After a week of backlash, the University of Alabama System’s Board of Trustees voted Friday to name a building after the school’s first Black student instead of having her share the name with a Ku Klux Klan leader.
Highlights
- The University of Alabama System’s Board of Trustees reversed a February 3 decision to name the building Lucy-Graves Hall after its first Black student and civil rights activist Autherine Lucy Foster and Bibb Graves, a former Alabama governor and a Ku Klux Klan leader.
- Students, faculty and community members said it was wrong to recognize the legacy of these two people in one building.
- “We’ve heard enough from people whose opinion matter to us,” trustee emeritus Judge John England Jr.
- said at the special called Friday meeting.
- “We can do that in a better way than what we’ve done,” England said.
- “This has been a challenging time,” he said.