Savannah State College was established in 1891 as the Georgia Industrial College for Colored Youths, growing out of the Second Morrill Act of 1890 and an act of the Georgia General Assembly on November 26, 1890, which created it as one of the original Negro land-grant colleges. Its first session was held at the Baxter Street School in Athens from June to August 1891, and in October that same year classes began on the present site. Its early program was agricultural, mechanical, and literary, and by 1898 the college was able to award its first degree. It was the first public institution of higher learning established for Negroes in Georgia and is now part of the University System of Georgia. The college's first president, from 1891 to 1921, was Major R. R. Wright, who as a boy was asked by General O. O. Howard of the Freedman’s Bureau what message he should carry to the people of the North; Wright replied, “Just tell them, we are rising,” a response that inspired John Greenleaf Whittier to write “The Little Black Boy of Atlanta.”