On This Day In Alabama History: Spring Hill Awarded First Black Graduate Honorary Doctorate

Alabama News Center | May 9, 2017 @ 5:02 am

By Graydon Rust
Alabama 200

May 9, 2004

Spring Hill College awarded Fannie Motley, the first black graduate of a previously all-white college in Alabama, an honorary doctorate of humanities. The college also established the Fannie Motley Endowed Scholarship to further diversity on its campus. A Jesuit college, Spring Hill began incremental enrollment of blacks in 1949 and, in May 1954, unilaterally desegregated all the college’s programs. Enrolling as a junior in February 1955, Motley took on heavy course loads of philosophy and theology each session and graduated with honors on May 29, 1956. An image of her graduation ran in the Mobile Press-Register, The New York Times, and Time magazine.

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