UA considers changing name of hall to honor Marengo native

As communities around the country consider removing public references to the Confederacy, a group at the University of Alabama is petitioning the school to rename the School of Education to honor a Marengo County native.

Now named Bibb Graves Hall for the former Alabama governor, the student organization is looking to change the name to honor Autherine Lucy, the first African American to be enrolled in the school.

The College of Education’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee’s position is to rename the hall for Foster, born in Shiloh in 1929, the youngest of 10 children. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English in 1952 from Miles College.

That same year, at the urging of a friend, Lucy applied for admission to UA’s graduate school in the master of education program. The two were accepted until admissions officials learned they were black. Thus began a four-year legal battle until Lucy was able to enroll and begin taking classes.

Ongoing protests escalated, however, and Lucy was excluded from the university in the interest of her own safety, according to university officials. It would be another seven years before black students were granted admission to UA.

Lucy married Hugh Foster in 1956. The couple had four children, two of whom attended UA.

In 1988, the UA board of trustees overturned Lucy’s expulsion, and she enrolled and received her master’s degree of education in 1992. The university later named an endowed scholarship after her, placed her portrait in the Ferguson Center and awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2019.

Bibb Graves was a UA graduate and member of the school’s first football team. Known as the education governor, he earned a reputation as a reformer.

However, he won the governorship in 1926 with the secret endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan, although he resigned from the group in 1928.

UA is not the only college campus in the state to have buildings named for the former governor. Others are located at the University of West Alabama, University of Montevallo, University of North Alabama, Auburn, Troy University, Jacksonville State and the historically black colleges of Alabama A&M and Alabama State University.