After World War II, the economy and everything shifts into high gear, but Georgia's held
back by one factor: segregation.
On most levels, the races were separated.
Not just education, business, commerce, transportation.
Sitting in the back of the bus or the back of the street car.
Blacks in the back, white to the front.
Even separate drinking fountains.
Waiting rooms in train stations.
The Supreme Court decision in 1954 outlawed segregation in public education, but all of
the southern states resisted it and fought it legally.
It took time for segregation to be whittled away.
One of the main breeches was on the campus of the University of Georgia in January of
1961, when Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes entered the University of Georgia as the first
two black students, undergraduates.
Holmes came from Morehouse College in Atlanta, still an elite school.
Charlayne Hunter came from Wayne State University in Michigan.
She was an Army brat and Army brats tend to learn to roll with the punches.
Holmes came from a very distinguished family in Atlanta.
They were both very carefully picked.
This was tough to integrate or break segregation system that had existed for a century and
was massively supported by the white majority.
Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter were really heroes.
Try to imagine forcefully integrating a school system that didn't want you there.
Well, they signed on in January of '61 in the academic building on the old North Campus at Georgia.
It's now the Hunter/Holmes academic building in honor of them.
Things went very well for a week.
Then we lost a very close basketball game to Georgia Tech in old Woodruff Hall, which
is long gone.
The crowd poured out of the gymnasium, angry, was joined by other townies who were angry
over integration.
And they marched on Myers Central Dorm, where Charlayne Hunter had to live.
She was a female and had to live on campus.
Hamilton Holmes was a male and he could live anywhere he wanted, on or off campus.
Charlayne Hunter had to live in Myers Central Dorm.
That's where the mob congregated, surrounded the dormitory and began to throw rocks and
bricks through windows.
Really ugly.
It could have been worse.
The cops and the firemen and several of the deans at the school arrived and dispersed
the mob.
Nobody was shot or seriously wounded, but it was scary.
Mobs are always scary.
That led to the two black students being temporarily withdrawn from the campus for their own safety.
But they were soon back with federal deputy marshals to see that they were properly protected.
And so for the rest of that year and for the rest of that two-year stay on the University
of Georgia campus, it wasn't Holiday Inn or Caribbean cruise.
Most whites didn't want them there.
They stuck it out because they knew what there were gonna face, and they were also extremely
able, bright, flexible people.
Hamilton Holmes majored in history and was a Phi Beta Kappa.
And he went on, I think he was the first black scholar at the Emory Medical School.
He went on, graduated, became a doctor.
And like any good doctor, he worked himself to death ahead of his time.
Charlayne Hunter, now Charlayne Hunter-Gault, was a journalism major and went into journalism
and has had an extremely successful career.
And she's still active in journalism.
These two kids have been very supportive alumni.
Charlayne Hunter still comes back sometimes.
And she gave a commencement address a couple of years ago.
Hamilton Holmes died early.
And I got to know him and his wife and his son, who also attended the University of Georgia.
Very outgoing, personable, positive sort of guy.
You couldn't help but like him.
They were the pathfinders.
Integration preceded but slowly, surely, but very slowly.