A History of the Mulerider Name and Mascots by Dr

A History of the Mulerider Name and Mascots
by
Dr. James F. Willis
(Reproduced from the Southern Arkansas U. website)

The unique name of “Muleriders” was not always the symbol of Southern Arkansas University. At the beginning, athletic teams and students were known as "Aggies." The Third District Agricultural School (TDAS) was founded in 1909 to educate rural youth of the region and to promote better agriculture practices. Of course, the school's working farm had many mules. Arkansas farmers used mules, along with oxen, to plow and for other tasks. Students at TDAS worked mules and played with mules in their leisure time.

Students and their mules at Third District Agricultural School in 1911-12, in front of the Boys Dorm, later named Holt Hall. Walz Photo Collection, Southwest Archives.

Until the end of the First World War, the name Aggies was used almost exclusively. The school's yearbook, titled The Monitor, when first issued in 1914, did not have its name changed to The Mulerider until 1922. The pages of the early yearbooks refer frequently to Aggies. The first use of the word Mulerider occurs, almost in passing, in the 1916 yearbook. The first image of a mule in a yearbook, apart from farm scenes, appears as a cartoon on the final page of the 1918 yearbook.

By 1919 athletes and students used the name of Mulerider even though it had not been officially adopted. The football team had certainly embraced it, as the photo below indicates.

The 1919 Mulerider Football Team: At top, l. to r.: Dolph Camp, Willie King, Ves Godley, Dewey Burnside, Lloyd Godley, F. O. Middlebrooks. Bottom, l. to r.: D. M. Stuart, Hubert Wilkinson, and Sam Crosswhite. Players not included in the photo: Thearon Atkins, Fonzie Moses, Royal Franks, and Carl McCollum. The picture took place before a game with Texarkana High, which TDAS won 51-7. The 1919 TDAS team was the first of the championship teams at the school. The team won all of its eight games. Travel was in Model-Ts driven by Van Emerson, Dr. H. K. Carrington, and Jules Roper; trip time depended on the number of flats. Facts from Ves Godley; picture from H. B. Nesbitt; enlargement and caption by Dr. Robert B. Walz. Walz Photo Collection, Southwest Archives.

Ves Godley of the winning 1919 team had played Aggie football before the war, and years later told the story of the Mulerider name's origins. On at least one occasion, when cars were scarce, team members had to ride mules to McNeil, five miles north of the campus, to board a train for a game trip. Interviewed in the early 1970s by Dr. Dan Skelton, Godley recalled that afterwards team members gathered in the campus home of G. R. Turrentine, the history teacher and coach from 1914 to 1917. Someone proclaimed that the players were Muleriders. Team members liked that name. The name was adopted officially after Mr. Charles A. Overstreet became the school's head in 1921-22. Subsequently, when the student newspaper began publication in 1924-25, it was named The Bray. (Dr. Dan Skelton, "A History of Southern Arkansas University From 1909 to 1976," Ed. D., dissertation, The University of Mississippi, 1979, pp. 46-47. SAU Archives.)