AUGUSTA, GA – Although Augusta State University’s storied history dates back to the late 1700s, it wasn’t until the late 1960s when the first black students arrived on campus.

Unfortunately, while it’s agreed on that a select group of black students were the earliest to matriculate to what was then called Augusta College, mountains of discrepancies exist when trying to determine who was the first black student to register.

School officials and past students alike, however, generally agree that there’s a group of individuals who are considered among the earliest black students to arrive at the Walton Way campus.

People like Eugene Hunt, Ed Polite, Grace Beard Harris, Rose White, Lillie Butler-Johnson, Joe Greene, Charles Walker, Henry Ingram and Terry Elam are typically agreed on as being among the earliest blacks to register at Augusta College.

Helen Hendee, Augusta State University’s vice president of development and alumni relations, also graduated from the campus in 1970. Although her office holds an annual African-American alumni reception each February, she concedes that after several years of attempts, they have yet to determined who is the school’s first black student registrant.

Meanwhile, Eugene Hunt, a former Bank of America corporate executive and Burke County native, claims that he is among the first group of black students to converge on the campus.
Hunt was a football star at Lucy Laney High School and had hopes of attending Paine College or accepting an athletic scholarship from Savannah State College — two historically black institutions.

Ed Polite and his wife at ASU's 2006 commencement

After graduating from Laney in the spring of 1966, Hunt said his mind-set changed.

“I had been noticing how much publicity Augusta College athletes were getting in the newspaper and on TV,” he said. “I was 18 and very impressionable.”

Hunt was so impressed that he chose to study at Augusta College and, in 1971, earned an accounting degree. His college success led to a 29-year, high-level career with Bank of America, ending with his retirement in September 1999.

As an 18-year-old student, Hunt said he didn’t give much thought toward being accepted at Augusta College.

“I had no idea I would be accepted,” he said. “Really, I didn’t think I would be accepted and, when it happened, I was just happy. It really turned out well.”

Although the alumni office could notofficially identify its first black registrants, it has confirmed the school’s first two black graduates as Ed Polite and Grace Beard Harris, both from the class of 1969.

Harris, a long-time Chicago resident, enjoyed a successful career as a senior-level insurance executive with Allstate before retiring in May 2007.

After graduating with honors from Laney in 1965, she spent two years at Spelman College before transferring to Augusta College in January of 1968.

Although no formal policy prohibited blacks from attending the school, Harris is convinced that after the school attained its four-year status in 1963, that’s when the doors symbolically opened for blacks.

She also recalls an instance when aprofessor made his ill intentions quite clear.

“I had a history professor tell me, ‘You may be here, but that doesn’t mean I have to pass you.’ I wasn’t there for a fight, so Isimply dropped the class,” she said. “I was there to get my degree, not fight a system.”

She graduated with a sociology degree in 1969. She has since earned a master’s degree from the University of Phoenix online program, she said.

Ed Polite’s academic route was somewhat different from Harris’ but equally successful.

Growing up in rural Allendale County, S.C., Polite graduated in 1962 from all-black C.V. Bing High before attending historically black South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, S.C. He transferred to Augusta College in 1967 and spent many hours as a working, married man and student.

After graduating with an industrial-business degree in 1969, Polite began what amounted to a 30-plus year corporate career as an executive-level administrator. Initially he worked for Augusta-based Continental Can Company (International Paper) and ended his career in senior-level positions with Culman Brothers, General Cigar Holdings and the Gilbert Packing Company.

Polite, now a retired Los Angeles resident, is a member of Augusta State University’s board of directors, a trustee and was the school’s 2006 commencement speaker. He is also a past winner of the President’s Award, one of ASU’s highest honors.

Polite speaks highly of John C. Bell Jr., a fellow student he befriended when the two studied at Augusta College. Bell is now a successful Augusta-based attorney.

“John was always a good friend in those days,” recalls Polite. “And he still is.”

Although Bell graduated from what was then an all-white Academy of Richmond County high school (1965), he recalls first witnessing black students at Augusta College as a non-event.

“I never felt there was anything unusual going on. We were all just college kids,” said Bell, who admitted it was his first time attending class with blacks. “I remember Ed as a hard-working student. Heck, he spent so much time at work, we really hardly saw him that much.

Then again, we all worked part-time and attended classes. That’s just the way it was in those days.”

“We’re very proud of Ed. He is quite a success story,” added Bell, who also graduated from Augusta College with Polite and Harris in 1969.

Bell’s law duties have included the Augusta circuit while he also travels to other parts of the nation, having earning a law degree from the University of Georgia in 1972.

“Because we didn’t have the fraternities and sororities (at Augusta College), that probably helped us become more of a united student body,” Bell said. “And we all participated in student government.”

While Augusta State’s enrollment totals have consistently hovered between 6,500 and 7,000 students in the past five years, black population figures have also remained constant — around 25 percent, according to Kathy Schofe, ASU’s media relations director.

Grace Beard Harris and granddaughter 

These days, you’ll find Rose White working diligently in her downtown office with the City of Augusta’s Housing and Community Development department.

However, after graduating from all-black Schofield High School in Aiken in 1965, the young coed chose to attend another all-black institution, Vorhees College in Denmark, S.C.

In the fall of 1967, she transferred to Augusta College.

“I really didn’t see much difference in the campuses,” she said. “Then again, I believe some of the students may have thought I was white because of my complexion,” said White, noting her very fair complexion.

She eventually left the school before graduating, got married and became a mother of two and enjoys a long career with Augusta’s city government.

Dr. Lillie Butler-Johnson is an Augusta State treasure. She has been on campus in some capacity for 42 years.

After graduating as valedictorian at Augusta’s T.W. Josey High in 1967, she considered her many options, including Emory University in Atlanta and Paine College.

“My father argued with an Augusta College recruiter who questioned whether I could be admitted to AC,” she recalls. “He was not very encouraging at all.”

Regardless, Butler-Johnson enrolled in Augusta College’s fall class of 1967 and ultimately earned valedictorian status for the class of 1971.

Although she was a product of Augusta’s inner-city Turpin Hill neighborhood, Butler-Johnson said she didn’t feel limited to Paine College or a similar black college experience.

“My father graduated from Paine and I have a special love for that campus, but I just felt like I was destined to attend Augusta College,” she said.

Although she admits losing out on establishing life-long college friendships, overall, she said has no regrets about her college choice.

Butler-Johnson now chairs the English and Foreign Languages Department at Augusta State University. Her husband, Harvey L. Johnson, was one of Augusta’s valued business leaders before his death in 2005.

The late Joe Greene was also one of Augusta State’s early black students and is credited as a co-founder of the school’s Black Student Union, along with former state Sen. Charles Walker, according to Helen Hendee.

Greene was a long-time ASU business professor and civic leader before his death in November 2007 at age 67.

Although the American South, including Augusta, was entrenched in a segregationsociety manifested by Jim Crow laws during the mid-1960s, notably enough, none of ASU’s early black students offer regrets for having chosen to attend Augusta’s largest educational institution. Of equal significance, few of these students offer any reflections of inequities concerning racism.

Lillie Butler-Johnson

Butler-Johnson, however, does recall watching a classroom of 30 dwindle to seven during her first year as a college professor.

“That happened after one day,” she said with a smile, noting that a student once boldly asked her, “So, you’re our English teacher?”

Butler-Johnson now heads that same department.

Socializing did present a challenge at the predominately white campus, Eugene Hunt revealed.

“I spent most of my free time at Paine and often socialized at the Paine campus. I had friends there from high school and I was dating a young lady who was a student there,” he said.

“It was easier to fit in and much more comfortable,” he added, noting that he and a girlfriend were once the only blacks at an ASU basketball game.

Hendee said that although it took many years for the college to integrate, there was never a formal policy that prohibited blacks from becoming students.

ASU recently announced it will receive a grant with hopes of increasing its black male student population.

The $20,000 grant is from Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation with a mission to remove barriers which keep young black males from attending and eventuallygraduating from college.

There still remains a train of thought that historically black colleges, although founded to counteract formal segregation practices, still serve a unique purpose.

While she didn’t follow her family’s footsteps and attend Paine College, Butler-Johnson says black colleges remain a valued and needed entity in America’s educational system.

“I think it would not be positive for cultural groups not to have schools of higher learning — to meet different roles — such as leadership training,” she said. “Our nation is large enough and diverse enough to have institutional options for education.”