On this day in Alabama history: Spring Hill awarded first black graduate honorary doctorate
Fannie Smith Motley (1927-2016) in her graduation garb. Motley was the first African American graduate of a previously all-white college in Alabama. She graduated with honors from Spring Hill College in Mobile in 1956 and went on to a teaching career in Mobile and later in Cincinnati, Ohio. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, Courtesy of Spring Hill College Archives)
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.
Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.
For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.
