FAMU Marching 100 in Tallahassee, Florida

The Marching 100 is the marching band of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, known for high-stepping precision, dance routines and showmanship.

The band's own FAMU Bands history page says it has been credited with over thirty innovations in marching band pageantry and lists press nicknames that include The Most Imitated Band in America, from The Miami Herald, and The Notre Dame of Marching Bands, from CBS 60 Minutes. It has been featured in segments on 60 Minutes, 20/20, P.M. Magazine and the CBS Evening News, and in Sports Illustrated.

In Tallahassee its home field is Bragg Memorial Stadium on the FAMU campus, and the history page shows the Marching 100 there on November 16, 1963, during a football game against Southern University. The director of bands dates the FAMU band program as a whole to 1892.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by rereading the FAMU Bands history, Foster and director pages, the Florida Department of State's Artists Hall of Fame biography of William Foster, FAMU news releases from 2025 and February 2026, and two Leon County records.

Yes, FAMU in Tallahassee had a band of instruments from 1892 and a marching band believed to date from 1910, decades before William Foster arrived.

According to FAMU Bands, the first band of instruments at the school was organized in 1892, and the first marching band is believed to have been organized in 1910 by Nathaniel C. Adderley, the uncle of jazz musicians Nat and Cannonball Adderley. Over the years, whenever a band director could be hired, a marching band played for concerts, military and chapel services, graduations, special campus affairs and athletic events in Tallahassee.

The Second World War cut the number of male band members on the FAMU campus. When William P. Foster was hired as director of bands in 1946, the history page says, he was met with only sixteen band members, and his idea of a band with 100 members gave the Marching 100 its name.

William Foster built the Marching 100 in Tallahassee from 16 students in 1946 into a show band with rapid tempos, high stepping and dancing.

The Florida Department of State biography, written for his 2003 induction into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, says Foster was born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1919, bought a used saxophone at 12 and received a degree in music education from the University of Kansas in 1941. He taught for two years at Lincoln High School in Springfield, Missouri, spent a year at Fort Valley State University and moved on to the Tuskegee Institute. At halftime of a Tuskegee game against a visiting Florida A&M team, his band caught the attention of FAMU President William Gray, who met him that evening and offered him a job, because Gray wanted a world-class marching band to promote the university. FAMU's presidents page dates Gray's presidency to 1944 through 1949.

Foster moved to Tallahassee in 1946, the state says, and starting with 16 students created what soon became known as The Marching 100. Breaking with tradition, he revved up performances with rapid tempos, high stepping and dancing, and by the 1960s bands at Grambling and Tennessee State began to mimic the Marching 100's flashy, crowd-pleasing style. His FAMU Bands biography adds a Master of Arts in Music from Wayne State University in 1950 and a Doctor of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1955, more than 200 halftime pageants for a band it counts at 329 pieces, and the textbook Band Pageantry, considered the bible for the marching band.

The official accounts give his tenure slightly differently. FAMU Bands calls it a record fifty-two years as the university's longest-serving band director and heads his biography Director of Bands 1945 to 1998, while also saying he began at FAMU in June 1946. The Department of State says he started a 52-year career in Tallahassee in 1946 and refers to his retirement in 2001.

The Marching 100's best-known moments are the Sudler Trophy of the mid 1980s, the 1989 Bastille Day parade in Paris and appearances at Super Bowls and presidential inaugural parades.

The FAMU Bands history page says that in 1985 the band became the fourth in America and the only one from a historically Black college or university to receive the Sudler Trophy, which it calls the Heisman Trophy of collegiate marching bands, and that in 1989 it was the only band the French government selected as the official U.S. representative at the bicentennial of the French Revolution, marching down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees before millions of television viewers. The same page counts five NFL Super Bowls, six Honda Battle of the Bands Invitational Showcases and three presidential inaugural parades; the Department of State counts two presidential inaugurations, both for President Clinton.

Shelby Chipman, a FAMU graduate who studied conducting under Foster, is the Marching 100's director of bands in Tallahassee as of October 2026.

His FAMU Bands biography says Chipman is director of bands and professor of music at FAMU, conducts the Marching and Pep Bands, Wind Symphony, Symphonic Band and String Ensemble, earned Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and music education at FAMU as a conducting student of William Foster and Julian White, completed a master's degree at the University of Illinois and received his Ph.D. in music education from the Florida State University College of Music. A FAMU news report from the August 2025 U.S. Open names him as director of bands leading the band that day.

Foster's own honors came late in his career. The Department of State lists his 1994 election as president of the American Bandmasters Association and the 1996 approval by Congress of his appointment by President Clinton to the National Council on the Arts, and says he died in 2010 at the age of 91. FAMU Bands adds that the Museum of Florida History inducted him as a Great Floridian in 1998 and that on December 17, 1998, he was elected to the National Band Association Hall of Fame for Distinguished Band Conductors.

Since late 2024 the Tallahassee band has been recognized as ESPN Band of the Year, played Coachella and the U.S. Open, and recorded a Michael Jackson tribute in 2026.

FAMU's presidential briefing for November and December 2024 records that the university honored the Marching 100 with the Leon County Commission for its recognition as ESPN Band of the Year, that the band received a proclamation from Chair Carolyn Cummings, Commissioner Bill Proctor and the board, and that it performed in the commission chambers. In April 2025, FAMU News reported, 26 students from the band performed at Coachella in Indio, California, with headliner Travis Scott, and the university listed a Louis Vuitton Men's Fashion Show in Paris on the band's resume.

The 2025 season opened with three national dates. FAMU News listed the Pepsi National Battle of the Bands in NRG Stadium in Houston on Saturday, Aug. 23, a tribute in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday, August 27, to tennis champion and FAMU alumna Althea Gibson, and the Orange Blossom Classic halftime on Aug. 30 against Howard University. The same release introduced the 2025 to 2026 drum major squad, led for the first time in the band's history by a young woman as head drum major. On February 24, 2026, FAMU released a Marching 100 performance of a Michael Jackson hit ahead of the April 24, 2026 release of the film MICHAEL.

Leon County government has made the band part of its own calendar. A Leon County release announced a free community kickoff dinner hosted by Commissioner Bill Proctor and featuring the Marching 100 and FAMU Athletics on Thursday, August 25, at the North Florida Fairgrounds, 441 Paul Russell Road, for the 2016 to 2017 season, and the April 23, 2019 County Commission agenda carried a proclamation recognizing the band for participating in the Rose Bowl Parade.