Name-a-Day Calendar, May 5: Morgan State Bears

Page 180 of 365

Chosen in: 1924

Chosen by: Unknown

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What is now Morgan State University was established in 1867 as a private bible school named Centenary Biblical Institute, then named for the Reverend Lyttleton Morgan (the first president of the school’s Board of Trustees) in 1890.

Morgan College, as it was renamed, began playing football in 1898. This team evidently had no official nickname until 1924, when university documents and print sources began referring to it as the Bears.

I got in touch with the university library to get more information on who first called Morgan’s teams the Bears and/or why the nickname was selected, and they couldn’t find anything in their archives. Some histories are just lost to time.

Morgan College would be purchased by the state of Maryland in 1939, at which point it would be renamed Morgan State College. In 1975, the addition of doctoral programs earned it university status and it became Morgan State University.

Morgan State’s mascot is the eternally stylish Benny the Bear.

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P.S. Special thanks to Associate Director of Special Collections & University Archivist Dr. Ida Jones for digging up key information for this page.