Founded in 1875 by Sarah Ann Dickey, the school was patterned after Dickey's alma mater, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College). The school was funded in part by the Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen from its founding until 1891. The seminary was eventually closed in 1924 by the American Missionary Association, which had its own college in Tougaloo, Mississippi.