The First College Homecoming: 1909 Baylor

Small-town Americans living east of the Mississippi left home in the 1890s to settle open lands in the West and fill factory jobs in the Northern cities. So many people left home that those who remained back home began organizing festivals and reunions for former residents to return home for a weekend or week of concerts and other activities. Organized to encourage former townsfolk to come home, the events became known as homecoming, home-coming, or Homecoming. Louisville had one in 1906, Nashville in 1907, Sheboygan in 1909, and there were many others.

Homecoming events ultimately became tied to colleges and then high schools. School-related homecomings often featured a parade, class and group reunions, a dinner dance, and a football game. They also became annual rather than periodic events. Several colleges claim to have hosted the first college homecoming, and identifying which deserves the title requires us to consider the just-mentioned components that occurred on various college campuses in the past. Of course, alums had returned to campus for rivalry football games for decades but the schools did not position or refer to them as a homecoming.

Texas held a homecoming-like event in 1908 over Thanksgiving weekend, with Texas and Texas A&M playing on Thanksgiving Day, but that celebration honored the university's 25th anniversary. They also did not hold similar events in subsequent years, so Texas held a one-time event where alums and others came to campus but did not start Homecoming. 

The situation gets stickier when considering Baylor's 1909 homecoming. That event was positioned solely as a social or fraternal activity for alums, with Baylor playing TCU in football that weekend. However, Baylor's next Homecoming did not occur until 1915, so their candidacy is also suspect.

That brings us to Illinois' campus in 1910, where Clarence Foss Williams and W. Elmer Ekblaw had the idea to hold a homecoming event each fall to bring former Illinois students back to campus. The two worked for several months building support with campus organizations and the administration, and they succeeded in holding the first school-sponsored Homecoming the weekend of October 15, 1910, capped by a win over Chicago. 

Unlike their brethren from the Lone Star state, Illinois hosted a homecoming event each year from 1910 to the present other than canceling in 1918 due to the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Which brings us to the point of the story. I had previously written about Texas, Baylor, and Illinois, so when I spotted the RPPC show below for sale, I pursued it. Thankfully, there was only one other bidder, so it cost me the equivalent of a six-pack of beer—very good beer.

(Personal collection)