First Black student transformed University of Alabama

On Feb. 3, 1956, Autherine Lucy made history by attending her first class at the University of Alabama, almost four years after she began to seek admission. She was the first Black student to attend classes at UA, but she was driven out by racists inciting riots, and an administration that backed down under the pressure.

Sixty-six years and eight days later, on Feb. 11, 2022, the education building at UA where she attempted to start studies as a graduate student in library science, was renamed for her: Autherine Lucy Hall.

A few weeks after having celebrated the historic renaming with hundreds of friends, family and UA officials, students and faculty in attendance, Autherine Lucy Foster died, at 92.

More:Tuscaloosa News’ editorials criticized riots in wake of Autherine Lucy’s enrollment

The University of Alabama awarded Autherine Lucy Foster an honorary doctorate during graduation in May 2019. Foster was the first Black student to attend the University of Alabama. Foster waves to the graduates and audience as she receives a standing ovation.

Another gathering was held in her honor at Foster (coincidence; no family connection) Auditorium, celebrating the educator’s momentous life. Celebrants filed in past Autherine Lucy Clock Tower, in Malone-Hood Plaza, mere feet from where Gov. George Wallace made his infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, trying to prevent Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, two Black students, from enrolling.

Despite the national notoriety of Wallace’s grandstanding, Malone and Hood successfully enrolled, June 11, 1963. Though Hood dropped out that year — later graduating from Wayne State University, earning a master’s from Michigan State — Malone became the first Black student to graduate from UA, in 1965.

Shiloh, Alabama native Lucy — who married Hugh Foster in April 1956 — had hoped to continue her education at UA, after earning her bachelor of arts degree in English from Miles College. She’d applied with a friend, Pollie Myers (later Pollie Myers Hudson, then Myers-Pinkins). UA admitted both women on the basis of their applications but began to backtrack after finding out they were Black. There was no place on the applications for race, because it was assumed any prospective UA student was white.

More:‘She meant so much to all of us’: UA officials speak about Autherine Lucy Foster and her life

With backing from Thurgood Marshall, who would go on to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, the two charged the university with racial discrimination. While waiting out legal wrangling, Lucy worked as an English teacher in Carthage, Mississippi, and as an insurance company secretary.

Even after securing a court order preventing UA from rejecting their applications, on June 29, 1955, it would still be years before Lucy could attend — and even then, was banned from dormitories and dining halls — while Hudson was rejected on the grounds that she’d conceived a child before marriage and was thus unfit to be a student.

On that first day, Lucy was escorted to class by UA officials, attempting to shield her from mobs shouting, according to E. Culpepper Clark’s book “The Schoolhouse Door,” “Lynch the n*****” and “Keep Bama white.”

This was about two months after the Montgomery bus boycott had begun, a little more than five months since the lynching of Emmett Till, and two years after Brown v. Board of Education established that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not yet a household name. It would be about a year and a half until the Little Rock crisis, in which Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called on the National Guard to block the admission of nine Black students to Little Rock High School, and roughly seven years before the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door in Tuscaloosa.

Lucy attended class on a Friday and the following Monday, riots broke out on the UA campus. Foster was led via a tunnel-like walkway connecting the building to the next-door library. Rioters threw eggs, bricks and stones, chanting vile epithets. UA first suspended, then later expelled Lucy, under the justification that it was for her safety

It wasn’t until 1988 that Lucy — now married and known as Autherine Lucy Foster — had her expulsion overturned. She re-enrolled at UA in 1989, joining her daughter Grazia Foster. They graduated together in 1992, with her daughter earning a bachelor’s in corporate finance, and mother earning a master’s degree in elementary education.

Here are more milestones from the life of the first Black student to enroll at UA:

Oct. 5, 1929: Autherine Juanita Lucy is born to sharecroppers in Shiloh, the youngest of 10 children.
1947: Lucy graduates from Linden Academy, having completed public school in Shiloh through 10th grade. Afterward, she attends Selma University, and then Miles College in Fairfield.
1952: Having graduated from Miles, Lucy applies, with Myers, to continue her education at UA. Their applications were accepted, until campus officials discovered they were Black.
June 29, 1955: The NAACP secures a court order preventing UA from barring Lucy on the grounds of her race.
Feb. 3, 1956: Lucy becomes the first Black student to attend class at UA.
Feb. 6, 1956: Lucy is chased from campus by mobs. Threats were made against her life, and the President’s Mansion was damaged by rioters. Lucy gets suspended by UA officials. Lucy and the NAACP file contempt-of-court charges against UA trustees, and its president, Oliver Carmichael; against the dean of women for barring her from dining halls and dorms, and against four other men, not connected to UA, who were among the rioters.
Feb. 7, 1956: The Tuscaloosa News publishes an editorial headed “What a Price for Peace,” written by publisher, editor and part-owner Buford Boone, in response. In 1957, Boone earned a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, with judges citing “…his fearless and reasoned editorials in a community inflamed by a segregation issue.” In the editorial, Boone wrote “No intelligent expression ever has come a crazed mob, and it never will.”
Feb. 29, 1956: Federal court in Birmingham orders Lucy reinstated, and stipulates UA must protect her. UA trustees expel her instead, claiming Lucy had slandered UA. Lucy and the NAACP cease legal action at this point. Though Lucy felt dispirited, Marshall, who would become the first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1967, wrote to her in a letter: “Whatever happens in the future, remember for all concerned, that your contribution has been made toward equal justice for all Americans and that you have done everything in your power to bring this about.” Fearful for her safety, Marshall brings Lucy to stay with him and his wife Cecelia, in New York.
March 1956: Martin Luther King, Jr. writes a sermon about Lucy and UA, delivering it at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church: “As soon as Autherine Lucy walked on the campus, a group of spoiled students led by Leonard Wilson and a vicious group of criminals began threatening her on every hand. Crosses were burned. Eggs and bricks were thrown at her. The mob even jumped on top of the car in which she was riding.” It went on to reference Boone’s editorial: “It was peace that had been purchased at the exorbitant price of an inept trustee board succumbing to the whims and caprices of a vicious mob. It was peace that had been purchased at the price of allowing mobocracy to reign supreme over democracy.”
April 1956: In Dallas, Lucy marries Hugh Foster, a divinity student and later minister. They’d met at Miles.
November 1956: UA President Carmichael resigns, having clashed with trustees and anonymous racists alike over Lucy, and takes an offer from the Fund for the Advancement of Education to do a survey of higher-education programs.
1956: Lucy speaks at NAACP and other gatherings, but her active work in the civil rights movement trails off by the end of the year. For the next 17 years, the Fosters live and work in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The notoriety often made it difficult for her to obtain employment as a teacher. In 1974, the Fosters move to Birmingham, where she goes to work in the city school system.
April 1988: Her expulsion is revoked. She enrolls in UA’s graduate program in education.
May 1992: Foster earns a master’s degree in education. UA names a $25,000 endowed fellowship in her honor, and unveils a portrait of her in the Ferguson Center (now Student Center), with an inscription reading “Her initiative and courage won the right for students of all races to attend the University.”
Nov. 3, 2010: The 40-foot-tall Autherine Lucy Clock Tower is dedicated at Malone-Hood Plaza, as part of a ceremony honoring the three Black students who led the desegregation fight.
Sept. 15, 2017: A commemorative marker is erected in Foster’s honor, outside the education building.
May 2019: UA presents Foster with an honorary doctorate, during commencement ceremonies.
Feb. 3, 2022: UA announces the change of the education building’s name, to Lucy-Graves Hall. After an outcry from students and others about placing her name alongside that of Graves, a former Ku Klux Klan member, the decision is altered.
Feb. 11, 2022: The former Bibb Graves Hall becomes Autherine Lucy Hall. Foster expressed her wish that the building bear her name as it was when she enrolled.
Feb. 25, 2022: Foster makes her last public appearance at the dedication of Autherine Lucy Hall. She speaks of love and forgiveness: “I am not bitter at all, and I try to tell everybody, don’t be bitter.” At the ribbon cutting, she’s presented with a certificate from the state of Alabama proclaiming her a master teacher. Foster said: “If I am a master teacher, what I hope I’m teaching you is that love will take care of everything in our world, don’t you think? It does not depend on what color we are, that’s what I want to teach. It’s not your color. it’s not how bright you are. it’s how you feel about those you deal with. I love everybody in this audience, do you mind? And those outside of the audience, really I love you. I smile. Love you, and so long.”
March 2, 2022: Lucy dies at 92.
March 24, 2022: Hundreds of family, friends, UA officials, faculty, students and more gather at Foster Hall to celebrate her life. Members of her sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, sing hymns out on the plaza, near her clock tower.A video chronicles her days from Shiloh, through Selma University and Miles College, through the legal wrangling over UA, into years of teaching and raising a family, and forward to UA’s efforts to honor her courage and sacrifice. Grazia Foster Kungu, who graduated UA alongside her mother in ’92, reminds those gathered that the honoree was not just a trailblazer and educator, but a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, church member, a first lady, a teacher, sorority member, a neighbor, a friend: “She laid a strong foundation, from an early age, for lifelong learning. … We’ve all got to remember her, our mother, our teacher, our friend, our muse. She inspired us in ways that are beyond the scope of time that we can dedicate right now.”