Qualla: Clemson University

Clemson University: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clemson College staff, Public domain. Thomas Green Clemson signed his will in 1888 and died on April 6 of that year, leaving Fort Hill plantation and most of his estate to South Carolina with instructions to establish a college of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The plantation had not started as his. It had belonged to his father-in-law John C. Calhoun, the seventh U.S. vice president and the most articulate defender of American slavery the nineteenth century produced. Through that marriage to Anna Maria Calhoun in 1838, Clemson had become an owner of enslaved people on the land that would eventually become a university. In November 1889, Governor John Peter Richardson III signed the bill establishing Clemson Agricultural College. The school opened in July 1893 with 446 students. Today it enrolls nearly 30,000 and has spent the past decade reckoning, in fits and starts, with the names carved into its oldest buildings.

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Image: Clemson College staff | Public domain

Clemson University: A Will and a One-Vote Margin

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Pruitt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Clemson's plan for the school very nearly did not pass. The South Carolina General Assembly was deeply split on the idea of redirecting federal Morrill Act funds from South Carolina College, now the University of South Carolina, to a new agricultural college in the upstate. Benja...

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Image: Chris Pruitt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clemson University: Cadets, Walkouts, and Fires

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Pruitt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Clemson's first half-century carried the marks of its military structure. Reserve Officers' Training Corps arrived in 1917; thousands of Clemson students would serve in both world wars, with 376 killed in World War II alone. The campus saw two major student walkouts. In March 192...

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Image: Chris Pruitt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clemson University: Desegregating, in Court

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Uncredited. Published by the United States Information Service., Public domain. Black applicants had been trying to enroll at Clemson since at least 1947, when one student briefly slipped through what the registrar later called a clerical error and then was never allowed to actually attend. The 1948 admissions debate inside Clemson's board landed where south...

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Image: Uncredited. Published by the United States Information Service. | Public domain

Clemson University: Death Valley and the Tiger Paw

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Raghuvansh r, CC BY 3.0. Memorial Stadium opened in 1942 with 20,500 seats, expanded over decades into the largest stadium in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The nickname Death Valley comes from a combination of the location, a valley in the western part of campus, and the original presence of the Clemson...

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Image: Raghuvansh r | CC BY 3.0

Clemson University: R1 Research, Nine Colleges, and a Lake

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Pruitt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Clemson is classified R1 for very high research activity, the highest tier in the Carnegie classification. The nine colleges include Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences; the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business, renamed in ...

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Image: Chris Pruitt | CC BY-SA 3.0