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History > Timeline

Timeline

1890 Major Rueben Webster Millsaps founds College with a personal gift of $50,000.	1901 Millsaps builds the first golf course in Mississippi.	1902 Mary Letitia Holloman becomes the first woman to graduate from Millsaps College.	1908 Sing-Ung Zung, of Soochow, China, becomes the first international student to graduate from Millsaps.
1914 Old Main, one of the first buildings on the Millsaps campus built in 1892, burns and is replaced by Murrah Hall.	1916 Major Millsaps dies and is buried on campus.	1931 A gas well is erected to heat the campus and save money. The heat is thermostatically controlled, a very advanced technique for the time.	1931 The first night football game in Mississippi is played on the Millsaps campus between the Majors and Mississippi A&M (Mississippi State University).
1941 The first bachelor of arts degree for economics is issued to Elbert Wallace.	1943 184 Marines and 196 Navy sailors move on to campus to begin the V-12 program.	1944 Louis H. Wilson ('41), future commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, receives the Congressional Medal of Honor.	1948 The Millsaps fight song is sung for the first time, during a football game between the Majors and the Mississippi College Choctaws.
1949 "Pinky," a movie based on the book Quality by Millsaps alum Cid Ricketts Sumner ('09), is made by controversial director Elia Kazan. The movie receives three Oscar nominations.	1952 Dr. Homer Ellis Finger, Jr. becomes the first alumnus to be named president of the College.	1953 Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis judge a Millsaps College beauty contest.	1957 Millsaps is selected as a hunting ground for new talent by 20th Century Fox studios.
1961 David Donald ('41) wins the Pulitzer Prize for his biography Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War.	1962 Millsaps V-12er Johnny Carson becomes host of the Tonight Show.	1965 Millsaps becomes first all-white college in Mississippi to integrate voluntarily.	1967 Robert Kennedy speaks at Millsaps about obligations of young Americans to give back to their country.
1967 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara gives convocation speech.	1971 Joanne Edgar ('65) co-founds Ms. magazine.	1975 Jimmy Carter speaks to Millsaps students about the crisis in the Middle East.	1979 The Else School of Management is formed.
1984 Ellen Gilchrist ('67) wins the American Book Award for Fiction for her novel Victory Over Japan.	1988 Millsaps initiates the first campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi.	1989 Millsaps College becomes the first school in Mississippi to have a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa honorary.	2000-2010 Dr. Frances Lucas served as the first woman president of the College.