Exhibit chronicles the hard story behind UGA's desegregation
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Posted 4:16PM on Thursday, January 31, 2002
ATHENS - For Laura Stott, it was an emotional struggle to put together an exhibit that chronicles the story of desegregation at the University of Georgia. <br>
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Scott in the university's adviser for student affairs. She said after looking through newspaper clippings and photographs of the anger and hatred that surrounded the school's integration in 12961, she went back to her office very depressed. <br>
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The result of her work is ``Challenge to Change'' at the Tate Student Center Art Gallery. The exhibit ends tomorrow. <br>
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She said, ``I felt really sad to think back in general to what our society was like. It was hard, especially seeing these people so young and angry, and knowing today they'd probably be the same.'' <br>
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Stott said the most chilling photos were those of smiling students, chatting casually as one among them yells at Charlayne Hunter (now Hunter-Gault) and Hamilton Holmes, the first black students at Georgia. <br>
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Then there are the newspaper clippings, in which Hunter and Holmes were described as the ``light-skinned Negroes.'' <br>
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Today, about six percent of the 32,300-member student body at Georgia is black. One student praised the exhibit in the show's comment book, but noted the lingering racial tension: ``We still have a long way to go.''