This Day in History Where Blacks Contributed to the Founding American Idea

It’s amazing what you learn when you look back. 

Sixty years ago today, Autherine J. Lucy became the first black student to be admitted to the University of Alabama. However, Lucy was suspended just three days later because the threats on her life and the mobs who were protesting her, made it too dangerous for Lucy to continue to come to campus. 

Lucy sued the University of Alabama in an effort to have the suspension overturned. It would be 24 years until the University of Alabama overturned Lucy’s suspension. In a sort of fairytale ending, in 1992, Lucy graduated from the University of Alabama with a master’s degree in education. Lucy’s daughter, Grazier Foster, graduated with a degree in corporate finance on that same day from the same school that had suspended her mother.