Mississippi Valley State University
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Former names
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Mississippi Vocational College Mississippi Valley State College |
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| Type | Public, HBCU |
| Established | 1950 |
| President | William B. Bynum, Jr. |
| Students | 2,502 (Fall 2016) |
| Location | Mississippi Valley State, Mississippi, United States |
| Campus | Rural |
| Colors | Forest green and White |
| Athletics | NCAA Division I (FCS) |
| Nickname | Delta Devils & Devilettes |
| Mascot | Devil |
| Affiliations | Southwestern Athletic Conference |
| Website | www |
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Mississippi Valley State University (commonly referred to as MVSU or Valley) is a historically black university located in Mississippi Valley State, Leflore County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, near Itta Bena. MVSU is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
The institution, which opened in 1950, was created by the Mississippi Legislature as Mississippi Vocational College. The legislation to form the institution was signed into law by Governor Thomas L. Bailey on April 5, 1946. The legislature anticipated that legal segregation of public education was in danger (and would in four years be declared unconstitutional in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education) and therefore created the institution, hoping that its existence would draw African-American applicants who might have otherwise applied to attend Mississippi's premier whites-only institutions—the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. Creating separate institutions of higher learning for Mississippi's black population, the state's political leaders hoped, would help ease the pressure to integrate the state's premier universities. To attract the support of those who opposed any government action to provide higher education to blacks, those proposing creation of M.V.C. used the term "vocational" to imply that the institution's main purpose would be to train blacks to take on blue-collar jobs.
The site selection committee appointed by the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning had originally selected the former Greenwood Army Air Base, which had many facilities ready for use and thus would have been a very cost-effective choice. The Greenwood Commonwealth celebrated the choice. However, residents of Carroll County, Mississippi objected to having the institution located near their property. Thus after further study, the proposed site was moved to Itta Bena. Even that town, however, objected to too close a proximity of a black institution, so the final site was chosen to place the college away from the downtown area, on cheap, uncultivatable land.
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