University of Alabama reverses course, will remove Klansman name and honor Autherine Lucy on hall

Autherine Lucy, the first Black student to enroll at the University of Alabama, was denied a dormitory room and board by trustees. More than six decades later, a campus building is being named in her honor, but the naming didn't come without some controversy. (The Birmingham News file / The Birmingham News)

Updated: Feb. 11, 2022, 2:00 p.m. | Published: Feb. 11, 2022, 10:26 a.m.

By Kayla Solino | Freelancer for The Alabama Education Lab at AL.com

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Autherine Lucy Foster’s name will now stand alone on a building she attended as the first Black student at the University of Alabama, after she battled rioters, threats and an eventual expulsion from the school.

The University of Alabama System’s Board of Trustees initially wanted to add Lucy’s name to a building currently named for Bibb Graves, a former governor of Alabama and a Ku Klux Klan member. But a week of outcry from students and faculty and national and local press attention forced the board to withdraw a recommendation for Lucy-Graves Hall.

The building will now be called Autherine Lucy Hall.

“This has been a challenging time,” Judge John England Jr said during a special called trustees’ meeting Friday. “The working group, in making the recommendation, intended for that paired name of [Lucy-Graves Hall] to generate educational moments to help us learn from our rich, complex history. Well, somehow or another the honoring of Lucy Foster took to the background. That’s not what we wanted.”

The university’s working group, which made the recommendation, was developed in June 2020 by the board of trustees and president pro tempore. It was tasked with reviewing names of buildings, structures and spaces on University of Alabama System campuses “relative to its fundamental Shared Values, including diversity, inclusion and respect,” per the board’s resolution.

Graves was governor from 1927-1931 and 1935-1939. His record as a governor, decision to increase funding for schools and eventual renouncement of the KKK was cited by university officials. But critics pointed out that his work did not actually end unequal education in Alabama, and that his involvement with the KKK apparently ran deep.

“It felt that even her [Foster’s] legacy, no matter what accolades she had previously as a Black woman, it did not matter. She had to share the indignity of being on a building name hyphenated with a Klansmen,” said Hilary Green, an associate history professor.

Lucy Foster reenrolled at the university in 1988 after earning a degree in English from Miles College and graduated in 1992 with her master’s degree. She now lives in Bessemer.

Barbara Whitesell, a December 2021 graduate, wanted Lucy Foster to get “full credit” on the building.

“If you’re going to give her credit. You have to give it all to her. She endured a lot more than any student that has ever gone to UA probably has,” Whitesell said. “I was very disgusted and very disturbed that somebody thought that was a way to honor someone … “It was very fine timing that they announced it when they did, too.”

Kirt von Daacke, a professor of history at the University of Virginia specializing in the antebellum, American South, said UA is facing the same fate as other public institutions across the Mason-Dixon line.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, von Daacke and a group of historians, community members and experts have worked to excavate markers of slavery on Grounds, uncover information about the lives of enslaved people, and change the physical landscape that previously erased enslaved people’s work and contributions. They have joined a growing movement of universities in the United States that are also working through ways to acknowledge and study past involvement in slavery and segregation.

“Universities are wrestling with this right now. And particularly universities in former slave states where segregation and then the Jim Crow era were part and parcel of the practice,” von Daacke said. “They have a built landscape of buildings and memorials, and honorific namings that recognize the architects of the slave system, and the age of segregation. And this is almost always at odds with what might be a 21st-century mission of any university.”

Other institutions in Alabama, such as Alabama State, Troy and Auburn universities have removed Graves’ name from campus buildings or landmarks. Schools in other states have taken different tacks. In November, Georgia’s University System decided they would not be renaming buildings with ties to slavery after conducting formal reviews.

The University of Alabama‘s working group was previously responsible for removing previous namesakes from Honors Hall, Presidents Hall, The English Building, Wade Hall and The UA Student Center in 2020 and 2021. In June 2020 the university also removed three plaques honoring Confederate soldiers.

Von Daacke said there are different ways for universities to accomplish changes to their landscapes, but UA’s choice with Lucy-Graves Hall fell short despite likely beginning with good intentions.

“I’m sort of shocked and appalled by the way the University of Alabama has ultimately attempted to resolve this one building … I find it really odd to say,’ We’re going to honor this first pioneering student of the university who is a victim of racial terror by sharing a name of a building with an architect of racial terror,’” von Daacke said.

Green said she felt the renaming process, and announcement on the 66th anniversary of Lucy Foster’s enrollment, without apparent discussion of the steps it took to get her enrolled or the mobs that caused her suspension, felt performative.

She said that she hopes the University takes the opportunity to listen to the community and works to “right this wrong.”

Von Daacke said an important step for universities in this process is openly acknowledging the wrongs that have been done.

“If you are unwilling to turn the critical eye on to your own campus and ask questions about you know, who is it that we honor, then you’ve failed as an educational institution,” von Daacke said. “If you can’t tell the truth about Bibb Graves or honor the story of Autherine Lucy Foster and this larger story about the slow process of integration … you’ve failed as an educational institution, a national institution.”

Green said the university has already inflicted pain and hurt across campus, especially to members of the Black community.

“One student said it felt like a slap in the face as a Black woman and a leader on this campus,” Green said. Green said some students are “hurt, angry and ready to leave.”

Whitesell said the university had good intentions but said it struggles to commit to listening to the Black community.

“It’s so hard for them to even just give us [Black students] a little bit of something and it just shows that they don’t care about their whole student body,” Whitesell said. “It’s almost like we have no voice.”

In September, A.B. Moore Hall was renamed Archie Wade Hall after the first black faculty member at the University. In 2019 the university announced a residence hall dedicated to Judge John England Jr.

Green said this made the announcement of Lucy-Graves Hall even more devastating for Black women.

“Archie Wade Hall … was just renamed Archie Wade Hall. He doesn’t have a hyphenated name. He has his own building. It was elaborately dedicated and marked … But yet this Black woman, who made Judge England and Archie Wade possible, could not get the same designation and recognition,” Green said.

Malea Benjamin, a sophomore, said the decision was “outlandish” and that the administration appeared aloof. She said the university could have chosen to honor Lucy Foster independently on what is now Lucy-Graves Hall or on another unnamed campus building.

“I just found it utterly disrespectful,” Benjamin said. “I think at this point, if they want to keep Graves on that building so badly, then keep it, but it doesn’t need to be Foster on there too because that’s beyond hypocritical.”

“It shows performative activism and that they’re not truly trying to reverse the harm that they caused on students that attended during that time,” Benjamin said.

The university working group submitted the original name suggestion for Lucy-Graves Hall after speaking with more than a dozen scholars specializing in Alabama history and considerations with stakeholders, according to the UA Systems site.

Von Daacke said the continued renaming process needs to include students, staff and the community at large.

“It [the process] should include all of those constituencies … It needs to be iterative with an open comment so that you end up with something that actually speaks to the 21st-century university community, which in this case, it sounds like it has not at all.”

Green said she hopes a better system can be implemented as the university looks rename other buildings in the future.

“It’s not the greatest process, but I still hope that we can have a better process moving forward,” Green said.

Education Editor Ruth Serven Smith contributed to this reporting. Contact her at rserven@al.com.