Historedia
AmericasEvent

University of Mississippi Admits Its First Students

When
1848–1849
Where
University of Mississippi
Episodes
2

The University of Mississippi admitted its first cohort of 80 students in late 1848, following its legislative charter in 1844. The inaugural class, predominantly white and from Mississippi, consisted largely of children of elite slaveholders. The university opened with a classical curriculum, establishing a foundational student body that would later form early literary societies and fraternities.

Episodes

  1. 1848-1849 · University of MississippiEarly Student Organizations

    Literary societies and the first Southern fraternity were established shortly after the first students arrived.

  2. November 6, 1848 · University of MississippiFirst Students Admitted

    The university opened to its first class of 80 students in November 1848, following its 1844 charter.

Background and detail

Background. The Mississippi Legislature chartered the university on February 24, 1844, establishing it as a public institution in Oxford. For 23 years, it remained Mississippi's only public institution of higher learning. The Lyceum, constructed in 1848, stands among the university's earliest buildings.

Inaugural Class. The first class consisted of 80 students who opened to a classical curriculum in November 1848. Demographically, all students were white, and all but one were from Mississippi. The majority of these students were children of elite slaveholders, reflecting the social composition of the antebellum South.

Student Life. Early student life included the establishment of literary societies, specifically the Hermaean Society and the Phi Sigma Society, in 1849. Under the university's emphasis on rhetoric, student-organized public orations on the first Monday of every month were popular. The Rainbow Fraternity, founded in 1848, was the first fraternity established in the South.

People involved

Sources

  1. University of Mississippi Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-02

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.