Oxford University Press, 1992

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1954-55 decisions striking down state-enforced segregation in the public schools, two young black women embarked upon a courageous mission to challenge racial barriers in Alabama, one of the most unreconstructed of southern states. In 1956 frantic University of Alabama officials found “moral” grounds for denying admission to Pollie Anne Myers, the determined and persistent natural leader of the two crusaders. The university complied with a federal judge’s order to admit Myers’s companion Autherine Lucy to its hallowed halls. Following campus rioting and Lucy’s published suspicions that the university was involved in a conspiracy against her, school officials expelled her and the most outspoken white student opponent of her admission.