History
Marion Military Institute traces its origins back to 1842 with the creation of Howard College. In 1842, Howard English & Classical School, later known as Howard College, was established in Marion, Alabama, by the Alabama Baptist Convention, with Dr. S. S. Sherman as President. During the American Civil War South Barracks (later known as Old South Barracks and now Lovelace Hall), built in 1854, & the Chapel, built in 1857, served the Confederacy as Breckenridge Military Hospital from 1863 to 1865. Along with the President's House (built 1912), these buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1887, the decision was made to move Howard College (now Samford University) to Birmingham. The then President of Howard College, Colonel J.T. Murfee, LL.D., and a handful of faculty and students decided to remain in Marion, Alabama and immediately reorganized and founded Marion Military Institute, a military preparatory high school and college. The United States Army ROTC program was first offered at MMI in 1916, when the institute was designated as an "Honor Military School with Distinction" by the United States Department of Defense. The U.S. Army Early Commissioning Program was established at MMI in 1968. In 1971 MMI became coeducational.
In March 2006, the Alabama state legislature passed a resolution placing MMI under the auspices of the Alabama Department of Postsecondary Education. MMI became "The State Military College of Alabama". As part of the transition to a public institution, Marion phased out its high school program. In May 2009, the last high school class graduated from Marion Military Institute's Preparatory School Program, a program that traced its origins back to 1887.
Read more about this topic: Marion Military Institute
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)