The naming ceremony was held Tuesday afternoon at the University of Georgia: UGA's College of Education is now the Mary Frances Early College of Education, named in honor of the University's first black graduate.
From Eric Stirgus, AJC…
During her days as a student, and for decades afterward, Mary Frances Early felt like University of Georgia leaders treated her as “the Invisible Woman.”
Classmates refused to speak to her. Although she was the first African American to graduate from UGA, on Aug. 16, 1962, the university didn’t acknowledge her role in its history. Her achievement was not reported by major news outlets who instead focused on UGA’s first two black students, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton E. Holmes, who enrolled there months earlier. They graduated in 1963.
Today, though, Early is one of its most celebrated graduates. The university plans a ceremony Tuesday to name its College of Education after Early, who spent decades teaching music in the Atlanta Public Schools system and at what’s now Clark Atlanta University.
“I was doing my little bit to help make the system change, and it did,” Early, 83, who precisely remembers dates and details, said during an interview last week in her Decatur home.
Ironically, UGA’s College of Education is in a building named after O.C. Aderhold, who was the university’s president when Early was a student. Aderhold, who died in 1969, did not acknowledge her during her days on campus, she said.
The university’s embrace of Early began in 1997 when a minority graduate student group invited her to speak on campus. Then-UGA President Michael Adams issued a proclamation acknowledging her role in the university’s history. UGA now holds an annual lecture in her name, Early was its 2007 graduate school commencement speaker, and in October 2018, she received the President’s Medal — one of UGA’s biggest honors.
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