While UTM is looking forward to the future, it took a moment last week to reflect on its past.
On Sept. 15, 2011, UTM celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first African-American students to enroll on and graduate from this campus, beginning the fall of 1961 with Jessie Lou Arnold Pryor and culminating in 1964 with Beverly Polk Echols.
Pryor was the first African-American student to enroll in the university; she was the end of segregation on the campus.
Echols was the first African-American to graduate from the university in June 1964. She was 16 when she first came to this school, transferring from LeMoyne College in Memphis after her father heard of another black student already enrolled in the school.
The celebration festivities began at 2 p.m. with a dedication ceremony for the women by unveiling a bench in their honor in the Unity Circle in front of Clement Hall.
Many students and faculty came out to be apart of the unveiling and to show respect to Echols’ and Pryor’s strength and contributions to help making their lives on campus possible. The women gave a small speech of thankfulness and briefly spoke on how their past at UTM and how much all the recognition meant to them.
The men of Zeta Kappa chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc., helped to buy the honorees’ benches by putting together various fundraisers and events. The Zeta Kappa chapter was the second African-American Greek lettered organization to be chartered, but the first African-American male fraternity at UTM.
After the ceremony, the women and their families were taken to the UC to admire the photo gallery of the first African-Americans to accomplish a marking in history in these past 50 years at UTM. A reception for the women and their families immediately followed.
Dr. Annie Carol Jones, Director of Minority Affairs for the Office of Minority Affairs, and her staff was responsible for arranging and putting together these days of remembrance and recognition for the women. The celebration will continue for the rest of this year.
