University of Alabama Expels Autherine Lucy After White Mob Violence, First Black Student Barred

On February 6, 1956, the University of Alabama expelled Autherine Lucy, its first Black student, after a three-day white supremacist riot made her presence on campus untenable. University officials blamed Lucy for the violence and used her NAACP-supported lawsuit challenging her suspension as grounds for permanent expulsion. The episode demonstrated how institutions could use mob violence as a pretext to resist integration while claiming neutrality.

Autherine Lucy had won admission to the university through a three-year NAACP legal battle. When she enrolled on February 3, 1956, white mobs gathered, throwing eggs and rocks and threatening to kill her. On February 6, the mob grew to over 1,000, and Lucy had to be escorted from campus by highway patrol officers. That evening, the University Board of Trustees voted to suspend her “for her own safety.”

The NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall filed suit in federal court, including allegations that university officials had conspired with the mob. Federal Judge Hobart Grooms ordered Lucy reinstated on February 29. However, rather than protect her, the University Board met in emergency session and voted to permanently expel her—citing the conspiracy allegations in the lawsuit as “outrageous, false, and baseless” and grounds for expulsion.

The expulsion revealed the institutional logic of massive resistance: create conditions of violence that make integration impossible, then blame the victim for the disruption. University President Oliver Cromwell Carmichael claimed the university had no choice, while privately the administration had made minimal effort to prevent or suppress the mob. The White Citizens’ Council and Ku Klux Klan had openly organized the resistance.

Autherine Lucy did not attempt to return to the university until 1988, when she re-enrolled and earned a master’s degree in elementary education. In 1992, the University of Alabama formally annulled her expulsion. The campus library now bears her name. But her 1956 expulsion succeeded in keeping the University of Alabama segregated until 1963, when Governor George Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” confrontation required federal intervention.