Holly Springs, Mississippi · Founded 1866 · Bearcats
“Founded 1866 by freedpeople's missionaries on Holly Springs' old slave auction grounds — the oldest Black college in Mississippi and Ida B. Wells' school.”
Rust's percussion section and dancers performing at the 2020 Battle of the Drummers at LeMoyne-Owen College — the drumline's showcase moment in front of an HBCU crowd.
The renowned A' Cappella Choir performing at Grace United Methodist Church in Memphis.
The choir billed as 'world-renowned' performing at the Union County Heritage Museum's Hallelujah Trail celebration at the Magnolia Civic Center.
The A' Cappella Choir sings a tribute to Miss Natalie Doxey (class of 1968) — a window into how the choir honors its own.
Closing ceremony of the United Methodist Building's 100th anniversary, with the Rust choir directed by Karl Twyner — the school's denominational ties on full display.
The choir's 2025 performance live from St. Mark UMC in Chicago — part of its annual national church tour.
Full 2026 A' Cappella Choir performance — the current sound of Rust's signature program.
The choir performing 'Meet You in the Morning' at St. Mark UMC Chicago on April 12, 2026.
The choir covering 'Deliver Me' at St. James United Methodist Church.
The A' Cappella Choir's March 9, 2025 performance at New Hope Baptist Church in Jackson, MS.
A Rust College Intro to TV class documentary (2026) on what students actually listen to — campus life from the inside.
The Rust softball team hosting its inaugural 'Bearcat Battle' intersquad draft during Founders' Weekend 2024 at Sam Coopwood Park.
Investigative journalist, anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, and cofounder of the NAACP; attended the school (then Shaw University) in the 1870s before being forced out after a dispute with the president.
Gospel composer and hymnwriter ('Something Within,' 'The Lord's Prayer'), a central figure in the National Baptist Convention's music tradition.
Operatic soprano who originated the role of Serena in the 1935 premiere of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
Actor best known as Amos Jones on the 1950s television comedy Amos 'n' Andy.
Disco singer whose 1979 hit 'Ring My Bell' topped the US Hot 100, R&B, and Dance charts and the UK chart.
Record executive, musician, and producer associated with the Memphis soul sound (per the school's listed alumni).
President of Wiley College, another historic HBCU, in the early 20th century.
11th president of Rust College (1993-2020); previously the 12th president of Wiley College; grew Rust's endowment from $13 million to $36 million.
President of Rust College (1957-1967) who kept the school open through efforts to close it during the civil rights era.
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church; Rust University was named in honor of his relative, the Rev. S. O. Shaw (per school history).
Civil rights activist, political scientist, and interim mayor of Jackson, Mississippi; organized with SNCC on the Rust campus as a student.
Lawyer, judge, and civil rights leader in Mississippi.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General and longtime chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party.
Bank founder and businessman; early resident of Mound Bayou, the historic all-Black town in Mississippi.
Activist, journalist, editor, and writer; daughter of Hiram Revels, the first Black U.S. senator.
Educator, civil and women's rights activist, and historian.
Basketball coach at MIT; profiled by the Clarion Ledger for his rise from Mississippi to MIT.
Physician and founder of the Las Vegas Pain Institute and Medical Center.
Author and founder of a hospitality house in the Catholic Worker tradition.
On November 24, 1866, barely a year and a half after the Civil War ended, missionaries of the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church opened a school for formerly enslaved people in Holly Springs, Mississippi. The Rev. A. C. McDonald of the Freedmen's Aid Society and Rev. Moses Adams, a Black preacher, opened the doors for classes in Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, a congregation pastored by an African American, Samuel Moses. In crude facilities with rudimentary equipment, the school accepted adults of all ages as well as children, teaching them to read and write. It was the earliest effort made during Reconstruction by the Freedmen's Aid Bureau of the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) to educate Black children and train Black teachers, and the first Black 'normal institute' in Mississippi.
A year after the founding, the first building on the present campus was erected — built with the cooperation of local African American carpenters and builders. Among them was James Wells, the father of Ida Bell Wells, who would grow up to become one of the most fearless journalists and anti-lynching activists in American history. The site itself carried heavy irony: the campus stands on the former slave auction grounds of Holly Springs. The Freedmen's Aid Society had turned the very ground where Black people were bought and sold into a place where Black people learned to read.
In 1870 the school was formally chartered by the state of Mississippi as Shaw University, honoring the Rev. S. O. Shaw, who made a gift of $10,000 to the new institution — worth roughly $250,000 in today's money. The charter marked the school's transition from a mission school to a legally recognized institution of higher learning. It took the name Shaw because of the gift, but the name would soon create an identity problem that forced a second renaming.
As the school's curriculum grew, it added high school and college-level courses, and in 1878 the first two students graduated from the college department. This was a genuine milestone: a school that had begun with freedpeople learning the alphabet in a church was now conferring college degrees, just twelve years after Emancipation. More than 5,500 students would eventually graduate from the college department, with over 20,000 Rust students educated in total across all departments.
Ida B. Wells, daughter of the carpenter James Wells who helped raise the first campus building, attended the school while it was still known as Shaw University. She became entangled in a dispute with the university's president and was forced to leave the school. The exact name of the president she clashed with could not be verified from the sources checked, so it is not stated here. Shortly after, in 1878, a yellow fever epidemic killed her parents and infant brother, and the teenage Wells became head of her family — working as a teacher while launching the journalism career that would make her a cofounder of the NAACP and one of America's greatest investigative journalists. Rust remains the school she attended, and the college still honors her legacy.
To avoid confusion with the other Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the institution changed its name in 1892 to Rust University — a tribute to the Rev. Richard S. Rust of Cincinnati, Ohio, the preacher, abolitionist, and secretary of the Freedmen's Aid Society who had helped found the college. Rust had also helped found Wilberforce University and, through the Freedmen's Aid Society, helped establish as many as 30 colleges and institutions for freedpeople across the South. The school would keep the 'University' name for 23 years before settling on its permanent name.
In 1915 the institution assumed the name it still holds today: Rust College. The 'more realistic name,' as the school's own history puts it, reflected what the school actually was — a college serving Mississippi's Black students. By then it had survived nearly fifty years of Reconstruction backlash, Jim Crow's rise, and chronic underfunding. The name change closed the book on the Shaw era for good.
In 1920, Dr. M. S. Davage became president of Rust College — the first African American to hold the position, fifty-four years after the school's founding. For the first five decades the school had been led by the white missionaries and administrators of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Davage's appointment marked the beginning of Black leadership at an institution built for Black students, a turning point in the school's identity.
Dr. L. M. McCoy succeeded Davage in 1924 and became the first alumnus to serve his alma mater as president. His tenure stretched more than three decades, into the heart of the civil rights era. The McCoy Administration Building still carries his name, and a 1929 portrait of the student government, painted by graduate Fletcher Ruff, hangs in the president's office. He was succeeded in 1957 by Dr. Earnest A. Smith, an alumnus of the class of 1937.
As public schools for African Americans became more widespread across Mississippi, the private elementary and high school departments that had been Rust's bread and butter for decades became less necessary. The primary school was discontinued in 1930. The high school continued to function for another generation, finally closing in 1953. Rust had completed its evolution from a school for all ages into a dedicated college.
Dr. Earnest A. Smith, Rust class of 1937, became president in 1957, at the height of the civil rights struggle in Mississippi. He later studied at Oberlin and Hartford Seminary and served churches and schools across the country. A tribute in the Congressional Record notes that he 'managed to keep the door open despite several efforts to close the school' during his presidency — a testament to how precarious small Black colleges were in Mississippi during the civil rights era. After Rust, he served thirteen years as director of human relations for the Board of Church and Society.
Rust College became a quiet engine of the movement in the early 1960s. SNCC organizer Frank Smith Jr. came to Rust in 1961-1962 to help organize Rust students and create what became the Speakers Bureau, which worked to get Black residents of Holly Springs registered to vote. Larry Rubin, another SNCC organizer, followed. Rust students — including a young Leslie McLemore, later a civil rights activist, political scientist, and interim mayor of Jackson — met organizers on campus. The campus was a place where the movement organized in the open, under constant threat.
In the summer of 1964, Rust College served as the central collection point for more than 100,000 donated books — sent from schools, libraries, and churches across America — that were sorted, catalogued, and distributed to Freedom Schools for Black children set up by civil rights activists across Mississippi. Student government president Bill Scott headed the sorting work. 'There were so many books,' Scott recalled, 'we could not fit them in any building. We set up a huge tent right where the library was built later.' Organizers Larry Rubin and Scott were each arrested in Mississippi towns while hauling books to Rust — Rubin was charged with carrying printed material 'advocating the overthrow of the government of the state of Mississippi.' The books were children's primers and schoolbooks; as Rubin put it, teaching Black kids to read effectively threatened the segregation system. The Holly Springs Freedom School itself began on the lawn of Rust College on July 2, 1964, because no building was available.
Rust fielded football teams in the South Central Athletic Conference — the predecessor of today's SWAC — in the early 1900s, and Holly Springs was one of the biggest college sports towns in Mississippi. Both Rust's and Mississippi Industrial College's programs were suspended in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and collegiate football has not been played in Holly Springs for nearly sixty years. The absence of football ever since has shaped Rust's athletics identity around basketball, track, and other sports — and is part of why the college band is a parade and showcase band rather than a marching band built for halftime.
In 1967, Dr. William A. McMillan, a non-alumnus, assumed the presidency and led the college for 26 years through the post-civil-rights era and into the 1990s. His tenure saw the college compete in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) from 1978-79 to 1987-88 — the period when Rust's athletic program played its highest level of competition, and the era of the 1984 women's basketball national championship.
In 1984 the Rust women's basketball team won the college's first national championship, defeating Elizabethtown College 51-49. For a school of a few hundred students with no football program and a tiny athletics budget, the title was a giant-killer moment. It remains the signature achievement in Rust athletics history, and the 51-49 final is still the scoreline Bearcat fans cite.
In 1993, Dr. David L. Beckley, Rust class of 1967, became the eleventh president of Rust College. A former Rust director of public relations and development who had gone on to lead Wiley College in Texas, Beckley returned home and served 27 years. Under his leadership the endowment grew from $13 million to $36 million. He led the college through its 150th anniversary, retired in 2020, and remains the defining modern president of Rust.
In 2008 Rust College acquired the campus of the former Mississippi Industrial College, located directly adjacent to the Rust campus. The irony was rich: Mississippi Industrial had been one of Holly Springs' early-1900s college football programs alongside Rust, and its campus was folded into the very institution it once competed against. The acquisition expanded Rust's footprint to approximately 126 acres.
In 2011 the college acquired Airliewood, an antebellum former slave plantation estate built in 1858 near campus. During the Civil War it served as living quarters for Ulysses S. Grant. It now serves as the official residence of the Rust College president — a former slave plantation house becoming the home of the leader of a Black college, a transformation the college holds up as part of its story.
In 2014, two historic markers were unveiled on campus honoring the Council of Federated Organizations and those involved in the 1964 Freedom Summer Project in Holly Springs — permanent recognition of the campus's civil rights role fifty years later. The markers anchored a 'civil rights corner' on the grounds where Freedom School classes had met on the lawn in 1964.
On November 13, 2016, in Morehouse Auditorium of the Doxey Alumni Fine Arts-Communication Building, Rust College celebrated its 150th Founders' Convocation. President David L. Beckley presided over an ecumenical service steeped in pomp and circumstance, with Rev. Dr. Jerry Young, president of the National Baptist Convention USA, as speaker. The celebration marked a century and a half since freedpeople walked into Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church to learn to read — and the school they founded was still standing.
After years in NCAA Division III, Rust moved to the NAIA and was approved as the 8th member of the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference in 2018, joining for the 2018-19 season — the conference's council of presidents voted unanimously, meeting on Rust's own campus in Holly Springs. The move brought Rust into a conference with fellow HBCUs after decades as an independent. The GCAC has since been renamed the HBCU Athletic Conference (HBCUAC), which is where the Bearcats compete today in 11 varsity sports.
On June 1, 2020, Ivy Taylor — the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, a Yale graduate with a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania focused on HBCU leadership — became the 12th president of Rust College and the first woman to lead the institution in its 154-year history. She succeeded Beckley, who had served 27 years, and steered the college through the pandemic, celebrating the 154th Founders' Week amid COVID-19.
In 2023, Dr. Robert M. Dixon, a Morehouse College alumnus, became Rust's interim president — the first scientist to serve in the post. During his tenure the campus hosted a day-long conference on the life and work of Ida B. Wells, focused on the 18 years Wells lived in Holly Springs, with Dixon delivering a deep study of Wells and her mission.
In 2025 the Rust College Board of Trustees selected Dr. Johnny M. Moore as the 13th president, choosing him from nearly 200 candidates in a national search. An Arkansas native, HBCU graduate, and mathematics professor with more than 30 years in higher education, Moore had served as chancellor of Arkansas State University-Newport, president and CEO of Pierpoint Community and Technical College, and president of Philander Smith College — another United Methodist-affiliated HBCU. His tenure began August 11, 2025.
The 2026 Memorialization Gathering, an annual convening of people and organizations engaged in community-driven memorialization of racial violence, enslavement, and resistance, was held September 25-27 at Rust College in Holly Springs. Co-hosted by the Lafayette Community Remembrance Project and Rust College, the gathering — themed 'Descendants: What We Inherit' — placed the college once again at the center of Mississippi's public reckoning with its past, exactly where it stood in the summer of 1964.
In the early 1900s, Holly Springs was one of the biggest college sports towns in Mississippi, with Rust and Mississippi Industrial College both fielding teams in the South Central Athletic Conference — the predecessor of today's SWAC. Both programs were suspended in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and collegiate football has not been played in Holly Springs since. In 2008, Rust acquired the former Mississippi Industrial College campus, folding the old rival's grounds into its own. No formal rivalry game name survives in the sources checked.
In the HBCUAC (formerly GCAC) the Bearcats compete against fellow HBCUs including Dillard, Philander Smith, Tougaloo, and Talladega. No named rivalry game could be verified from the sources checked, so none is claimed here.
🥁 Rust College Band
Rust College's signature music program is its A' Cappella Choir, directed by Director of Music Karl Twyner, which tours churches across the country and has been described as world-renowned. The College Band fields a percussion section and dancers who perform at campus parades and HBCU drum showcases, such as the 2020 Battle of the Drummers at LeMoyne-Owen College. With football discontinued in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the band's identity is parade, pep, and showcase rather than halftime.
No band director name could be verified from the school's public materials. The college catalog lists a College Band alongside the choir; the band performs at parades such as the Founders' Day Parade and showcases like the 2020 LOC Battle of the Drummers, but Rust has had no football program since the late 1960s/early 1970s, so there is no traditional marching-band-for-football setup. Directors marked unverified rather than invented.
Rust is the thinnest file in this set. The only firm evidence is a 2018 Founders' Day report identifying a Miss AKA at Rust College; third-party rating pages (Greekrank) mention Zeta Phi Beta and Delta Sigma Theta, but those are weak sources. No chapter names or charter dates could be verified from school materials — left incomplete rather than padded. No Iota Phi Theta or other D9 presence could be confirmed.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
The campus added a three-story addition to the McDonald Science Building, expanding lab and classroom space for the Division of Science and Mathematics. No completion date could be verified from public sources.
The college's administrative headquarters, housing the president's office. Named for Dr. L. M. McCoy, the first alumnus to serve as president (1924). A 1929 portrait of the student government, painted by graduate Fletcher Ruff, hangs on display in the President's Office.
Houses Morehouse Auditorium, where the 150th Founders' Convocation was celebrated in November 2016 with President David L. Beckley presiding and National Baptist Convention president Rev. Dr. Jerry Young as speaker.
Sits about 35 feet from Oakview on the campus's historic core, anchoring the media and communications programs.
Hosts campus events including the Ida B. Wells commemorative conference held April 16, focusing on the 18 years Wells lived in Holly Springs.
The only nineteenth-century building remaining on the Rust campus and one of the oldest extant buildings associated with Black education in Mississippi. Originally believed to be a kitchen house for a plantation planned by Holly Springs contractor Ulysses Ross — construction halted by the Civil War — it later served as a practice cottage and the college infirmary. It stands on the site of the former slave auction grounds of Holly Springs. A 1981 National Park Service survey listed it in good condition and noted threats from campus improvements.
In 2008 Rust College acquired the campus of the former Mississippi Industrial College, located directly adjacent to the Rust campus, expanding the college's footprint.
In 2011 the college acquired Airliewood, an antebellum former slave plantation estate built in 1858 near campus that served as living quarters for Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War. It now serves as the official residence of the college president.
Five gender-segregated dormitories with roughly 800-900 total spaces, serving the residential student body.
Rust College's FM radio station at 88.1, used as a training resource for broadcast journalism majors and the broadcast home of The Rust Story podcast hosted by Sharron Goodman-Hill. A Founders Week Radio-A-Thon on WURC raises scholarship funds.
Basketball venue on campus that hosts the Dr. Ishmell Edwards Basketball Classic during Founders Week, plus alumni and friends tailgating festivities.
Baseball coach Bates led the Bearcats into the 2026 season with shortstop Kyrent Cole named Preseason All-HBCUAC First Team. Athletics contact: rustathletics.com. No verified athletic director name was found in the sources checked.
13th president (since August 11, 2025); former chancellor of Arkansas State University-Newport.
Dean of Humanities and Director of Music; leads the renowned A' Cappella Choir. Opened a 2024 panel discussion on Rust's Freedom Summer legacy at the Rust College library.
Vice President of the college; served as chief marshal of the 150th Founders' Convocation. The Founders Week basketball classic is named for him.
Host of The Rust Story podcast, broadcast on WURC 88.1 FM, featuring Rust alumni and the college's history.
Rust runs on its history and its voice. The A' Cappella Choir is the campus's signature — touring churches nationwide, performing at the UMC Building's 100th anniversary, and drawing 'world-renowned' billing at heritage events. Founders Week each November is the homecoming of the soul: a Founders Parade through Holly Springs, a Radio-A-Thon on WURC 88.1 FM raising scholarship money, an alumni and friends day party at the Magic Johnson Complex with a student/alumni stroll-off, and the Dr. Ishmell Edwards Basketball Classic. WURC 88.1 FM doubles as a training ground for broadcast journalism majors. Student media includes The Rustorian (campus newspaper), The Bearcat (yearbook), The Sentinel (college bulletin), and the Bearcat News video reports. With no football since the late 1960s, basketball is the sport that packs the gym.