Auburn University's first black student: 'Happened to be at the right place at the right time'
SYLACAUGA, Alabama – Harold Franklin never set out to attend Auburn University.
The school with its agricultural heritage had little appeal for the bookish Franklin.
“I used to hate when daddy grew a garden and I had to go out and help with it,” Franklin said. "That was the last place I wanted to go.”
He had dreamed of being an attorney, inspired by his childhood idol Thurgood Marshall, the prominent counsel for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and first black Supreme Court justice.
“I wanted to be a lawyer,” Franklin said, sitting on the couch in his two-bedroom apartment in Sylacauga below a framed photo of Samford Hall. “That was the most important thing to me.”
Franklin graduated from Alabama State University, then named Alabama State College, in 1962 with a degree in government and psychology. Franklin was seeking character references for a law school application when an encounter with civil rights attorney Fred Gray put him on the track to become Auburn University’s first black student.
Franklin successfully enrolled as a graduate student in history and registered for classes on Saturday, Jan. 4, 1964. The enrollment, achieved after successful federal lawsuits against the university, came almost seven months after the infamous stand in the school house door at the University of Alabama by segregationist Gov. George Wallace.
“I think deep down they knew it was coming,” the 80-year-old said, reflecting on the 50th anniversary of his push to enroll at Auburn. “It was just a matter of time. Alabama had gone through it, and Auburn was next on the list.”
Gray said the integration efforts at Auburn and other Alabama universities were part of a broader national effort by the NAACP.
When Franklin first approached Gray, he said his intention was to apply to law school at Alabama, where he had already taken the Law School Admission Test. Gray advised him his LSAT scores might be too low to successfully challenge Alabama.
Gray said he encouraged Franklin, who had a lifelong fascination with African American history, to apply to Auburn.
“I said ‘Fred, I really don’t want to go,’ and he said ‘Harold, you are the ideal candidate,’” Franklin said.
Gray made the case Franklin was the perfect candidate because the 31-year-old was married, honorably discharged from the Air Force, graduated with honors from ASU, and had no criminal record.
“There was nothing in my background that white Alabama could use against me,” Franklin said.
Franklin agreed to help and applied for graduate school at Auburn University. He said he proceeded with the support of his wife, who had been active in protests in her hometown of Atlanta, and his parents, who taught their children to stand up for themselves.
“They taught us don’t take any crap,” Franklin said.
The university denied Franklin admittance in early 1963, and Gray filed a class-action lawsuit in August of 1963 on behalf of Franklin and other black Alabamians, arguing Franklin had met the requirements for admission and the rejection violated his constitutional rights.
Franklin was denied admittance to graduate school by Auburn University because he graduated from ASU, which lacked accreditation. ASU lost its accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1961, months before Franklin’s graduation because of underfunding by the state, according to Franklin.
Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson ruled in favor of Franklin on Nov. 5, 1963, deciding the denial by Auburn, as a state institution, amounted to discrimination against the plaintiff and other blacks because Alabama had allowed the accreditation for the black schools to lapse while maintaining accreditation for the white-only public universities.
Franklin also successfully sued to force the university to provide him on-campus housing.
Just 'another day on the Plains'
Franklin’s enrollment at Auburn on Jan. 4, 1964 was uneventful, compared to the theatrics by Wallace at Alabama seven months earlier and the violence that accompanied James Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi in 1962.
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Gallery: Harold Franklin at Auburn University
Wallace decided not to make a similar show at Auburn. Franklin said he learned Wallace, commenting on Auburn’s integration, had called him a 31-year-old married agitator.
“George was going to get that last word …,” he said. “I laughed about it.”
Franklin said he wasn’t worried about safety as he enrolled. Gray said, though he had concerns about his client’s welfare, he did not worry about safety either, adding he believed university and federal officials would take care of Franklin.
“We had been assured Franklin was going to be safe,” Gray said.
Franklin arrived in Auburn to a campus that had been closed to outsiders as a safety precaution. The university, which sought an uneventful integration, had closed the campus to anyone except authorized staff, students, police and reporters covering the event. Wallace sent state troopers to campus to be part of the security detail.
In a last-minute adjustment, Franklin was taken first to Auburn United Methodist Church, where the church’s minister allowed the use of his office. The minister and other church leaders from Auburn were working with the federal agents to ensure the integration went smoothly. At the church, Franklin’s bags were search by FBI agents as a precaution in case anyone tried to plant weapons.
“’He (the agent) said he doesn’t have a gun,’” Franklin said. “I said ‘I am not going hunting, I am going to school.’”
Franklin was escorted onto campus to Magnolia Hall to register for a room by Joseph Sarver, the university’s director of development. Franklin said as he left the dorm for the library to register for classes he met then Dean of Student Affairs James E. Foy, who planned to escort him.
“And who should pop up but Col. Al Lingo,” Franklin said.
Lingo was in command of state troopers sent to the campus by Wallace and insisted Foy treat Franklin as any other student – as per the federal court order – and not escort him to registration.
On the way to the university library on Mell Street, Franklin was stopped by a state trooper who asked him for his student identification, which Franklin said he had not obtained yet.
“He started acting silly, really harassing me. I said, ‘You know exactly who I am,’” Franklin said. “All of ya’ll know who I am. I’m the reason you all are here.”
Franklin said he was eventually allowed to continue to the library after showing his driver’s license to another trooper.
Franklin registered for classes in front of a group or reporters before making his way back to his dorm. Outside, Franklin was greeted by two members of the student newspaper staff.
On the way back to Magnolia Hall, he got lost. Franklin said the chief of campus security helped him find his way back.
“I will never forget what he said, ‘Everything will be all right once we get rid of these state troopers,’” Franklin said.
Franklin said he returned to Magnolia Hall, where he had an entire wing to himself, living alone in a room on the second floor. During his first meal on campus, he ate by himself, adding no students would sit at his table in the cafeteria.
“It didn’t bother me,” he said. “I had pretty much been a loner.”
Campus life
Franklin said his time at Auburn was, for the most part, uneventful. Other students mostly ignored him, he said. Franklin made a few friends on campus but spent most of his free time heading home to Montgomery to see his wife and son, born 17 days after he had enrolled.
“Every chance I got, I was home,” Franklin said, adding he had to be driven back to Montgomery because he did not bring a car onto campus for fear of vandalism.
Franklin said he did not fear for his safety on campus, though some students made racist comments and, in one case, spat water on him.
“Some got a little nutty … called me nigger,” he said.
Franklin left in 1966 without finishing his degree. He would eventually be granted an honorary doctorate by AU in 2001. Franklin said he left when it became clear he would be unable to reach an agreement with professors about his thesis.
“I got tired of the crap,” Franklin said. “I said ‘hell, what you are telling me is I am not going to get a degree from Auburn.”
Franklin hoped to write his thesis on the civil rights movement but said he was discouraged from the course of study by academic advisors.
“They told me I was too controversial,” he said.
Following the recommendation of the professors, Franklin wrote about the history of Alabama State College, which he added held little interest for him. Franklin said he continued to disagree with professors supervising his thesis over details of his work.
Franklin taught at ASU and Tuskegee University following his departure from Auburn before joining the staff at Talladega College, from where he eventually retired in 1992. Franklin completed his master’s degree at the University of Denver in 1976.
50 years later
These days, Franklin said he doesn’t think much about Auburn. He doesn’t actively keep up with the university’s news. But he does get occasional calls from members of the Harold A. Franklin Society.
Auburn University student Aaron Jordan, current president of the Franklin Society, described the society as a brotherly group that tries to welcome new black students onto a campus.
Jordan said he knew little of Franklin’s story before coming to the Auburn campus and studying the history of its desegregation.
“Honestly, he is one of the most courageous people I can think of,” said the aerospace engineering major. “He put himself in what many would call a hostile environment to get an education …”
It was never a role Franklin sought out but one he said he willingly accepted.
“In those days … you were expected to do what you could in the struggle for civil rights,” Franklin said. “I just happened to be one of the people who happened to be at the right place at the right time.”
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