Founded in 1890 as the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth and briefly located in Athens, Georgia, this was the first black public university in Georgia and its history highlights the struggle for African American education and self-reliance in the face of segregation and racism. Lobbying by Savannah’s African American religious community prompted the college’s relocation in 1891 to a site south of Thunderbolt, comprising two donated parcels of land—ten acres from George Parsons, which included a three-story antebellum house, and sixty acres from Sara Postrell, out of what was once Placentia Plantation. Parsons’s house, a barn, and Boggs Hall (a new five-bay, three-story building erected in 1891) constituted the entire campus at first, with the latter serving as a classroom building and then as a woman’s dormitory for many years. Parson House and Boggs Hall were demolished in the 1950s, when the barn was relocated to its present site.
From the beginning, the president, faculty, and students had to make do with little funding and support, growing and selling their own produce, meat, and dairy products. Agriculture played a central role in the curriculum, and in 1893 the college began sponsoring fairs to spread knowledge about scientific farming techniques to African American farmers throughout the region. In 1916, the college partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Central of Georgia Railway to sponsor an “agricultural school on wheels,” which travelled across the state to demonstrate “the admirable collection of farm products produced by thrifty, energetic and intelligent black farmers.”
In 1921, under the leadership of President C. G. Wiley, the college admitted its first female students, and in 1928 it became a four-year, degree-granting institution, abolishing its high school programs. The school was renamed three times: Georgia State Industrial College in 1932, Savannah State College in 1950, and finally Savannah State University in 1996, when it was fully integrated into the university system of Georgia.
Savannah State University has arguably the largest number of African American-designed and -constructed buildings in the South. By the 1950s the college spread over 136 acres with thirty buildings and was largest degree-granting institution for African Americans in the still-segregated state. After the 1950s, however, several of its original student-built structures were demolished and replaced with midcentury modern buildings. The Benjamin F. Hubert Technical Science Center (1958–1960, Larry Craig Dean of Logan and Williams Architects), the first $1 million architectural project for the college, represented an enormous investment in state-of-the-art equipment, allowing Savannah State College to offer an accredited four-year engineering degree, the first degree of its kind in the Southeast. Recently the university undertook a massive rebuilding program, creating new facilities and classrooms as well as living spaces for its now racially diverse student body. Felix Alexis Academic Circle is the classical campus core with the placement of the original buildings (demolished or relocated), reborn as a center for “Greek” student life.