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By Kathy Pharr
pharr@uga.edu
Horace Ward wanted the University of Georgia, but the University of Georgia didn’t want him.  Ward, who 50 years ago became the first African American to seek admission to the state-supported institution, will recall the battle to desegregate UGA in the School of Law’s 92nd Sibley Lecture on Oct. 31 at 4 p.m. in the Chapel. The lecture and reception which follows are open to the public without an admission charge.
Ward, now a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, will share his experience in the lecture, “Desegregation of Public Higher Education in Georgia Revisited: Background, Court Cases, and the Aftermath as Witnessed by a Major Participant.”
Ward’s participation occurred both as a plaintiff and as a lawyer. In September 1950, he applied to the UGA School of Law. The U.S. Supreme Court had recently forced the University of Texas to desegregate, and other border states had begun to admit blacks to their universities. Ward, a La Grange native who had earned an undergraduate degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta and a master’s degree in political science from Atlanta University, had reason to believe he stood a chance of being admitted. However, UGA and the University System of Georgia Board of Regents responded to his application by establishing new law school admissions criteria: a battery of tests and the requirement of personal recommendations from alumni, including one from the judge of the superior court in the applicant’s judicial circuit. The moves effectively blocked Ward’s entrance. UGA offered to pay his tuition at an out-of-state law school--a common practice at Southern universities seeking to maintain segregation. Ward refused and spent the next seven years fighting to gain access to his home state’s university.
Ward was represented in his discrimination suit by a team including attorneys Donald Hollowell and Constance Baker-Motley, who represented the NAACP. Thirty days before his case was to be heard, Ward was drafted into the army. After serving two years in the military, he returned to Georgia and renewed his lawsuit. The case finally went to trial in December 1956, but was dismissed shortly thereafter when the judge ruled the issue as moot upon learning that Ward had enrolled as a law student at Northwestern University. Thus, the question of discrimination was never decided by the court.
Ward returned to Georgia upon the completion of his law degree and joined Hollowell in representing Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes in the lawsuit that led to the integration of UGA in 1961.
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