Mississippi Valley State University

Mississippi Valley State University is established before 1964 in Itta Bena, Mississippi. The university is historically categorized as black university. The university is often referred as MVSU or simply ?The Valley?. The university is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. The Mississippi Valley State University 's colors are greena nd white and their nickname is the Delta Devils. The sports team of te university participate in NCAA division I in the Southwestern Athletic Conference. The Mississippi Valley State University Department of Athletics currently sponsors Men's Intercollegiate baseball, basketball, football, golf, tennis, cross country and track along with Women's intercollegiate volleyball, soccer, basketball, softball, bowling, golf and track.

The institution was opened in 1950 and was created by the Mississippi state legislature as Mississippi Vocational college. The college changed its name in 1964 to Mississippi Valley state college and was granted university status in 1974.

The legislature of the university anticipated that legal segregation of public education was in danger and created the institution to hold the African-American applicants who might have applied to other premier white universities of Mississippi like: University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi.

The state leaders anticipated that the cration of a separate university for the blacks would ease the pressure to integrate the state's premier universities. To attract the support of those who opposed the governmental action of providing higher education to the black, the Mississippi Valley State University used the term ?vocational? to connote that the aim of the institution is to train blacks to take on blue-collar jobs. The first president of Mississippi Valley State University J.H. White, an African American reassures that the state's political leaders that the institution would not be a center for black agitation.