[2] In 1955, one year after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Hunter was in eighth grade and was the only black student at an Army school in Alaska, where her father was stationed.

Her parents divorced after spending the year in Alaska, and Hunter moved to Atlanta with her mother, two brothers, and maternal grandmother.

[6] The two were initially rejected by the university on the grounds that there was no more room in the dorms for incoming freshmen who were required to live there.

In 1968, Hunter-Gault joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter specializing in coverage of the urban black community.

While in high school, at the age of 16, Hunter, along with two friends, converted to Catholicism after being raised as a follower of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

[2] Shortly before she was graduated from the University of Georgia, Hunter married a classmate, Walter L. Stovall, the writer son of a chicken-feed manufacturer.

[3] Years later, after the couple's 1972 divorce, Hunter-Gault gave a speech at the university in which she praised Stovall, who, she said, "unhesitatingly jumped into my boat with me.

[17] Following her divorce from Walter Stovall, Hunter married Ronald T. Gault, a black businessman who was then a program officer for the Ford Foundation.

[18][19][20][21] After moving back to the United States, the couple maintain a home in Massachusetts, where they remain active supporters of the arts.