FOSTER, AUTHERINE, JUANITA LUCY (1929-)

Her ambition to have the best education she could get led her into a nightmare and into history. Autherine Juanita Lucy was born on October 5, 1929, in Shiloh, Alabama, the daughter of Minnie Hosea Lucy and Milton Cornelius Lucy, a farmer. One of ten children, she went to the public schools of Shiloh through junior high school. She also helped her family work in the cotton fields and raise watermelon, sweet potatoes, and peanuts. For high school, she went to Linden Academy, graduating in 1947.

Lucy's undergraduate college years were spent at Selma University in Selma, Alabama, and at all-Black Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama, where she met Hugh L. Foster, whom she would later marry. She graduated from Miles with a B.A. in English in 1952. The next decision Lucy made changed her life drastically. She decided to go to graduate school at the University of Alabama. She was not naive; she knew that getting into the school would be a struggle and she prepared for it. With a friend who shared her ambition, she approached the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for help. Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, and Arthur Shores were assigned to be her attorneys. While they started laying the groundwork for her case, she worked as a secretary, among other jobs. Court action began in July 1953.

"If I graduated from the University of Alabama," she said in a recent interview, explaining her determination, "I would have had people coming and calling me for a job. I did expect to find isolation... I thought I could survive that. But I did not expect it to go as far as it did."

It is probable that no one expected things to go that far. On June 29, 1955, the NAACP secured a court order restraining the university from rejecting Lucy and her friend based upon race. The University of Alabama was thereby forced to admit them. Two days later, the court amended the order to apply to all other African-American students seeking admission to the university. On February 3, 1956, twenty-six-year-old Lucy enrolled as a graduate student in library science. (Her friend had reconsidered the situation.)

That is when the nightmare began. On the third day of classes, Autherine Lucy faced mobs of students, townspeople, and even groups from out of state. "There were students behind me saying, 'Let's kill her! Let's kill her!' " she said. The mobs threw eggs at her and tried to block her way. A police escort was needed to get her to her classes, and even from within the classroom, she could hear the crowds chanting.

That evening, Lucy was suspended from the university. The university's board stated that the action was taken for her safety and that of the other students. The NAACP lawyers did not accept the suspension, however. They filed a contempt of court suit against the university, accusing the administrators of acting in support of the white mob. Unfortunately, they were unable to support these charges and were forced to withdraw them. The suit was used as justification for expelling Lucy from the school.

In the days and months that followed, Lucy was invited to study at several European universities at no charge, but she declined. "I didn't know whom to hate," she said. "It felt somewhat like you were not really a human being. But had it not been for some at the university, my life might not have been spared at all."

For some time after her expulsion, Lucy could not find work as a teacher. She was simply too controversial. In the spring of 1956, she moved to Texas and married her college sweetheart, the Reverend Hugh Foster. They had five children, and eventually, she was hired as a teacher. The Fosters lived in Texas for seventeen years, returning in 1974 to Alabama, where she worked as a substitute teacher. During this time, she maintained her interest in civil rights, speaking periodically at meetings.

Then, in 1988, two professors at the University of Alabama invited her to speak to a class, telling students about her experience more than thirty years before. One of the questions she was asked was, "Did you ever try to re-enroll?" Foster said that she hadn't, but that she might consider it. Several faculty members heard about her statement and began working to get the university to overturn her expulsion. In April of that year, the board officially did so.

A year later, Autherine Lucy Foster entered the University of Alabama to earn a master's degree in elementary education. Her daughter, Grazia, enrolled at about the same time, as an undergraduate majoring in corporate finance. In the spring of 1992, they both received degrees.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

The New York Times (February 4, 1956; March 4, 1956; April 26, 1992); Ebony (November 1988).

TIYA MILES

SOURCE

Black Women in America. An Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Darlene Clark Hine (New York: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1993), pp. 446-449.