In 1866, the campus was donated to the Louisiana Presbytery and was known as Silliman College until 1931 when the school was shut down due to economic conditions and declining enrollment.

Local white parents were well aware that a federal order to desegregate East Feliciana Parish public schools would be coming, as it did in 1969.

In the late 1990s, Silliman was one of 23 private schools in Louisiana ruled ineligible for that state's tuition grant program because of its continued refusal to adopt racially non-discriminatory admissions policies.

[4] A majority of the school's board of directors at the time refused to allow black children admission in order to become eligible for the grants.

The three buildings (built c.1850, c.1860, and 1894) are brick structures in Greek Revival, Italianate and Second Empire styles whose front galleries join to form a continuous colonnade.

Silliman offers football, basketball, baseball, softball, golf, tennis, cross country, track, cheerleading, and dance.