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since 12/15/98 |
| Columns::September 3, 2002 Three are named GUC undergraduate program directors New NSF pilot project will produce ‘gene encyclopedias’ ‘Bridges to the Doctorate’ NIH grant will support graduate education of minority students at UGA Chick-fil-A hold grand opening at Tate Student Center Mountain ecologist is appointed international education director The burden of care: Study shows mothers’ depression affects children’s well-being Managers complete training; Research Fellows announced Newsmakers Retirees Newsmakers The Honduras Connection Campus News Writing wrongs Civil rights historian pens scholarly account of university’s desegregation Robert Pratt, associate professor of history, is the author of We Shall Not Be Moved: The Desegregation of the University of
Columns: What led you to write this book? Pratt: I wrote my first book on school desegregation in Richmond, Va. I came to the University of Georgia with that book nearly completed, and I realized that eventually I’d have to turn to another project. I’d always considered myself a scholar of civil rights history and was aware that there had never been a scholarly study of the desegregation of the University of Georgia. I considered that to be a fairly significant omission. Calvin Trillin’s book, An Education in Georgia, appeared in 1963, but that was a journalistic account. Charlayne Hunter-Gault had written her memoirs, but she only talks about her days at UGA in a couple of chapters. There had just been no scholarly study done. Columns: What was the most difficult part of piecing together the story of UGA’s integration?
Columns: Are there unsung heroes in this story? Pratt: The unsung heroes are probably those African-American students who came in the aftermath of Holmes and Hunter. I interviewed several of those students, people like local attorney Ken Dious. He pointed out to me that it was tough for Holmes and Hunter, because they were the first, but at least they had the cameras here--they had the media attention. And that afforded them some small measure of protection. But those students who came a year or two later, once the cameras had left, caught the full brunt of it without any kind of media attention. Columns: Were you pleased that the UGA Press published the book? Pratt: It was very important to me. As is the case with any scholar, you either want to publish your book with a commercial press and make tons of money, or you want to go with an academic press that has a certain academic clout to it. I had been impressed with the kinds of things the UGA Press had been publishing over the years, so I knew the Press had that cachet, especially in regard to works of Southern history. To me it seemed like a natural. Columns: Were there surprises in your research? Pratt: The thing that surprised me the most was the lengths to which white lawmakers and university administrators went in order to keep the University of Georgia all white. I knew about segregation and about the schemes and ruses that white universities used to keep blacks out. But when I looked through documents, through the regents’ minutes, through the minutes of the state lawmakers, and saw some of the schemes and subterfuges they came up with to keep black students out of this university--it was just incredible. But I shouldn’t have been surprised at all. Columns: The events outside Charlayne Hunter’s room in Myers Hall in 1961 have sometimes been described as a “spontaneous disturbance” following a tough basketball game with Georgia Tech. You present considerable evidence that it was a planned riot. Do you believe this was covered up or downplayed then or over the years? Pratt: I hesitate to say that it was covered up. I do believe it was deliberately downplayed. That’s pretty evident from the existing literature. In the early stuff that was written, there was an attempt to put the best possible spin on the events. Even now, 40 years after the fact, there is a tendency on the part of some to characterize it as a disturbance, when clearly many of those who were there considered it to be much more. It was a nasty riot. Columns: How far have we come since the integration of UGA? How far do we still have to go? Pratt: Those are fair questions but not always ones that are easy to answer. If you look at where we were as a society 40 years ago and compare that to where we are today, you have to conclude that we’ve come a long way. I was the first African American, for example, ever to be hired in the history department [in 1987], and now there are five of us. We have made some progress. But we haven’t been able to climb above 6 percent African-American students here, so we’re having a very difficult challenge. I find that troubling because other universities, such as Ole Miss and Alabama, who had a much more turbulent time in desegregating their universities, have since done much better in recruiting African-American students. The University of Georgia’s lack of black students is clearly troublesome. |
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