A second Morrill Act, passed in 1890, provided for the regular funding of land-grant institutions. This legislation, that withheld funds from states that failed to provide, at minimum, separate but equal educational facilities for African Americans, led to the founding of many historically black colleges. The land-grant colleges also provided greater access to college for women. Women began attending Cornell in 1872.
Today, nearly one-fifth of all students seeking a college degree in the U.S. attend a land-grant institution. Among the most well known are Purdue University in Indiana, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Cornell University was also one of the first colleges to field a football team; the Big Red hit the gridiron in the early 1870s, just as collegiate football was becoming popular. Search the collection Taking the Long View, 1851-1991 on football to find more photographs documenting collegiate football rivalries.
- Search across the American Memory pictorial collections on Cornell or Ithaca to see more photographs of Cornell University, as well as the scenic Ithaca Falls and Cascadilla Gorge.
- Search on Cornell University in Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885 to find tunes such as the "Cornell University Polka" and the "Cornell University Defilé March."
- Explore the range of material available on other institutions of higher learning. Search across all the American Memory collections on college, or university, or on the names of individual institutions.
- There are Today in History features for a number of colleges and universities and about individuals closely related to these institutions. Find, for example, features related to Columbia, Fisk, Georgetown, Harvard, Vassar, Howard, Princeton, and Tuskegee.
