We Shall Not Be Moved: The Desegregation of the University of Georgia

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book has been several years in the making, and I am indebted to many people for helping to bring it to fruition. Many of my colleagues at the University of Georgia read the manuscript in its entirety and offered suggestions for revisions, and I hope the book reflects our collective wisdom. For their insightful criticisms, I am especially grateful to Bud Bartley, Jim Cobb, Robby Cohen, Tom Dyer, Peter Hoffer, Will Holmes, John Inscoe, John Morrow, and Emory Thomas. Thanks also to our departmental word processing specialist , Bonnie Cary, for her valuable technical assistance, and to Travis Rose and Robert Smith, my able research assistants. I am grateful to the University of Georgia’s Boyd Graduate School for its support of this project by awarding me a Senior Faculty Research Grant in 1998. I also wish to thank uga photographer Peter Frey for helping me to locate photographs. I reserve a special note of thanks for my editor, Malcolm Call, whom I have known personally since I joined the faculty at the University of Georgia in 1987. Malcolm expressed great enthusiasm for this project from its inception and I benefited immensely from his support and encouragement at every stage in the process. He meticulously read each individual chapter as I wrote it, long before anything resembling a monograph emerged. His professionalism is evident from beginning to finish, and I am delighted that this is one of the last books he edited before he began his retirement. He will be sorely missed at this place. My greatest debt is to the many people who took the time to share with me their recollections and impressions of this important episode in Georgia’s history. While this book relies heavily on archival sources, it required a human element that simply cannot be found in libraries and archives, and I am grateful to the following, who helped bring the story to life: Milner Ball, Leslie K. Bates, J. Ralph Beaird, Robert Benham, Harold Black, William A. Bootle, Thomas Brahana, Gene Britton, Chester C. Davenport Jr., Ken Dious, Thomas Dyer, Mary Frances Early, T. David Fletcher, Thurmon Garner, xiii Acknowledgments Hugh Gloster, Richard Graham, Donald Hollowell, Gary Holmes, Hamilton Holmes Jr., Herbert Holmes, Isabella Holmes, Marilyn Holmes, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Randall Johnson, Giles Kennedy, Alfred Killian, Archibald Killian , Charles B. Knapp, Earl T. Leonard Jr., Calvin Logue, Walter A. Lundy, Betty Mapp, Pete McCommons, Adrienne McFall, Horace Montgomery, Ray Moore, John H. Morrow Jr., Constance Baker Motley, Rubye Potts, Caroline Ridlehuber, Gregory Roseboro, Bill Shipp, Edward D. Spurgeon, S. Ernest Vandiver, Horace T. Ward, Homer Wilson, and Joan Zitzelman. The one name that is noticeably absent from the above list is that of Hamilton Holmes. Unfortunately, I was unable to schedule an interview with him before his untimely death in October 1995. His words and image have been preserved in various other formats, but I would have loved to have talked to him about his turbulent years as a student on uga’s campus, as well as the later years in which he began his reconciliation with the university. Fortunately , I did have the opportunity to gain some of those insights from more formal settings. I first met Holmes in 1989 when he was invited to give a lecture to a history class. Later, he and I served as panelists in a discussion of race relations at the University of Georgia. The things that struck me most about him were his warm and congenial personality, his broad smile and hearty laugh, the uneasiness he felt about his celebrity status, and the fact that he seemed to harbor no resentment toward those who had made his life intolerably difficult for two and a half years—all in stark contrast to the image that many had of him as a student. I understand now, as he did then, that his reserved demeanor during his college days at uga was a necessary part of his protective armor, which he was able to shed when he felt it was no longer needed. He was a remarkable man and I feel honored to have known him. I hope that this book will be a fitting tribute to his legacy. xiv We Shall Not Be Moved This page intentionally left blank ...