'To Promote the Liberal and Practical Education of the Industrial Classes' in the South: Southern Land-Grant College Development, 1862-1910

The Morrill Act of 1862 provided the funding mechanism for the modern land-grant college system. In the over 160 years since its passage, the tripartite land-grant mission of teaching, research, and service has become the most recognizable legacy of the legislation. Recent scholars of land-grant education caution against viewing the history of land-grant education as a singular story. Despite this caution, many of the texts that offer horizontal histories of land-grant education focus largely on schools in Northeastern and Midwestern states. Within the study of the history of higher education, land-grant college development and the development of higher education in the postbellum South are relatively underexamined. Southern land-grant college development, where the two bodies of literature converge, is studied even less. This study combines multicase study methodology and historical research methods to examine the history of Alcorn University (now Alcorn State University), the University of Georgia, and Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Virginia Polytechnic and State University) between 1862 and 1910 to answer the question: How did land-grant colleges develop in the postbellum South? In doing so, it looks both within the developments of these colleges, to identify unique internal factors and external influences, and across them, to identify larger themes around land-grant college development in the region. Specifically, this study explores how state-level politics, race and racism, and the changing social order of the postbellum South shaped these land-grant colleges during the eras of Reconstruction and Populism. This study intervenes in the historiographies of land-grant college development and southern higher education, and in doing so extends our understanding of both. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]