I knew the plantation before I knew the college.

Tougaloo College, known as an HBCU (Historically Black College / University), sits in the heart of Jackson, Mississippi.

Tougaloo College is also the learning institution where in 1961, nine of its students participated in a “read-in” protest at Jackson’s “whites-only” municipal public library. The students, later known as the “Tougaloo Nine,” were arrested for simply reading books in a whites-only library, a movement which eventually led to other protests in Mississippi.

This video about the Tougaloo Nine goes into more detail.

This is fascinating. Very fascinating.

And surprisingly, most people may not know of the Tougaloo Nine, or of Tougaloo College itself.

But in the mid-1970’s, they certainly knew about the land on which the college exists today.

Because for years, there was a public service television commercial about harsh conditions at a Civil War-era plantation. The plantation’s location was never mentioned in the commercial – but you certainly heard its name more than once. The Bodie Plantation.

For it was on the land where the Bodie Plantation once stood – that today are some of the original buildings and infrastructure of Tougaloo College.

Oh, and if you’re having a bit of a “I swear I remember that commercial now” moment, you know I gotcha covered.

Yep. That Bodie Plantation. Now known as Tougaloo College.

And the crazy thing is … I should have known about this as well. For I remember that United Negro College Fund commercial. And it was only when I contemplated new blog post topics, that I researched where the Bodie Plantation was, and what college was actually referenced in the original commercial.

Such is the history that makes America. We have a long way to go, but the journey is nowhere near complete.

Let’s keep forward progress on that journey.