"SCHOOLHOUSE" WOMEN
Past Efforts
Framing Memory of Black Women
Memory & Performance
Women's Sports at UA
Women at UA Today

Women of the Schoolhouse

Three of the first four African American students to enroll in The University of Alabama were female: Autherine Lucy (Foster) in 1956, Vivian Malone (Jones) in 1963 , and two women in the fall of 1964. (Our class searched unsuccessfully for the names of the two women who enrolled in the fall of 1964 -- but we're still looking.) Finally, if we include Pollie Anne Myers -- the young Black woman who convinced her friend Autherine Lucy to apply to the university, only to be turned away at the eleventh hour for a pregnancy outside of marriage -- we would have had four women out of the first five black students!

We don't say that enough, nor tell their stories with sufficient attention to the complicated intersections of race and gender (among other pieces of our identity). Our class addressed this aspect of our 50th Anniversary celebration in several ways:

Fall 2013 Class Project: "What Would Lucy Say"

MLK Memorical in Washington DC reminds us about justice
In this creative, collaborative class project, each student in the fall 2013 course was asked to assume the identity of a key player in the 1956 integration of the university. Students wrote a short contextual profile of their assumed character, based on our course text The Schoolhouse Door (Clark, 1993), then created a short speech as if that person spoke out during the Lucy crisis.

The assignment was challenging, posing ethical challenges to students who chose to adopt the view of white segregationists, as well as representational challenges for students who adopted a view from a person not of their own race. As a class, the students knocked this difficult assignment out of the park. In the audio clip below, their speeches and voices are performed as one, linking across the generations the actions of then and now, culminating with rousing calls from our "Lucy's" to keep the arc of history bending toward justice.

"What Would Lucy Say" Speech Performance Project - Fall 2013

Student Projects and Overviews

Past Efforts
Kimberly Richardson (Spring 2013) revisited UA's attempts at public memory at the 40th anniversary of the university's desegregation, suggesting new profiles of key women involved with intergrating UA. Ashanti Richardson (no relation) followed up on this, proposing new language and structure for the 50th anniversary website.
Framing Memory of Black Women
Kris Lee and Andrea Dobynes (Spring 2013) examined media framing of high profile Black women in the Civil Rights movement, and suggest new ways that the university can tell their stories and honor their contributions.

Memory & Performance
Pete Moss, Alex Taylor, and Robert Hester (Fall 2013) took a creative route to explore the experiences of Autherine Lucy and her peers during the tumultous days in 1956. The students recreated "diaries" of white and black students, male and female, to give us a sense of what life may have been like during those historic, if terrifying, times.
Women's Sports at UA
Ali Possess (Spring 2013) delves into women's sport history at UA, from humble beginnings to national championships.
Women at UA Today
Victoria Simmons (Spring 2013) assessed Black women at UA today, specifically through the powerful meanings associated with hair styles and skin tone, providing a modern bookend to an important discussion about race, gender, class, and civil rights.

Hannah Nicholson, Keondria Williams, and Elisabeth Wyatt (Fall 2013) examined attitudes of female UA students toward other women, contextualized their data within feminist history and theory, and created a tumblr blog to unite women at UA around their shared gender.

The Role of Allies

Black and White female students speak out over Greek segregation in 2013
White female allies also have a part in the story of UA's desegregation -- from Dean of Women Sarah Healy (featured above, third from the left) offering her personal vehicle to shuttle Lucy between classes amid angry crowds to Prof. Jean Lyda, in whose class Lucy was trapped for two hours while rock-throwing mobs chanted below for her ouster - or more. Nine years later, when Vivian Malone entered Burke Hall to rest and eat while the Wallace "stand" was addressed, several white female students joined her in a show of support.