November 11
What a price for peace
When a mob drove Autherine Lucy from campus, a Tuscaloosa publisher asked what the university had sacrificed to restore order.
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The University of Alabama building where Autherine Lucy took refuge from a white mob now bears her name. In February 1956, she became the first Black student to attend the university. Three days after her first class, the university suspended her, citing safety. The next day, The Tuscaloosa News publisher Buford Boone asked what that quiet had cost in an editorial titled “What a Price for Peace.”
In Thursday’s “This Matters,” Bill Britt revisits Lucy’s fight to attend the university and the editorial that challenged its response to mob violence. Lucy eventually returned, earned her master’s degree and stood in the building again in 2022 as the university dedicated it in her honor. Her story leaves a question for any community under pressure. Whose safety and whose rights are sacrificed to keep the peace?
Watch “What a price for peace” above. Subscribe to “This Matters with Bill Britt” on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or anywhere you get your podcasts.