*The opening of George is celebrated on this date in 1882. This was a Historically Black College (HBCU) in Sedalia, Missouri.
African American ragtime-music piano composer Scott Joplin attended it. The institution was associated with the Freedmen's Bureau and Southern Education Society of the Methodist Church and played an important role in the lives of young people for several decades. According to the Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri by Howard Conrad, the building was completed in 1882.
The college operated from 1894 until it burned down on April 26, 1925, after which its assets were merged (in 1933) with the Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. A photograph of George R Smith College, with students, can be found among the references.
