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worth repeating |
Chester Davenport, the first African American to graduate from UGA’s School of Law, delivered the 97th Sibley Lecture April 7 as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Some excerpts from his talk: “I must admit that the biggest visible difference in the law school was the number of minority and women students in the school. As many of you know, I was not only the first African-American student to enter the law school, but the only African-American student through my entire three years. . . . “Over the years, the question I’m asked the most often is, with all the turmoil and strife and mass resistance to integration in 1963, why did you apply to the University of Georgia’s law school? They ask me, weren’t you afraid? Was that the only school that you could get in to?… “I have one simple answer: It was Horace Ward. When Judge Ward first applied to our law school, I was in the fourth grade at West Broad Elementary School [in Athens]. The fact that Judge Ward was denied admission to the law school was a big local—and national—story. When I asked why he could not attend the university, I was told they did not want black people at the University of Georgia, unless they were cooks or waiters, not students. They told me the state had agreed to pay his way to go up north to school, and that he could not stay at home like white students who wanted to go to law school. At the tender age of 9, I thought that was not fair. I told my parents and teachers that if they had not let Horace Ward into Georgia by the time I got ready to go to law school, I was going to go. To my great surprise, 13 years later, I had the great pleasure of keeping that promise.” |
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| —Beth Roberts |
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