Texas College Steers history

Giving further shape to this constitutional mandate, by 1905 the university had adopted a motto — the Latin words “Disciplina, Praesidium, Civitatis.” These were meant to capture a famous sentiment of Texian president Mirabeau B. Lamar: “A cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.”

The Charter as originally issued July 1, 1907, indicates that the name of the corporation was established as “Texas College,” with the purpose of an educational institution designed to operate under the supervision care and ownership of the CME Church in America.

In May 1912, the college was officially renamed Texas College.

Because the fund treated oil profits as principal rather than income, the proceeds from Santa Rita and other wells were reinvested instead of being spent, and by 1925 the Permanent University Fund was growing by more than $2,000 a day.

In 1929, the Association of American Universities confirmed that UT was indeed a university of the first class when the AAU invited UT into membership.

FROM TOP-LEFT: The UT Main Building and Tower under construction in 1936.

Texas College has been associated with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) since the fund’s inception in 1944.

In 1950, no flagship university in the former Confederacy admitted black students.

One of its most prominent graduates is Mildred Jefferson, who in 1951 became the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

The year 1963 marked the first time two very different men who made a gigantic impact on the university’s modern character both were in power: Harry Ransom and Frank Erwin.

One of 20 surviving copies of the first book printed using moveable type, the Gutenberg Bible was made in the 1450s and acquired by UT in 1978.