Baton Rouge, Louisiana · Founded 1880 · Jaguars & Lady Jaguars
“The Bluff — Louisiana's flagship HBCU, home of the Human Jukebox and the biggest rivalry in Black college football.”
One-hour-plus Bayou Classic weekend retrospective — includes the band's tribute to Dr. Greggs and its 2019 Rose Parade moment. The cultural tentpole of Southern's year.
First full Battle of the Bands season under Nathan Haymer's direction (2014) — the changing of the guard after Lawrence Jackson's retirement.
2015 Bayou Classic Battle of the Bands — the Haymer-era Jukebox at its peak popularity.
Full Southern vs Grambling band battle from the 2019 season, in 4K — shows what the Friday-night tradition looks like in the dome.
Full 2016 battle, uploaded by the band's own media team (DaEdge1) — a complete record of a Bayou Classic weekend showdown.
2025 Bayou Classic performance in 4K — the Jukebox under Kedric Taylor still drawing the modern band-culture audience.
From the Yard's video feed.
From the Yard's video feed.
From the Yard's video feed.
From the Yard's video feed.
From the Yard's video feed.
From the Yard's video feed.
NFL Hall of Fame cornerback (Cardinals, Rams); one of eight Southern football legends honored by the university.
NFL Hall of Fame cornerback; four-time Super Bowl champion with the Steelers and 1975 NFL Defensive Player of the Year.
NFL wide receiver; Philadelphia Eagles great and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee.
NFL cornerback (Packers, Oilers); one of Southern's eight honored football legends.
NFL linebacker with the Rams; one of Southern's eight honored football legends.
NFL defensive end (Broncos); one of Southern's eight honored football legends.
NFL linebacker (Seahawks, Saints); one of Southern's eight honored football legends.
NFL wide receiver (Chiefs, Browns); one of Southern's eight honored football legends.
NBA point guard across 16 seasons and 1999 champion with the Spurs; 2006 NBA Coach of the Year with the Dallas Mavericks. Southern's basketball court is named for him.
NBA forward; three-time All-Star with the Chicago Bulls.
NBA shooting guard (Hornets, Cavaliers) across eight seasons.
NBA point guard (New Orleans Jazz).
NBA small forward (Celtics, Kings, Spurs).
Baseball Hall of Famer (Cardinals); led Southern to the 1959 NAIA national championship — the first HBCU to win it.
No. 2 overall pick in the 2003 MLB draft; back-to-back NCAA batting titles at Southern (.495, .479) and 2003 Golden Spikes Award winner.
The only player ever drafted No. 1 overall in the MLB draft twice (1971, 1975); turned down the White Sox to attend Southern.
U.S. Army Lieutenant General; commanded Joint Task Force Katrina in 2005. Southern class of 1971, B.S. in vocational agriculture.
B.A. 1984, Law Center J.D. 1987; former U.S. congressman — elected at 30, the youngest member of the 103rd Congress.
M.A. in journalism 1982, Law Center J.D. 1985; former mayor of Baton Rouge.
B.A. in accounting 1980; chancellor of SUBR (2024–present) and former Southern University Law Center chancellor.
The Louisiana General Assembly chartered Southern University for Colored Students on April 10, 1880 — the first public higher education institution in Louisiana for Black people. The push came from Reconstruction-era Black political leaders, with P. B. S. Pinchback, Theophile T. Allain, and Henry Demas proposing the institution at the 1879 state constitutional convention. It opened March 7, 1881 in New Orleans with just 12 students, holding classes in the former Israel Sinai Temple on Calliope Street. From that single room, Southern would grow into the nation's only HBCU university system.
The legislature designated Southern a land-grant college for Black students under the Second Morrill Act — the state's way of satisfying federal requirements to support higher education for all students while keeping its system segregated. An Agricultural and Mechanical department was established, and the school eventually took the name Southern University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. The land-grant mission still anchors Southern's agricultural research and extension work through the SU Ag Center. The 'A&M' in the name traces directly to this 1890 designation.
Partly under pressure from white neighbors in New Orleans' Audubon district — home to Tulane and Loyola — and partly to serve rural Louisiana, Southern moved to Scotlandville, just north of Baton Rouge. The new campus sat on Scott's Bluff facing the Mississippi River, the site students call 'The Bluff' to this day. Joseph Samuel Clark, who had led Baton Rouge College and the Louisiana Colored Teachers Association, became president of the new Southern. The relocated school opened March 9, 1914.
The 1921 Louisiana Constitutional Convention authorized reorganization and expansion, and Legislative Act 100 of 1922 placed the school under the State Board of Education — formal standing as a state institution. Clark used the new status to push enrollment from 47 to 500 and oversaw two of the school's earliest buildings. It was the first real growth spurt on the Bluff, laying the physical and institutional foundation for everything that followed. State recognition also meant the state funding battles that would shadow the school for decades.
Joseph Clark's son took the presidency in 1938 and ran it for 30 years — the great expansion era. Thirty-three of the campus's 114 buildings went up on his watch, and enrollment grew from about 500 to nearly 10,000, making Southern the nation's largest HBCU at the time. He founded two branch campuses: Southern University at New Orleans (1956) and Southern University at Shreveport (1964). The F.G. Clark Activity Center and much of the modern Bluff are his legacy.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the campus — Southern was among the first HBCUs to receive a visit from a sitting First Lady. In the Jim Crow South, the visit was both an honor and a statement about the school's national standing. Students and faculty turned out to greet her on the Bluff. The visit remains one of the most photographed moments in Southern's early Baton Rouge years.
When LSU Law School refused to admit Charles J. Hatfield III, an African American college graduate who sued in 1946, Louisiana chose to establish a law program at Southern rather than integrate LSU. It opened in September 1947 and became the Southern University Law Center — now one of only two public law schools in Louisiana. The founding was segregation's workaround, but the school grew into a genuine engine of Black legal education. Its alumni include judges, legislators, and members of Congress across the state.
A.W. Mumford's undefeated Jaguars beat San Francisco State 30-0 in the Fruit Bowl — the first interracial bowl game in college football history. A Black college team taking the field against a white program and dominating established credibility for HBCU football on a national stage. Mumford would win 179 games, five black college national championships, and 11 SWAC titles across 27 years on the Bluff. The football tradition at Mumford Stadium starts here.
Led by future Baseball Hall of Famer Lou Brock, Southern became the first HBCU to win the NAIA national baseball championship. Brock had come to Southern on an academic scholarship, nearly lost it over a bad grade his first semester, and walked onto the baseball team to earn an athletic scholarship instead. Southern won the NAIA title in his junior year, and Brock signed with the Chicago Cubs in 1960 before a Hall of Fame career with the Cardinals. The program's baseball tradition — 34 SWAC championships and 19 tournament titles, both conference records — traces back to this team.
Dr. Isaac Greggs — 'Doc' — took over the marching band and spent 36 years turning it into the Human Jukebox: a band that played six Super Bowls, four Sugar Bowls, and three presidential inaugurations. The students named it for the jukebox in the student union — in Greggs's words, 'Put a quarter in the jukebox. What tune you want? We could play it.' In 1969 he also co-founded the Fabulous Dancing Dolls with Gracie Perkins, the dance line that has performed with Madonna at the Super Bowl and in Beyonce's Homecoming. His hat and baton sit in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
On November 16, 1972, during a second day of student protests demanding a voice in administration decisions, Denver Smith and Leonard Brown were shot and killed outside the Old Auditorium during a clash with sheriff's deputies. Buckshot matching deputy-issued ammunition killed both young men, members of the activist group Students United — and the murders were never solved. Governor Edwin Edwards shut the campus down and sent in troops to patrol it. The killings, remembered every November, remain the darkest day in Southern's history.
A special legislative session created the Southern University System by constitutional mandate — the nation's only HBCU university system — with Jesse N. Stone of Shreveport as its first president. The system holds SUBR, SUNO, SUSLA, the Law Center, and the Ag Research and Extension Center. That same year, Southern and Grambling moved their annual football meeting to New Orleans and named it the Bayou Classic, first played at Tulane Stadium. The system and the Classic both became permanent institutions of Black Louisiana life.
Dolores M. R. Spikes became president of Southern — the only woman to hold the office. Her 1988–1996 tenure steered the system through tight state budgets and accreditation fights. The Dolores Spikes Honors College now carries her name. She remains the lone woman to sit atop the nation's only HBCU system.
Pete Richardson's Jaguars finished 12-1, beating Grambling 44-41 in the Bayou Classic and Alabama State 20-9 in the SWAC championship game before 31,617 fans in Birmingham — Southern's 19th SWAC title. They were named the 2003 SBN Black College National Champions. Richardson won five SWAC titles and four HBCU national championships across 17 seasons, compiling 134 wins — second only to Mumford — and never lost to Grambling's Eddie Robinson. In 2021 the field at Mumford Stadium was named Pete Richardson Field.
Southern earned the Carnegie R2 classification — Doctoral University, High Research Activity. It was one of only 11 HBCUs with R2 status and the first HBCU in Louisiana to reach it. The designation marked the school's arrival as a research institution, not just a teaching college. It capped a decade-long push for doctoral program growth and research dollars.
Southern named the field at A.W. Mumford Stadium for Pete Richardson, the coach who won 134 games, five SWAC titles, and four HBCU national championships from 1993 to 2009. He was the only coach to go undefeated against Grambling's iconic Eddie Robinson and was named SWAC Coach of the Year five times. The stadium keeps Mumford's name and the field carries Richardson's — the two winningest coaches in school history honored in one building.
Dennis Shields — chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Platteville since 2010 — was named president of the SU System and chancellor of SUBR, succeeding Ray L. Belton, who retired after announcing it in 2021. At Platteville he had led more than $93 million in campus projects, and the hire brought an outsider's fundraising and building record to the Bluff. Two years later the board split the roles again, naming John K. Pierre chancellor of the Baton Rouge campus in 2024 while Shields kept the system presidency.
The board named John K. Pierre chancellor of Southern University and A&M College — a homecoming, since Pierre earned his bachelor's in accounting from Southern in 1980. He had served the Law Center since 1990 as a faculty member and then chancellor from 2016 to spring 2024, and was interim executive vice president of the system in 2023. Before academia he served as a JAG officer in the U.S. Army from 1986 to 1990. The appointment returned the Baton Rouge campus to leadership by one of its own graduates.
Construction began on a $68 million, 86,000-square-foot STEM complex on E.C. Harrison Drive — the largest academic building project in school history. Funded through the state's Capital Outlay Act, it will hold 21 teaching labs for physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics plus 16 classrooms, replacing William Henry James Hall. A topping-off ceremony marked the completed steel framework, with opening expected in spring 2027. Chancellor Pierre called it a transformational facility for the state and the nation.
With enrollment climbing, Southern broke ground in June 2026 on the first phase of an 850-bed residential expansion next to the Horace W. Moody Intramural Sports Complex, with a ceremony on Helen Barron Drive. Chancellor Pierre called it a 'landmark moment' — the biggest housing investment in decades, aimed at a fuller residential campus to support retention. Separately, alumnus Dexter Henderson committed $1 million to redevelop a blighted Scenic Highway building into the Jaguar Colosseum, housing 20-plus students by early 2027. Both projects answer years of complaints about too few beds on the Bluff.
The granddaddy of HBCU classics. Southern and Grambling first met in 1932 — Southern won 20-0 on Armistice Day — and have played nearly every year since, moving the game to New Orleans as the Bayou Classic in 1974 (first played at Tulane Stadium, then the Superdome from 1975). Televised by NBC for 20-plus years over Thanksgiving weekend, the two schools combine for 45 SWAC championships and seven NFL Hall of Famers. Southern leads the Classic series 28-24 and the overall series 43-34 after a 28-27 win in 2025, and owns the longest Classic win streak at eight (1993–2000). One-score thrillers define it: 30-28 in 2019, Grambling's 29-26 win in 2021, 27-22 in 2023 — with Southern's biggest Classic rout the 49-7 win in 2021. And the Friday-night Battle of the Bands — the Human Jukebox vs. Grambling's World Famed — fills the dome with tens of thousands and trends nationally on its own.
Southern's other defining SWAC rivalry — the West vs. East heavyweight fight that has decided countless conference races. The football series and the baseball series (where Southern's 34 SWAC championships tower over Jackson State's 16) carry the weight, but the halftime showdown between the Human Jukebox and the Sonic Boom of the South is its own event.
🥁 The Human Jukebox · since 1947
The marching band from Jaguarland, founded 1947 and turned into a national institution by Dr. Isaac Greggs. Known for volume, arrangements you can feel in your chest, and playing anything in the Top 40 — the students named it the Human Jukebox because, in Greggs's words, 'Put a quarter in the jukebox. What tune you want? We could play it.' Signature moments: the Friday-night Battle of the Bands against Grambling's World Famed during Bayou Classic weekend in the Superdome — the 2015 'Hello' cover went viral past a million views in under two weeks; Madonna's 2012 Super Bowl halftime with the Dancing Dolls; Lizzo's 'Good as Hell' video; Beyonce's Homecoming doc; the 2020 Rose Parade; and the first marching band in the nation with its own state license plate (2017).
Credited with establishing Southern's marching band; organized the first Southern University Band Festival and Band Day; named Professor Emeritus in 1989.
Who directed the band between Davis and Greggs is unverified from sources opened for this profile.
Known as 'Doc.' 36-year tenure that made the Jukebox a national name — six Super Bowls, four Sugar Bowls, three presidential inaugurations, Rose Parade 1980. Co-founded the Fabulous Dancing Dolls with Gracie Perkins in 1969. Band hall bears his name; Louisiana Black History Hall of Fame 2013; his hat and baton sit in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Died April 28, 2014.
Played tuba in the Jukebox 1971–75, came back as director. Eight years at the helm per subr.edu; retired July 2014 after a 38-year musical career. Honored as honorary band director by Grambling's World Famed — his fiercest rival — in 2016.
Assistant director who took the top job in 2014 calling it his middle-school dream. Terminated in 2018 after an internal audit found roughly $300,000 in band camp and appearance fees diverted to personal accounts; pleaded guilty to federal embezzlement in 2020 and served 13 months. Hired by Alabama A&M's band staff in 2026.
Southern alumnus, 2005 trumpet section leader, on band staff since 2014 (associate director before the top job). Led the Jukebox to the 131st Rose Parade in December 2019 — the band's second Rose Parade, 40 years after 1980.
The Bluff runs deep with Greek life — all nine NPHC orgs have histories here (eight currently recognized). Homecoming's Greek Step Show at the F.G. Clark Activity Center is iconic: a record-breaking crowd of nearly 4,000 in 2022, with each org composing routines drawn from its own history (the Zetas' four-segment number built on scholarship, service, sisterhood, finer womanhood; Sigma Gamma Rho took first among sororities, Alphas first among fraternities in 2023). Beyond NPHC, the school's SPOC council governs service and professional orgs. Greek life here has been in the national spotlight for hazing enforcement: Omega Psi Phi was removed in 2025 and Alpha Phi Alpha's Beta Sigma chapter was suspended then cleared late in 2025. Chapter histories date to the 1940s — Beta Psi (AKA) was keeping the campus's highest scholastic average among Greeks in 1942, and Beta Alpha (SGRho) was organized December 8, 1945.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
A bronze jaguar honoring Lacumba — the first live exotic animal mascot at an HBCU — arrived at the plaza in October 2021, continuing a legacy that started when alumnus Henry J. Bellaire and Helen Williams gifted the school a baby jaguar in 1971.
Year of the official naming unverified. The band hall on campus was renamed for Dr. Isaac Greggs, who directed the Human Jukebox for 36 years.
Year of renovation unverified. The 66,200-square-foot student union — six-outlet food court, 12 bowling lanes, barber and beauty shops, ballroom, art gallery, post office — was described as recently renovated in the university's campus profile.
Construction began in March 2025 on an 86,000-square-foot, three-story STEM complex on E.C. Harrison Drive — the largest academic building project in school history. Funded by a $68 million legislative appropriation through the Capital Outlay Act, it will hold 21 teaching labs for physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics plus 16 classrooms, replacing William Henry James Hall. A topping-off ceremony marked the completed steel framework, with opening expected spring 2027.
A $1.7 million amphitheater and outdoor classroom funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic as open-air learning space near the Mississippi River. Its design echoes the shape of the historic campus bell housed in the John B. Cade Library — the bell enslaved ancestors rang to start the day, per Chancellor Pierre. Seats up to 1,500, with construction-management students assisting the Luster Group build.
Groundbreaking was held October 17 for a one-story, 4,021-square-foot headquarters for the Southern University Police Department — the first new police station built on campus in more than 70 years. Located near the dormitories to put watchful eyes over residential students, per Chancellor Pierre. Funded by HEERF and Title III.
Construction is underway on the Global Innovation and Welcome Center on Harding Boulevard near the security checkpoint — a state-of-the-art venue for large internal and external events that seats up to 750. It will house the Traffic and Parking Department and the Office of Research and Strategic Planning. Chancellor Pierre called it the emblem of a campus 'growing and thriving in the 21st century' after 145 years on the Bluff. Funded by a HEERF grant, with phase two scheduled for late 2025.
With enrollment climbing, Southern broke ground in June 2026 on the first phase of an 850-bed residential expansion adjacent to the Horace W. Moody Intramural Sports Complex, with a ceremony on Helen Barron Drive. Chancellor Pierre called it a 'landmark moment' — the biggest housing investment in decades, aimed at a fuller residential campus experience to support retention. The university's analysis had found a major shortfall in on-campus beds.
Southern alumnus and developer Dexter Henderson committed $1 million to redevelop a blighted building at 6800 Scenic Highway into the Jaguar Colosseum — a modern student housing community with six residential units housing more than 20 students. Pitched as investment in North Baton Rouge and the Scenic Highway corridor, with completion expected in the first quarter of 2027.
Notable faculty on record: Blyden Jackson (English professor 1954–56, Dean of the Graduate School), Jewel Prestage (Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs), and the Fabulous Dancing Dolls' co-founder Gracie Perkins. Athletically: 13 intercollegiate teams, Jaguars/Lady Jaguars, SWAC, NCAA Division I FCS. Football: 19 SWAC titles and black college national championships in 1993, 1995, 1997, and 2003 under Pete Richardson (plus Mumford-era titles); A.W. Mumford Stadium's field was named for Richardson in 2021. Baseball: 34 SWAC championships and 19 tournament titles — both conference records — under coaches including Roger Cador (913 wins, 1984–2017); Lou Brock's 1959 team won the NAIA national title, the first HBCU to do so.
Named chancellor of SUBR in July 2024; Southern alumnus (B.A. accounting 1980), former Law Center chancellor (2016–2024).
System president since 2022; previously chancellor of UW–Platteville, where he led $93M+ in campus projects.
Vice-Chancellor per the university's profile.
Campus is called 'The Bluff' — 512 acres on Scott's Bluff over the Mississippi, Lake Kernan running through the middle. Nearly 150 student organizations. The weekly student newspaper The Southern Digest has run since 1926 ('The Sentinel of an Enlightened Student Body'); student radio is 'The Bluff.' Every fall the calendar bends around the Bayou Classic against Grambling — football in the Superdome, televised by NBC for 20-plus years, and the Friday-night Battle of the Bands that draws tens of thousands and trends nationally. Founders' Week each March includes the Lab School pilgrimage to the founders' graves at the back of campus.