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Alabama NewsCenter — JSU to dedicate historical marker honoring first Black student, Barbara Curry-Story

| February 3, 2023 @ 4:00 pm

By: Abigail Harris

The first Black student to attend JSU, Curry-Story was born Barbara Crook in Ohatchee on Nov. 24, 1941. She graduated from Calhoun County Training School in 1959 and briefly attended Alabama A&M before moving to New York City to raise money for college. Five years later, she returned home to Alabama as a single mother and enrolled at JSU in fall 1965, determined to give her 2-year-old son a better life.

As a Black woman living during the end of Jim Crow laws, it was dangerous at times for Curry-Story to do everyday tasks. While at JSU, she lived at home with her parents and borrowed her brother’s 1959 Chevrolet to commute to campus, often taking different routes to school each day to avoid harassment.

When she walked into Angle Hall (formerly Bibb Graves Hall) for the first time to attend history class, she was met with silence from classmates. A few times, she heard other students say, “She needs to go home.” But Curry-Story endured, and by the second semester she made friends and studied with them.

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Alabama News Center tels the stories of the people and businesses powering the states of Alabama, striving to make Alabama a wonderful place to live and work.

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