Spring Hill College

especially in Louisiana, where many wealthy whites were Catholic. It eventually admitted its first black students in September 1954, a few months after the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional Mrs. Fannie E. Motley was the first black graduate from the institution in 1956.
Even that late start made Spring Hill College comparatively early in educational civil rights for Alabama's African Americans. In his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said he "commend[s] the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago."
On the night of January 21, 1957, a dozen or more darkened cars entered the main avenue of the college. Ku Klux Klan members tried to set up a kerosene-soaked cross outside Mobile Hall, a dormitory. They were unaware that they were there during finals week. Most of the white, male residents were still awake, studying for exams, and several heard the hammering. Once …