University of Georgia desegregation riot
The two had been admitted to the school several days earlier following a lengthy application process that led to a court order mandating that the university accept them.
On January 11, several days after the two had registered, a group of approximately 1,000 people (including members of the Ku Klux Klan) conducted a riot outside of Hunter's dormitory.
In 1867, there was an attempt by several freedmen to gain admittance to the university, but with the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson and the legal doctrine of separate but equal, UGA, like many others in the United States, remained segregated into the early 20th century.
[1] However, starting in 1936, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began a campaign that aimed to desegregate universities in the Southern United States.
However, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruled that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, leading to greater integration in the proceeding years.
[2] In summer 1960, after again being denied entry for the fall 1960 semester, they appealed the decision to Chancellor Harmon White Caldwell of the University System of Georgia (USG), who refused to take action on the matter.
[12] Attorneys representing the applicants included Donald L. Hollowell, Vernon Jordan, Constance Baker Motley, and Ward, who, after being denied entry to UGA, had enrolled at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
[2] On September 13, 1960, United States federal judge William Augustus Bootle started a hearing on the matter, wherein Attorney General of Georgia Eugene Cook claimed that the applicants had filled out their admission forms incorrectly and, as the Board of Regents had not yet met to decide on their appeal, they had not exhausted all administrative remedies for the case.
[12] Following this, Bootle scheduled a pre-trial hearing for November 18 and ordered that the trial would begin the second week of December in the Athens division of the court.
According to historian Robert Mickey, Georgia Lieutenant Governor Garland T. Byrd assured students that they would not face punishment for these actions, either criminal or disciplinary.
[16] Slightly past 10:00 p.m., several students unrolled a large banner outside of Hunter's on-campus dormitory that read "Nigger Go Home" and threw bricks and Coke bottles through her window.
[8] Holmes and Hunter, understandably, later expressed unpleasantness with their experiences at UGA, though neither were physically threatened again during their time at the university, and both later graduated and had careers in their fields.
Roy V. Harris (a kingmaker in Georgia politics[22]) seemed to acknowledge these claims when, speaking to the press, he said "it was people holding high official positions in the Capitol" who had encouraged the rioters.
