The chartered schools of the American Missionary Association, though doing an essentially similar work, are yet strongly individualized. Tougaloo University is emphatically the black belt plantation school of the Association, located in the country, in the midst of America's darkest Africa, touching that by far most numerous and important class on which the future of the negroes mainly rests--the plantation negroes. Forming the bulk of the colored population, least tinged with white blood, they are at once the most ignorant and the most hopeful class. Within seven miles of Jackson, the State capital, on the Illinois Central road, easily accessible, not only from Mississippi, but from large regions of Louisiana and Arkansas, it draws pupils from a wide area and sends its trained teachers and graduates to a region still wider. Its location is healthful and one of beauty, and, removed from town distractions and temptations, it is admirably situated for efficient work. The school was established in the autumn of 1869, and the early reports show a surrounding region which in its drunkenness, fighting and iniquity, is quite in contrast with the present condition of affairs. Five hundred acres of land were purchased and with them a fine mansion (page 125), then not many years old, intended for the finest plantation house of the State and built for a bride who came not. As the illustration shows, it is a handsome structure--the only one with any decided architectural pretensions in the place. It served at first for school rooms and dormitory purposes, and has been thus used during most of the life of the school. Now it contains the offices of president and treasurer, the main library--which greatly needs more books--music rooms, the doctor's office, teachers' rooms, and the president's home. There are now nine large buildings for school use, with several smaller ones. The next oldest of the large buildings is the girls' dormitory, just south of the mansion, where is the common dining room, with the necessary kitchen, laundry and bake house appliances, and dormitory room for several teachers and eighty to ninety girls. [Illustration: BALLARD HALL.] [Illustration: BOYS' DORMITORY, STRIEBY HALL.] [Illustration: THE PLANTATION BARN.] [Illustration: BIBLE HALL.]