Of all the Southern universities that have been forced to open their doors to Negroes,* none have reacted so violently—or surrendered so abjectly to mob pressure—as Alabama. All week a storm of hatred swirled around the lone figure of Autherine Juanita Lucy, 26, the first Negro ever admitted to a white public school or university in the state.
The youngest child of a tenant farmer in Shiloh, Autherine Lucy began her fight to get into the university in 1952. Promptly rejected, along with her Negro friend Pollie Ann Myers Hudson, she took her case to a Birmingham Negro lawyer named Arthur Shores. The Supreme Court ordered Federal Judge Harlan Grooms to instruct the university that it could not refuse students on the basis of race. Though Alabama turned down Pollie Ann on the grounds of "her conduct and marital record" (she is involved in a divorce action), it reluctantly notified Autherine, on the very eve of registration day, that she would be allowed to enroll. In spite of the fact that she was barred from all dormitories and dining halls. Autherine registered. Her life since then:
Friday, Feb. 3. Autherine was driven by a Baptist pastor the 60 miles from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa in time for her first class in geography. Before 9 a.m. she walked into Smith Hall, took a seat in the first row. "I was met with hateful stares," she reported later. "As I sat down . . . several students moved away." That night 1,000 students marched on the home of President Oliver Cromwell Carmichael. They sang Dixie, shouted, "To hell with Autherine!" and "Keep 'Bama white!" Another group of mobsters set a Ku Klux-style cross on fire in front of Dean William Adams' house.
Saturday. Autherine attended her one class, went home unmolested. But about 11 p.m. a crowd of students and townspeople once again marched on Carmichael's house, shouted him down when he urged them to disperse. Meanwhile, other hoodlums were at work downtown. They mobbed three cars driven by Negroes; one white student hopped on the roof of a car, jumped up and down until he had mashed it in. Then another cross was fired in the main quadrangle of the campus.
Monday. This, says Autherine, "is a day I'll never want to live through again." She arrived at Smith Hall in a black Cadillac driven by Henry Nathaniel Guinn, Negro owner of a Birmingham finance company. A crowd of 300 had already gathered around the hall, suddenly began to chant "Hey, hey, ho, ho. Autherine must go." At the end of class Dean of Women Sarah L. Healy and Carmichael's assistant, Jefferson Bennett, led Autherine out a back door to a waiting car. The mob spotted them, began throwing eggs and stones as the car sped off to Bibb Graves Hall for Autherine's next class (children's literature). Autherine had to use a back door once again, but the crowd kept pelting the car with rocks, shouting at Bennett, "Kill him! Kill him!" Says Autherine: "After that class I was not permitted to leave the building, for my own safety. I could still hear the crowd outside . . . Sometime later I was escorted back to Birmingham by the state police."