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Brown v. Board of Education didn’t settle much in the fight for equality in education. Barbara Pace Hunt, Iris Mae Welch, and Myra Elliott learned that the hard way in 1956 as Georgia State University fought the federal mandate to integrate.
Upon applying, the school insisted that only an impossible recommendation letter from white alumni would do.
As Hunt v. Arnold raged in federal court, a state-sponsored character assassination campaign ensued.
Lead plaintiff Hunt, a 23-year-old mother of two, was originally encouraged to apply to GSU by her Southern Christian Leadership Conference boss, Martin Luther King, Jr. himself!
Yet she was publicly slandered and forced to move her family WEEKLY to escape KKK threats. She only mentioned it as a “dark time,” according to her daughter.
Even as their legal victory set the precedent for the integration of schools like the University of Georgia (1961) and Ole Miss (1962), the state’s revenge continued.
GSU barred all three from enrolling STILL, as random age caps and morality clauses targeted students like them: older and/or unwed mothers, and most obvious to all, BLACK.
Despite the painful past, Elliott (now in her 80s) told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she has no regrets.
“They told me I couldn't go to that school, and I started thinking about all the black children who might want to go. That was my reason."