Initially a parochial school founded and run by white Presbyterians, it was restructured in 1924 and became an accredited junior college with an all-black faculty and black administrator in 1933.

As enrollment grew over the subsequent years, citizens from Crockett and elsewhere in the United States began donating land and money to the school, and by 1891 the campus consisted of 260 acres of land and an additional brick hall, named after the benefactor, Michigan United States Senator James McMillan.

In 1921, a Presbyterian newspaper advertised the position of "white lady teachers" at the school, promising 44 dollars per month for an eight-month term, plus "maintenance and railroad fare both ways.

"[9] In 1924, the Texas school board appointed the first black administrator, the Reverend Burt Randall Smith, to restructure Mary Allen Seminary.

[10] Over the next eight years, Smith oversaw an overhaul of the curriculum, including expansion of the library and science facilities, and in 1932 the school became an accredited junior college with an all-black faculty.