Clemson University
Clemson University is a public land-grant research university near Clemson, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1889, Clemson is the second-largest university by enrollment in South Carolina. For the Fall 2025 semester, the University enrolled a total of 24,060 undergraduate students and 5,485 graduate students, and the student/faculty ratio was 16:1.
Clemson's campus is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The campus now borders Lake Hartwell, which was formed by the dam completed in 1962.
Clemson University consists of nine colleges: Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences; Architecture, Art and Construction; Arts and Humanities; Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences; Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; Education; the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business; the Harvey S. Peeler Jr. College of Veterinary Medicine; and Science. Clemson University is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity."
History
Beginnings
, the university's founder, came to the foothills of South Carolina in 1838, when he married Anna Maria Calhoun, daughter of John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina politician and seventh U.S. Vice President. Through the Calhoun family, Clemson became an owner of enslaved persons on the family plantation that was to become the heart of the future university. When Clemson died on April 6, 1888, he bequeathed the Fort Hill plantation and most of his estate, which he inherited from his wife, in his will to be used to establish a college that would teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts to South Carolinians. His decision was largely influenced by the future South Carolina Governor Benjamin Tillman. Tillman lobbied the South Carolina General Assembly to create the school as an agricultural institution for the state, and the resolution passed by only one vote.In his will, Clemson explicitly stated he wanted the school to be modeled after what is now Mississippi State University.
Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina
In November 1889, South Carolina Governor John Peter Richardson III signed the bill, thus establishing the Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina. As a result, federal funds for agricultural education from the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act and the Hatch Act of 1887 were transferred from South Carolina College to Clemson. Construction of the college began with Hardin Hall in 1890 and then main classroom buildings in 1891. Convict laborers, some as young as 12 years old, built many of the original buildings on campus. The prisoners that built Clemson were almost all black, and over 500 of their names are recorded. South Carolina used more convict labor to build its universities than any other state.Henry Aubrey Strode was the first president of Clemson from 1890 to 1893, hiring faculty and designing the curriculum. Edwin Craighead succeeded Strode in 1893. Clemson Agricultural College formally opened in July 1893 with an initial enrollment of 446. The common curriculum of the first incoming students was English, history, botany, mathematics, physics, and agriculture. Until 1955, the college was also an all-white male military school.
On May 22, 1894, the main building was destroyed by a fire, which consumed the library, classrooms, and offices. Tillman Hall was rebuilt in 1894 and is still standing today. The first graduating class of Clemson was in 1896, and they had degrees in mechanical-electrical engineering and agriculture. Clemson's first football team began in 1896, led by trainer Walter Riggs. Henry Hartzog, a graduate of The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, became president of Clemson in 1897. Hartzog created a textile department in 1898. Clemson became the first Southern school to train textile specialists. Hartzog expanded the curriculum with more industrialization skills such as foundry work, agriculture studies, and mechanics. In 1902, a large student walkout over the use of rigid military discipline escalated tensions between students and faculty, forcing Hartzog to resign. Patrick Mell succeeded Hartzog from 1902 to 1910.
Following the resignation of Mell in 1910, former Clemson Tigers football coach Walter Riggs became president of Clemson from 1910 to 1924. The Holtzendorff Hall, originally the Holzendorff YMCA, was built in 1914 designed by Rudolph E. Lee of the first graduating class of Clemson in 1896. In 1915, Riggs Field was dedicated after Walter Riggs and is the Clemson Tigers men's soccer home field. During World War I, enrollment in Clemson declined. In 1917, Clemson formed a Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and in 1918, a Student Army Training Corps was formed. Effects of World War I made Clemson hire the first female faculty due to faculty changes. Riggs accepted a six-month army educational commission in 1919 overseas in France leaving Samuel Earle as acting president. On March 10, 1920, a large walkout occurred protesting unfair "prison camp" style military discipline. The 1920 walkout led to the creation of a Department of Student Affairs. On January 22, 1924, Riggs died on a business trip to Washington, D.C., leaving Earle the acting president. In October 1924, another walkout of around 500 students occurred when Earle rejected their demands for better food, the dismissal of mess officer Harcombe, and the reinstatement of their senior class president. The 1924 walkout resulted in 23 students being dismissed and 112 suspended.
On April 1, 1925, a fire destroyed the interior of the agricultural building and its many research projects and an agricultural museum. The exterior of the building survived, leading to the construction of Sikes Hall to hold the library from Tillman Hall. On May 27, 1926, Mechanical Hall was destroyed in a fire. Present-day Freeman Hall, built in 1926, was the reconstructed shop building. In 1928 Riggs Hall was established in honor of Walter Riggs. President Enoch Sikes increased student enrollment by over 1,000 students and expanded the degree programs with an addition of the first graduate degree. The Department of Arts and Sciences was formed in 1926 with the addition of modern language programs. Programs at Clemson were reorganized into six schools of agriculture, chemistry, engineering, general science, textiles, and vocational studies. In 1927, Clemson received accreditation from the Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges of the Southern States.
During The Great Depression, student enrollment and income declined. The New Deal brought needed construction to the campus under the Works Progress Administration with new dormitories to relieve the housing shortages. Long Hall, Sirrine Hall, and 29,625 acres of privately owned farmland were acquired by Clemson through federal funding. Agricultural engineers of Clemson diversified with the Clemson Agricultural Extension to educate farmers on soil conservation and crop storage techniques during The Great Depression. Robert Poole became the first Clemson alumnus to be president in 1940. On September 19, 1942, Memorial Stadium was formally opened as the new stadium for the Clemson Tigers football team previously played on Riggs Field since 1915.
During World War II, more than 6,500 students were sent overseas to the military. As a result of the Clemson ROTC, around 5,850 were commissioned officers. The class of 1943 had a historical low of 343 graduates. By the end of the war, 376 Clemson students had been killed in it.
Becoming civilian and coeducational and desegregated
By 1948, many black applicants had attempted to gain admittance to Clemson and desegregate the university, but segregated admissions policies had blocked them all. Admissions forms asked applicants to mark their race, and some black applicants responded with "Negro," while others wrote "American" or did not answer the question. In 1947, one black student had successfully gained admittance, even though he answered the question with "Negro,": the school blamed this on a clerical error and the registrar reported that "for various reasons... did not pursue his admission." The next year, the university's board met to discuss how they would handle increasing pressure to desegregate, which was coming from NAACP lawsuits against other schools, increasing numbers of Clemson applications from black students and rising moral indignation from religious groups. The board decided to keep Clemson segregated, directing black applicants to South Carolina A&M instead.In 1955, Clemson underwent a major restructuring and was transformed into a "civilian" status for students. It began admitting white women; the university was still segregated. In 1957 Margaret Marie Snider became the first woman to earn a degree. Initially, the university had many extra rules that only applied to women, but these were removed by the middle of the 1970s.
Over the 1950s, while court decisions desegregated other schools, Clemson's rejection of black applicants like Spencer Bracy, Edward Bracy, and John L. Gainey became newsworthy. In 1963, the university admitted its first African-American student, Harvey Gantt, who later was elected as mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. Gantt and Cornelius Fludd, along with many other black students, had applied to transfer to Clemson in 1961 and been rejected, but Gantt and Fludd's persistent work with the NAACP pushed the school to consider their applications more deeply. In 1962, Gantt and the NAACP filed suit against the university, and in 1963, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit directed Clemson to admit Gantt. Clemson's leaders warned students to remain nonviolent as Gantt registered under press scrutiny. The rest of the process went relatively smoothly, unlike desegregation efforts that turned violent like the Ole Miss Riot.
Gantt enrolled in 1963, and later recalled that he was harassed by other students for the first few days and later sometimes insulted, but never directly confronted. He attributed this to his large build and president R.C. Edwards' stern warnings against violence. Edwards asked Gantt to avoid student dances, but Gantt attended them and football games. He contrasted his experience with that of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, and the students who desegregated the University of South Carolina and the University of Georgia.
Also in 1963, Lucinda Brawley became the first black woman admitted to Clemson and the second black student to attend, and Larry Nazry transferred in the semester after.