Voorhees College was founded by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright in 1897 as the Denmark Industrial School to emphasize a vocational curriculum for rural African American students on the model of the Tuskegee Institute. With funding from philanthropist Ralph Voorhees, it was renamed Voorhees Industrial School for Colored Youth in 1904, Voorhees Normal and Industrial in 1916, and Voorhees School and Junior College in 1947. Supported by the Episcopal Church since 1924, Voorhees changed its mission during the first half of the twentieth century, became Voorhees College in 1962, and became a senior liberal arts college in 1967. The historic portion of the campus was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as the Voorhees College Historic District.