Our History

William H. Holtzclaw: Founding an HBCU in Jim Crow Mississippi  

His name was William Henry Holtzclaw. He was the son of former slaves.   To truly understand the founder of the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute and to recognize how courageous he was…how amazing it was that he founded this institution, and kept it running successfully for over 40 years, you have to understand a bit about the times that shaped the man.  

He was born in Randolph county in Alabama and grew from an illiterate young man, who could barely write, to a scholar who rubbed shoulders with white society’s elite and who founded and maintained this institution.  

William Holtzclaw came to Mississippi in 1902 when it was extremely challenging (to put it mildly) to be a black man anywhere in the country but ESPECIALLY in this state.  One of Holtzclaw’s colleagues at the Snow Hill Institute warned him: “You know there IS no God in Mississippi.”   

28-year-old Holtzclaw came to Hinds County, after several attempts in the Mississippi Delta, determined to make a difference in the lives of the blacks living in this rural area.  He proposed a program that demanded accountability from his pupils, their parents and the general community all working together.  Truly the ‘village’ would raise, or uplift, the children.
 
Holtzclaw put into practice the teachings of Tuskegee Institute and the experience he received while working at Snow Hill Institute.  He turned down an offer to teach at Tuskegee instead choosing to teach at Snow Hill.  There he established his first version of the Black Belt Improvement Society to help local black farmers market their crops without resorting to white middlemen.  This was a limited cooperative, however, because a true cooperative would have antagonized those white merchants who were almost wholly dependent on the black farmers for their existence.
 
The founding of the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute in 1903 was a monumental task and is noteworthy on several accounts. It was arguably the first school of its kind in Mississippi to be founded by a black educator on behalf of black people.  Other similar institutes and colleges were started by a variety of churches and missionary groups representing (white) Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists.
 
 
In 1908 Holtzclaw moved the school from the site close to present day St. Peter Baptist Church in the town of Utica to this location.  It has been in operation since that date on these grounds.  First as Utica Normal & Industrial Institute for the Training of Colored Young Men and Women, then as Hinds Agricultural High School – Colored, it became Utica Junior College in 1953 and finally merged with Hinds Junior College in 1983 to become the Hinds Community College District. That merger, while making us a part of Hinds Community College, did not erase the traditions that are inherently those of an HBCU.  Remember this campus started out as, and remains, an HBCU.

Holtzclaw worked with and mentored other Tuskegee graduates as well as graduates from other institutions.  One of those mentored was Laurence Jones. Jones came to Utica from The University of Iowa.  He worked at Utica Institute for a short time in 1908 before moving to D’lo and founding Piney Woods Country Life School. 
 
Learning the history of this campus allows us to keep the legacy of William Henry Holtzclaw alive.  We honor him by striving for the excellence he expected of his students in 1903 and for students in this future he couldn’t see.