Across the street from Rust College in Holly Springs, a small HBCU once fielded a proud football program that locals simply called “Miss Industrial.” Mississippi Industrial College (MIC)—founded in 1905 by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church—sustained intercollegiate football for roughly four and a half decades, then slipped into memory as costs rose and the higher-ed landscape shifted.
By the 1920s MIC had taken the field as the Tigers, wearing purple and gold and scheduling fellow small HBCUs across Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. MIC competed as an independent for long stretches and later in the South Central Athletic Conference (SCAC), a league of HBCUs that operated from 1935–1961. Conference peers included Alcorn A&M (now Alcorn State), Mississippi Vocational (now Mississippi Valley State), Arkansas AM&N (now Arkansas-Pine Bluff), Paul Quinn, and Jarvis Christian.
Rust College—MIC’s neighbor on the same stretch of North Memphis Street—served as a natural rival; their proximity made game days community events for Holly Springs.
MIC’s best sustained run came from 1947 through 1950, when the Tigers went 28-7-2; the 1953 team added a 6-1-1 mark. Though detailed record of those games have long been lost.
By the mid-1950s, the Tigers were a force to be reckoned within in the SCAC. Making it to the conference championship games in 1955 and 1956, though losing to Mississippi Vocational College (now MS Valley State), both times. Typical of small-college HBCU football in the era, MIC stitched together regional schedules featuring bus-ride opponents and occasional neutral-site doubleheaders or “classic” dates. SCAC members commonly met in Jackson, Vicksburg, Pine Bluff, Marshall (TX), Waco. While details are scarce it is believed the Tigers shared a stadium with Rust College just across the street.
(All that remains of Mississippi Industrial College is a few buildings.)
The most documented MIC football alumnus is James “T”/“Long Gone” Jim Thomas (RB) of Columbus, Miss. Thomas starred at MIC from 1958–61, then authored a nine-year professional career with the Edmonton Eskimos, rushing for 6,161 yards with CFL All-Star honors and a still-famous 104-yard touchdown run in 1965 (an Edmonton franchise record). Local obituaries and archives remember him as a three-sport standout at MIC—a .300-hitting center fielder and a 9.6-second sprinter—before brief NFL/semipro stops and his long CFL tenure.
The biggest rivalry for MIC was their neighbors just across the street at Rust College, also in the SCAC. A rivalry separated only by North Memphis Street once stood as arguably the most intense clash among Mississippi’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The Mississippi Industrial College Tigers and the Rust College Bearcats squared off in football games that became community-wide events, drawing crowds from across the region.
It’s been over 60 years since either school fielded a football team, with both programs ultimately suspended, but their proximity made the rivalry unforgettable. In fact, research shows that MI and Rust were closer in distance than any two colleges in the history of college football, a factor that only intensified the rivalry’s significance. Following the discontinuation of both programs, the South Central Athletic Conference—where they once competed—realigned and evolved into what is known today as the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC).
MIC reportedly fielded football from roughly 1920 until about 1965, after which the sport was dropped. The college itself later closed in 1982, with sources pointing to post-desegregation enrollment shifts and financial pressures that made it difficult for a small private HBCU to compete—pressures that had been building across the 1960s and 1970s for many similarly sized institutions.
The MIC campus is on the National Register of Historic Places. Rust College acquired the property in 2008, and the site endures in local memory as a companion campus to Rust and as a symbol of HBCU educational and athletic ambition in North Mississippi. For football fans, the Tigers’ peak years, their SCAC footprint, and the pro career of Jim “Long Gone” Thomas are the clearest markers of a program that mattered well beyond its enrollment size
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