GAPS History
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Mary Frances Early Lecture

Mary Frances Early was born on June 14, 1936, in Atlanta to Ruth and John H. Early. As a child, Ms. Early was a musician and avid learner, and she spent a great deal of time in a local library across the street from a restaurant owned by her father. Her love for higher learning, and being influenced by her band teacher at Henry McNeal Turner High School in Atlanta eventually led to her matriculation at Clark College (later Clark Atlanta University) to major in music education. 

When Ms. Early began the admissions process at The University of Georgia (UGA) for graduate school, it became obvious to her exactly how big an issue her racial identity was. She had to schedule her own admissions interview, which she later described as "not pleasant". She was bombarded with inappropriate questions, such as whether she had ever been a prostitute or had any illegitimate children. She was told she would lose all of her credit hours from the University of Michigan if she transferred, but Ms. Early was determined and persistent. UGA officials investigated her voting records and her family's health records (particularly for evidence of sexually transmitted diseases), and checked to see whether anyone in her family had received any speeding tickets or had been arrested. 

Mary Frances Early
Eventually Ms. Early received an acceptance letter from UGA on May 10, 1961, and within a few days she arrived in Athens for summer classes. While at UGA she was the victim of repeated abuses. She recalls students throwing lemons at her at the dining hall and students trying to bar her from the library one evening by joining hands in front of the library doors. Her automobile was defiled with a racial slur, but Ms. Early had the car repainted and continued her studies. Despite the discrimination she endured at UGA, Ms. Early says, "I came to love Georgia as a school. I didn't like a lot of things that went on sometimes, but the music department was a place of refuge." In September of 1962, Ms. Early became the first African-American to receive a graduate degree from the University of Georgia.

Early and Archer
Ms. Early was formally recognized by UGA for the first time at a reception hosted by Graduate and Professional Scholars (GAPS) in the spring of 2000. Since then, her namesake has been enshrined by GAPS via an annual event called the Mary Frances Early Lecture, during which prominent speakers such as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Elaine Brown, Esq., speak on awareness and issues affecting African-Americans in current society. Ms. Early acknowledges that UGA has exhibited a "greater awareness that bigger efforts need to be made to integrate the student body" in the past forty years. She is pleased that UGA now hosts an office of diversity, and hopes that in her lifetime she will see "the kind of equity and diversity our state university deserves". Ms. Early is the chair of the Department of Music at Clark Atlanta University.