THE CLAY HILLS 387 MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN Mississippi University for Women, most often known as “The W,” is a public university with the feel of a private college. Established in 1884, The W today attracts both female and male students from around the region and around the world. It has established one of the premier nursing programs in the state, offering degrees from an associate through a doctor of nursing practice and has developed a nationally-recognized program in culinary arts. The W’s four colleges include Arts and Sciences; Business and Professional Studies; Education and Human Sciences; and Nursing and Speech-Language Pathology. The quality of The W’s academic programs has been nationally recognized by U.S. News & World Report, Washington Monthly, and The College Database. The historic campus is home to twenty-three buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, making it one of the most significant architectural campuses in Mississippi. such as Chickasaw, there were none. Just as important, most county clerks they spoke to, such as the one in Attala County, were also supremely confident that they could hold the line on new registrants. As the clerk there proudly told the investigator, there were ninety black voters in the county, and only one new registrant, a hotel porter from Kosciusko, was of any concern; but even he “was considered by those who knew him to be a white-man’s Negro” and thus could be contained. With reports such as these to bolster them, Commission investigators concluded that the region’s race relations were “very quiet and moving along smoothly.” Such reports ignored or underplayed important undercurrents of African American dissatisfaction as well as the willingness of some whites to change. In Starkville, for