After more than 60 years, George Starke Jr. said he can still vividly recall the day he integrated the University of Florida when he entered the law school.

On Sept. 15, 1958, Starke’s cousin dropped him off at the corner of University Avenue and 13th Street, where UF’s law school was at the time. A crowd of 50 reporters with cameras awaited, but Starke found a side entrance to avoid his picture being taken.

“My first impulse was 'don’t sit in the back of the classroom,'" Starke said. "So I sat in the front."

Now 87 and living in Clermont, Starke will be honored by UF as part of its 60-year commemoration of desegregation. On Nov. 7, Starke will travel to Gainesville for a ceremony at Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom at the Levin College of Law. The event will take place from 3-4:30 p.m. and include reflections from current students and alumni. Starke said one of his two children plans to attend, and possibly one of his two grandchildren.

“Basically just overwhelmed,” Starke said of the honor. “It builds a little bit of anxiety, but my relationship with the University of Florida remains strong.”

Starke’s path to attend UF was cleared by Virgil Hawkins, who in 1949 began a court fight to gain admittance to UF’s law school under the constitutional Equal Protection Clause. Between 1948 and 1956, 85 African-American students were denied admittance to UF. Hawkins dropped his case in the Florida Supreme Court in 1958 and withdrew his application in exchange for Starke’s admittance.

Starke had attended Morehouse College in Atlanta as an undergraduate and, after serving in the Air Force, was admitted to law school at Northwestern and Washington University in St. Louis.

“Then I found out that UF was accepting applications,” Starke said. “I applied here and at first there was no response. I wasn’t concerned but when the letter finally came I was excited, I was enthused.”

There were some concerns, though, about how the first African-American student would be received in Gainesville. Starke recalled meeting with UF student body President Jim Glass a few weeks before his first class.

“He said no one knew what to expect; this hasn’t happened in Gainesville,” Starke said. “The day before classes I went to purchase books. I was the only customer there. It had been made by appointment.”

Starke wore a suit to the first day of class, while others around him wore shorts and tee shirts. David Levy, who had been editor of The Alligator, was the first person to greet him and sit down with Starke. The first to befriend him was Fredric Levin, for whom the law school is now named. Starke and Levin developed a friendship that has lasted 60 years. Levin faced discrimination early in his life for being Jewish.

“We just happened to hit it off,” Starke said. “He and I shared similar experiences during the course of our time at Florida. We had difficulty finding a mentor; we were the last two to do so, and the mentor was ostracized for associating with us.”

Levin, now 80 and still practicing law in Pensacola, said the two formed a study group and helped each other get through classes. Often, Levin said, the law faculty and staff at UF made things hard on Starke. One law professor, Levin recalled, failed Starke for being five minutes late to an exam.

"It was rough for him but I think he handled it about as well as he could have, under the circumstances," Levin said.

Starke received a police escort his first few weeks on campus, but said there was no violence, no outward hostility toward him. He knew he had been accepted on the day when he raised a point in class and students began stomping their feet. Back then, if a student raised a good point in class, other students would show their appreciation by stomping.

“It was a good sign,” Starke said. “But in those days, people in the South, there was excitement about what was going on in the Civil Rights Movement. There were no incidents here, but in Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama there were incidents.”

Starke said he never thought about living on campus, instead choosing to live off campus with relatives in the Grove Street neighborhood of Gainesville, near Chestnut Funeral Home. His academic career at UF lasted three semesters. But after dropping out of law school, Starke went on to a successful 40-year career in finance as a mortgage broker, investment banker and energy consultant. Starke said his experience at UF helped shape his professional life.

“I always had something to work towards,” Starke said. “I worked with experts. I think I was disciplined and mature enough to come here with the knowledge of self-sacrifice to accomplish something greater.”

As for being part of UF history, Starke said he was slow to recognize it, but now is open to discussing his experiences. He moved back to Florida 3 1/2 years ago, but retirement didn’t suit him, so he's now back to working part-time as a mortgage energy consultant.

“I realized being retired isn’t all that great,” Starke said.

While UF greatly improved diversity since Starke first enrolled in 1958, recent trends have caused concern about how much progress is being made in racial equity. Last month, according to a USC Race and Equity study on black representation at colleges and universities, UF received an F grade on representation, based on the percentage of African-American students enrolled (6.1 percent) compared to the percentage of population of 18 to 24 year olds African-Americans in the state (21.5 percent).

That inequity, combined with recent events such as allowing white supremacist Richard Spencer to speak on campus and African-American students being bullied off stage by a faculty proctor during last spring's commencement, have caused some African-American students to voice concerns about how welcome they feel on campus.

“Sometimes when you look at statistics, you do wonder the underlying broader situation, the circumstances that are causing it,” Starke said.

Diedre Houchen, a postdoctoral associate for the Center for the Study of Race Relations at UF, keeps in contact with Starke often and is looking forward to him being honored in front of faculty and students. Houchen was the lead exhibit curator for “Black Educators: Florida’s Secret Social Justice Advocates (1920-1960)” which is being presented on the second floor of George A. Smathers Library through Dec. 18. The exhibit examines how black educators in Gainesville and around the state advanced social justice in the four decades before Starke was admitted at UF. Starke’s story is part of the exhibit.

“My goal and my hope is that people will meet George Starke, get to hear from him and recognize how recent our heroes are in the past,” Houchen said. “To encounter them and be inspired with them to continue their own progress going forward.”

Phillip Bernavil, a fifth-year, African-American pre-med student at UF, took a tour of the exhibit at Smathers on Tuesday and was inspired by Starke’s story.

“They teach us a lot about merit and credibility and being a bright, intelligent student,” Bernavil said. “When you look at these people’s resumes, they were probably at the top of their class, hands-down. There was an agenda, there was definitely a prerogative or some kind of idea or there was a goal for preventing them from entering their school. It showed desegregation only worked one way.”