RCJ; 36 new PTAC heat/air units replaced across all residence halls; and upgraded dorm lounge furniture and decor — aimed at a larger freshman class for fall 2024.
A $1,250,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant funds Morris's new small business entrepreneur incubator center — a hub for aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners across Sumter, Clarendon, and Lee counties with co-working space, business education, and mentorship. Rep. Jim Clyburn presented the ceremonial check on campus in February 2026.
Morris College and Denmark Technical College signed an academic articulation agreement creating transfer pathways from Denmark Tech into Morris's cybersecurity, e-sports, and forensic science bachelor's programs — part of Sewell's push to grow enrollment through partnerships with fellow SC institutions.
Morris runs lean — about 51 full-time faculty for a few hundred students — in keeping with its small private-college identity. The Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention of South Carolina remains owner and operator, with annual giving historically between $500,000 and $750,000. A current athletic director could not be verified from available sources.
11th president since July 1, 2024.
Framed homecoming 2020 as welcoming alumni and supporters to the Hornets' Nest.
Coached the Hornets in the early 2010s per NCCU game notes.
Announced Richardson's 2017 retirement and the search that followed.
Documented Morris's federal grant history and Clyburn's support for the college.
Morris feels like a family by design — the college's own promo video is literally titled 'Morris College Feels Like Family,' and with a few hundred students on 33 acres, everybody knows everybody. The Baptist identity is lived, not decorative: chapel opens homecoming, the Bible was historically taught as a textbook in every year of study, and the convention's churches still fund the school. Basketball season is the athletic heartbeat — the Hornets' Nest fills for Swarmcoming and rivalry games — while homecoming week is the social peak of the year. Students call it 'MoCo' and tag it #MakeItMorris.