An excerpt from the Montgomery Advertiser -
Harold Franklin broke through racist barriers as Auburn University's first Black student
By Derryn Moten
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| Dr. Harold Franklin, photographed in 2014 for an Auburn Univerity alumni publication became the university's first Black student when he registered for classes in 1964 under a federal court integration order. Jeff Etheridge / Auburn University |
Harold Franklin graduated from Alabama State College, now University, in the spring of 1962. In the fall of 1963, he made history becoming the first Black student ordered admitted to Auburn University by a federal court. Franklin is to Alabama State University and Auburn University what Autherine Lucy is to Miles College and the University of Alabama.
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U.S. Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall and the U.S. Justice Department joined the complaint against Auburn on behalf of Franklin. This was the administration of U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
Middle District Court of Alabama Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. handed down his opinion on November 5, 1963, three days after Harold Franklin’s thirtieth birthday. Judge Johnson wrote, “. . . the State of Alabama is as much to blame for the plaintiff’s inability to satisfy Auburn’s requirement for admission to its Graduate School as if it had deliberately set out to bar the plaintiff from Auburn because he is a Negro.”
On November 6, 1963, a headline in The Burlington Free Press read, “Wallace Calls Admitting Negro to Auburn ‘A Tragic Decision.’” Governor George Wallace made those remarks at Dartmouth College.
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