University of Alabama trustees have voted to strip the name of a one-time governor who led the Ku Klux Klan from a campus building and rename it solely for the school’s first Black student
The unanimous vote reversed a decision last week to add the name of Autherine Lucy Foster, who briefing attended the all-white state school in 1956, to a building honoring Bibb Graves, a progressive, pro-education governor who also ran a Montgomery KKK group a century ago.
Rather than Lucy-Graves Hall, the classroom building will be known as Autherine Lucy Hall, trustees decided.
“It’s never too late to make the right decision,” said John England, a former trustee who led a committee that initially recommended the joint name and then reversed itself after criticism that Graves didn’t deserve to have his name alongside that of Lucy, now 92 and living in metro Birmingham.
Trustees didn’t mention the topic of Graves’ leadership in the notorious hate group during an online meeting, but England said some questioned why the woman’s married name of “Foster” wouldn’t be on the structure.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/university-alabama-remove-kkk-leaders-hall-82827692