In the Heat of the Night

Nestled within the Southern city of Jackson, Mississippi, is a jewel of American higher education. Quaint in almost every other regard, the small, quarter-square-mile district known as the Tougaloo section shares its name with a Historically Black College whose world-renowned reputation has helped to make the otherwise small town famous. Tougaloo College, established in 1869 by the American Missionary Association, is more than a campus. It is a citadel of courage—a haven of hope, forged in the fire of Mississippi’s long night of racial violence, and a crucible of Black freedom fighters, who dreamt of a better state, nation, and world, each made better by and because of their commitment, courage, and sacrifice.

Tougaloo is a Historically Black College founded in the ashes of slavery to educate the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Its mission has never been neutral. Like other HBCUs, Tougaloo was established not only to impart knowledge, but to safeguard dignity, to cultivate leaders, and to insist on the humanity of a people once denied this essential freedom in the United States. By contrast, Brown University was founded in 1764—more than a century earlier—as the seventh-oldest college in the United States and the third-oldest in New England. Its history, like that of most Ivy League institutions, is steeped in wealth, whiteness, and proximity to power. That these two institutions—so different in origin, in resources, and in race—would choose each other was not just improbable. It was radical.

But even the bravest institutions need allies, especially those located in a place that once laid as proud a claim to the moniker “Cradle of the Confederacy” as it now does to the name “The State of Possibility.” Caught between these two extremes, Mississippians have nevertheless managed to hold fast to their Southern charm and the welcoming nature of their people. Hospitality has always been true for a place—and a people—as special as those of Tougaloo.

But even more true is this: in the heat of the long night of the modern Civil Rights Movement, Tougaloo stood as a sanctuary for justice—a campus where Black students could gather, organize, and dream, even as the world beyond its gates encamped around them for doing so. Tougalooans, as all Tougaloo students call themselves with pride, hold a sacred space for their student activist-alumni. But for the college’s student activists, it’s not just the name of their institution they proudly carry—it is Tougaloo’s mission, its flame, and its scars. White Tougalooans like the seasoned Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland—herself inspired by the admission of two Black students to the University of Georgia—brought their bodies and their resolve to the frontlines. Adam Daniel Beittel, a white sociologist and theologian who became Tougaloo’s president in 1960, had admitted Trumpauer without apology. But he didn’t stop there. When the college was labeled “a hangout for Communists,” when lawmakers openly threatened to revoke its charter, and when students—both Black and white—were jailed for sitting in, Beittel stood with them. He protected his campus and defended his students.

The Nature of the Partnership

It was in this crucible that Tougaloo found an unlikely partner nearly 1,500 miles away: Brown University, an Ivy League institution in Providence, Rhode Island. Thus on April 25, 1964, amid the terror of burning crosses and just weeks after the worst of the red-baiting threats, Beittel and Brown University forged a Partnership that would span decades. Dubbed the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, this collaboration born out of an aim of mutual success has nurtured generations of scholars, built bridges between North and South, and modeled what it means to stand in principled relationship—not just in times of crisis, but in seasons of growth. The Brown-Tougaloo Partnership began as a promise, a mutual agreement to build something braver than what either institution could achieve or become on its own. So, for more than half a century, the Partnership has endured, shaped, and reshaped by time as its tough taskmaster, challenged by culture and change, but ultimately sustained by a shared sense of purpose. In its best moments, Brown has, for its part, honored Tougaloo’s legacy by amplifying its voice, not drowning it out. Either, when faced with trying moments, it has called both institutions to account.

From its inception, the Partnership created opportunities for Tougaloo students to study at Brown for the summer or a semester, to live and learn in the Ivy League—not to assimilate, but to expand their horizons. Faculty exchanges followed. Brown professors taught at Tougaloo, bringing with them a network of research access and scholarly legitimacy that could help Tougaloo punch above its institutional weight. Tougaloo professors traveled to Providence, not as guests but as collaborators, deepening the relationship between institutions that, on paper, had little in common but through the Partnership had everything to gain.

This was not a one-way pipeline; Brown, too, was transformed. Through Tougaloo, it gained proximity to the Civil Rights movement’s history, to radical courage, and to the lived realities of Black America that rarely breached Ivy-covered walls. Brown students encountered a South different from stereotypes, and people who were neither tragic nor passive but organizing, teaching, demanding, and building. Some returned home differently, and some never returned at all. Unlike other partnerships between Historically Black Colleges and predominantly white institutions, the Brown-Tougaloo collaboration insisted—at least in its earliest, most radical years—on mutual respect. It acknowledged disparities in endowment, infrastructure, and racial privilege, but refused to let those differences define the relationship. This wasn’t a charity model—it was a coalition.

The Partnership also made space for shared culture. Brown invited Tougaloo’s gospel choir to perform, and Tougaloo hosted Brown’s faculty for lectures on Reconstruction and race. Together, they cosponsored events, built archival bridges, and—quietly but steadily—rewrote the script on what institutional solidarity could look like. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. And real partnerships, like real people, are shaped not only by what they offer one another in public, but by what they are willing to fight for in private.

Milestones, Moments, and Tensions

As historian Françoise N. Hamlin notes in her powerful reflection on co-teaching a Civil Rights immersion course at Tougaloo, the college continues to serve as an immersive educational site. In the Partnership’s modern iteration, students from Brown travel South to learn from the place itself—to break bread with locals, walk the campus grounds, engage the archives, and encounter Mississippi not as myth but as movement. “These moments of communal learning,” Hamlin writes, “were (and perhaps still are) the stuff of nightmares for segregationists.” 1 1 Françoise N. Hamlin, “Courting the Senses: Experiential Learning and Civil Rights Movement Pedagogy,” The Black Scholar 46, no. 4 (2016): 19, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48537877. They are also the lifeblood of the Partnership.

Today, such exchanges are as much about questioning privilege as they are about pursuing justice. Hamlin reminds us that the experience challenges both white and Black students, disrupting assumptions and calling them to deeper understanding. The Partnership is not merely institutional. It is interpersonal, intergenerational, and—in its most powerful moments—transformative.

So, too, are its people. One such figure is Robert Smith, a Tougaloo graduate who has spent more than sixty years providing medical care to the Black community of Jackson, Mississippi. In a 2022 profile published in the Brown Alumni Magazine, Smith recalled how the Partnership shaped his education and enduring public service. “We have to take care of each other,” he said plainly. His career is a living embodiment of what the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership envisioned: leadership rooted in ethics, service, and sustained Black agency.

Smith’s legacy also reminds us that this Partnership has always been about more than student exchange or faculty collaboration. It’s about building a civic infrastructure across lines of race, region, and class. It is a partnership not of convenience, but of conviction. That it survives is a testament not just to its vision but to its vigilance.

Why It Still Matters

In an era when diversity is often reduced to a buzzword, the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership remains a living blueprint for what real institutional commitment can look like. It is not a diversity initiative; it is a moral alliance.

The significance of the Partnership has only grown with time. As threats to HBCUs persist—through underfunding, political attacks, and erasure from mainstream narratives—Tougaloo’s bond with Brown has provided a kind of academic insulation, advocacy, and visibility that few institutions of its size or resources enjoy. At the same time, Brown has become more honest due to Tougaloo’s presence in its institutional life. Its students have been pushed to consider history not as theory, but as terrain. Its faculty has gained collaborators rooted in a different kind of rigor—one born of resistance, not just tradition.

Today, Tougalooans continue to study at Brown, and Brown students continue to walk the grounds of Tougaloo. The gospel choir still sings. The archives still open their doors. The questions they ask of one another—about race, justice, and education—remain as urgent now as they were in 1964. Perhaps most importantly, the Partnership matters because it has not given up on the hard work of holding space for difference without domination. It reminds us that solidarity is not sentimental—it is structured and intentional. It is built on paper, yes, but kept alive in practice. It demands not just good intentions but shared responsibility. In this way, the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership is not just about the two schools that forged it. It is a model for what is possible when institutions move beyond performative allyship toward principled partnership. It is, in the best sense, a tradition worth troubling—and a fire worth tending.

Conclusion: Keep the Fire Burning

Forged in the heat of the night, the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership endures—not out of nostalgia, but necessity. What began as an act of moral courage in 1964 now stands as a monument to what two very different institutions can become when they commit to one another, not in charity, but in covenant. Tougaloo stood when it was hardest to stand. Brown stood with her. And together, they built something neither could have made alone.

Today, the world is once again on fire. And once again, we are asked to choose: comfort or courage, performance or partnership, silence or solidarity. Tougaloo chose. Brown chose. And in that choice, they gave us a blueprint—one that reminds us that the real test of alliance is not whether it shines in the spotlight, but whether it holds in the heat.