For more than a century, Wesleyan College for women has clung to class names cast from an era when the school openly celebrated the Ku Klux Klan and fostered initiation ceremonies that used nooses, Klan-like robes and rituals held by torchlight in the dead of night.

Many of these traditions continued for decades after the 1960s when the first African-American students entered the Macon school, which proudly touts its storied place as the oldest chartered college for women in America. Methodist ministers founded the school in 1838.

Now, as the school readies for fall classes that start next Monday, one of the last vestiges of its racist past has suddenly vanished. School officials on July 24 announced they are abolishing Wesleyan’s use of its four class names over concerns they link directly back to the most menacing parts of the institution’s history.