Autherina Lucy had little desire to be a civil rights pioneer. Raised as the youngest of 10 children in an Alabama farming family, she simply wanted the best education her state had to offer.
She received her BA in English from the historic Black Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama in 1952. institution, University of Alabama. And she was accepted—at least until university officials discovered she was black and told her there had been a mistake and she wasn’t expected.
Thus began a legal battle that culminated in 1956—nearly two years after the Supreme Court found segregation in public schools and colleges unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision—when Ms. Lucy became the first black student in Alabama. .
But her quest for a second bachelor’s degree in library science lasted only three days of classes at Tuscaloosa. When the mob threatened her life and pelted her with rocks, eggs, and rotten food, the university suspended her, ostensibly for her own safety. A few weeks later, he expelled her.
Her case was the first test of a Supreme Court ruling giving federal district court judges the power to enforce Brown’s decision, and she was defeated. But when she died on Wednesday at the age of 92, she was remembered for her courage and dignity in the struggle that led seven years later directly to sustainable integration in Alabama in the face of Gov. George Q. Wallace’s infamous “standing at the school door.” disobedience.
“What are the extraordinary resources of this unfortunate country that instills such dignity in its victims?” asked New York Post columnist Murray Kempton, watching Lucy’s calmness in the face of hate.
Recalling her ordeal in Alabama 36 years ago, Ms. Lucy told The New York Times in 1992: “It seemed to me that you were not quite human. But if it wasn’t for someone at the university, I wouldn’t have been spared at all. I expected to find isolation. I thought I could survive this. But I didn’t expect it to go this far. Students stood behind me and said, “Let’s kill her! Let’s kill her!”
Known by her middle name to family and friends, Autherina Juanita Lucy was born October 5, 1929, in Shiloh, Alabama, in the northeast corner of the state. She received a two-year teaching certificate from Selma University in Alabama before completing her undergraduate work at Miles College. Miles’ girlfriend, Polly Ann Myers, a civil rights activist, suggested they join together in seeking entry to Alabama.
Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Arthur Shores, a black Alabama lawyer with experience in civil rights cases, led the federal litigation on behalf of the women that began in 1953. to become the first black Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and Ms. Motley became a prominent federal judge.)
In June 1955, Federal Judge Hobart Grooms ruled that Alabama could not discriminate between Ms. Lucy and Ms. Myers. In October, the Supreme Court upheld his ruling.
The university allowed Ms. Lucy to enter, but forbade her from canteens and dormitories. (Polly Ann Myers, who had a child before marriage, was not allowed to enter under the university’s moral code.)
When Ms. Lucy arrived in her first grade on February 3, 1956, the civil rights struggle centered on the Montgomery bus boycott in support of Rosa Parks, who was arrested when she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. But Ms. Lucy herself attracted the attention of the whole country.
Alabama’s student government called for law and order, but during the first two days of Ms. Lucy’s classes, protests and scattered acts of vandalism by students and outsiders erupted on and near the campus. On the third day, when she was hit by debris, she made it to class but had to be carried off campus by crouching in the back of a police car.
That night, the Alabama Board of Regents suspended her. The NAACP Defense Fund filed a lawsuit alleging that the university conspired with rioters to prevent her admission. There was no evidence of this and the charge was subsequently dropped, but in late February the university expelled Ms. Lucy on the grounds that she had slandered him.
Miss Lucy married Hugh Lawrence Foster, a divinity student, in April 1956 and they moved to Texas. She was looking for teaching positions, but, as she recalled, interviewers told her: “You were the infamous Miss Lucy, and we do not want you to come to our school.”
She eventually taught at various schools in the South, but largely disappeared from the civil rights scene while her husband continued his Baptist ministry and they started a family.
In the spring of 1963, Alabama admitted two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, under Judge Grooms’ still-standing order regarding a 1950s trial. But they only managed after the Kennedy administration pressured Governor Wallace to stay out of his largely token blockade of the registration building.
The University of Alabama did not lift the ban on Autherina Lucy Foster until 1988. Shortly thereafter, she entered graduate school and attended her graduation in May 1992, when she received her master’s degree in education and her daughter, Gracia Foster, received her bachelor’s degree in education. corporate finance. She said she was still distressed by the way she was treated years ago, but that “you just refuse to waste time thinking about it.”
On that graduation day, Alabama unveiled a student union portrait of Ms. Foster, along with a sign that said “her initiative and courage have enabled students of all races to enter the university.”
In November 2010, the university dedicated the Clock Tower to Autherina Lucy. In 2019, the university awarded her an honorary doctorate. And less than three weeks before her death, the university named a teacher training college building in her honor. It was previously named after David Bibb Graves, former governor of Alabama and leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
University officials announced her death but did not say where she died. Full details of her survivors were not immediately available.
Autherina Lucy Foster returned to Alabama in 1974 and taught at a high school in Birmingham in her later years.
In June 2003, on the 40th anniversary of Alabama’s successful integration, Vivian Malone Jones spoke of her duty to the woman who first fought the racial divide.
“I was a child when it happened, but her efforts made a lasting impression on me,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I thought if she could do it, then I can.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.