By 1995, McCarty was 87.
Her arthritis had slowed her hands, and she needed assistance managing her finances.
A remarkable account of what happened next was later shared by Paul Laughlin, a retired senior vice president and trust officer at Trustmark National Bank.
Laughlin recalled McCarty visiting his office in the summer of 1995.
She had been a bank customer for many years.
McCarty explained that she wanted her savings divided among several beneficiaries: her church, three cousins and The University of Southern Mississippi.
To help visualize the proportions, Laughlin used ten dimes to represent her savings.
Each dime represented ten percent.
McCarty allocated one dime to her church.
She allocated one to each of three cousins.
The remaining six went to the university.
In other words, she intended approximately 60 percent of her accumulated savings to support education.
That became a gift of $150,000.
The money would establish scholarships at Southern Miss.
A woman who had been forced to leave school after the sixth grade had decided that the money she earned over a lifetime should help other people remain in school.
The Education She Never Received
This is what makes McCarty's donation much more than an inspiring story about saving money.
Education was personal to her.
She knew what it meant to lose the opportunity to continue learning.
She had once dreamed of becoming a nurse, but family responsibilities changed the direction of her life.
Instead of allowing that experience to make her bitter, she eventually transformed it into an opportunity for someone else.
She could not return to childhood and reclaim the education she had missed.
But she could help another young person receive theirs.
That is exactly what her money began doing.
The Oseola McCarty Scholarship was established to help students attend The University of Southern Mississippi.
The donation quickly attracted national attention.
There was something deeply compelling about the contrast.
People were accustomed to hearing about universities receiving large gifts from wealthy businesspeople, foundations and alumni.
McCarty did not fit that familiar profile.
She was a washerwoman.
Her wealth had accumulated slowly.
And $150,000 represented not a small fraction of a vast fortune but most of what she had spent her life building.
Her generosity resonated far beyond Mississippi.
One Gift Inspired Thousands of Others
Perhaps the most extraordinary part of McCarty's story happened after she made her donation.
People heard what she had done.
And they wanted to participate.
Donations began arriving from across the country.
Some were large.
Others were small.
But that distinction would have mattered little to McCarty.
Her philosophy was that every contribution counted.
The University of Southern Mississippi Foundation continued managing and growing the scholarship endowment.
Year after year, new donors contributed because McCarty's example had inspired them.
Her $150,000 was no longer simply one woman's donation.
It had become the foundation of a much larger movement.
By 2023, nearly 130 students from South Mississippi had benefited from the Oseola McCarty Scholarship Endowment, according to Southern Miss.
At that point, approximately $600,000 in scholarships had been awarded through the fund.
But another milestone was approaching.
McCarty had hoped that the scholarship fund might one day grow to $1 million.
In March 2025, that dream became reality.
The $1 Million Milestone
On March 7, 2025 — the date that would have marked McCarty's 117th birthday — The University of Southern Mississippi Foundation announced that the Oseola McCarty Scholarship Endowment had reached a corpus of $1 million.