Holly Springs, Mississippi Photo - McCoy Hall, of Rust College,

McCoy Hall, the administrative building of Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi. One of the oldest colleges for African Americans in the United States, the private college was founded in 1866 by Northern missionaries with a group called the Freedman's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1870, the college was chartered as Shaw University in 1870, honoring the Reverend S. O. Shaw, who made a gift of $10,000 to the institution . In 1882, to avoid confusion with Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., the institution changed its name to Rust University â € ” a tribute to Rev. Richard S. Rust of Cincinnati, Ohio, the secretary of the Freedman's Aid Society. In 1915, the institution assumed the name Rust College. IAs of 2016, it is the oldest of the 11 historically black colleges and universities associated with the United Methodist Church, the second-oldest private college in Mississippi, and one of the five historically black colleges that were founded before 1867.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.