Civil rights protesters expelled from college 58 years ago get long-awaited apology

Deborah Barfield Berry | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Joseph Peterson knew there were risks when he and other students at Alabama State College went to protest against the whites-only lunch counter in the basement of the Montgomery County courthouse in 1960. They went anyway.

Lights were shut off. The cafeteria was closed. Police then forced the protesters outside, where they were lined up and their pictures taken.

It was what happened back on campus that surprised and disappointed Peterson. He was expelled. To this day, the 83-year-old has no regrets.

“It was time for America to change,” recalled Peterson, who lives in Birmingham. “You have to take a stand for something.”

Earlier this month — and 58 years later — the Alabama State Board of Education cleared the records of Peterson and eight other students who were expelled as well as those of faculty members who were fired for their civil rights activities. The head of the board called the state actions “unjustified and unfair."

“It was a long time coming,” said James McFadden, 78, one of the expelled students.

He said other states should “absolutely” follow Alabama’s lead.

“If you’re wrong … you should try to do something about it,” said McFadden, who now lives in Philadelphia. “That’s why I think Alabama should do it and every other state, city and county should do the same thing for every form of injustice that they have done."

McFadden, Peterson and other students expelled from Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) in Montgomery were not alone.

Across the South during the 1960s and early 1970s, other African-American students at historically blacks colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other institutions were kicked out of school for participating in civil rights demonstrations. Many civil rights activists, including the movement's leaders, were students at HBCUs.

Dorie Ladner said she and her sister, Joyce, were threatened with expulsion from Jackson State College in 1961 if they marched with Tougaloo College students trying to integrate a library in downtown Jackson, Miss. They marched anyway.

The sisters left Jackson State and enrolled at Tougaloo, which served as a civil rights base for students and activists from outside the state. “I knew that if I came back I would not be welcomed,” said the 75-year-old native of Hattiesburg, Miss.

Derryn Moten, chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at Alabama State University, said it’s not too late to apologize to civil rights veterans.

“These guys need to see and hear justice,” said Moten, who spearheaded the effort to clear the records of the ASU students. “These students were accused of being insubordinate. These students were accused of being disloyal to the state and disloyal to the Alabama State College. They were also accused of being unfit for a future teacher of Alabama, and all of that was a lie."

Earlier this month, Ed Richardson, then the interim state superintendent of education, expunged the records of the nine students expelled in 1960 for their participation in lunch counter sit-in. The records of several faculty members were also expunged.

“They represent a time in the history of the State Board that must be acknowledged and never repeated…," Richardson wrote in a May 10 letter to ASU President Quinton Ross. “I regret that it has taken 58 years to correct this injustice. I can only hope that this action will provide a modicum of comfort to the people affected."

Ross praised the move, noting the university played a key role in the civil rights movement.

He called the students who joined the sit-in "national heroes who deserved to have their records expunged."

It was in 1960 that John Patterson, who, as the state's governor, was part of the State Board of Education, told Alabama State College President H. Councill Trenholm to expel the students for insubordination and “conduct prejudicial to the school and for conduct unbecoming a student or future teacher’’ in Alabama schools, Richardson wrote.

Other students expelled included St. John Dixon, Bernard Lee, Edward E. Jones, Leon Rice, Howard Shipman, Elroy Emory and Marzette Watts. Twenty other students were put on probation.

Later that year, Patterson also fired several faculty members, including Lawrence D. Reddick, then chairman of the college's History Department.

Rickey Hill, chairman of the political science department at Mississippi's Jackson State University, said it’s only right that Alabama education officials and their peers in other states apologize for "bad decisions."

“Those protests were very much a part of the larger civil rights struggle,'' he said. "Students ... were kicked out because they were opposing racial segregation and racial domination.”

In some cases, college presidents acted on their own, Hill said, but in many cases they were pressured by state officials to expel students and even to call police to quell protests.

Hill and others noted that many historically black colleges, however, supported civil rights activities.

Hill himself was arrested and expelled from Southern University in Louisiana in 1972 for helping lead a protest on campus. He was banned for decades from returning to campus. Hill, then a junior, later finished school at Fisk University in Tennessee.

In 2011, he was invited back to be a speaker along with other civil rights veterans.

Hill said Southern has offered degrees to some students who were expelled and there’s now a monument on campus for two students who were shot and killed by police in the 1972 protest.

Still, he said, more schools should step up and do the same.

“It is never too late,” he said.

Alabama State University awarded Peterson, McFadden and Dixon, the known surviving students from the 1960 expulsion, honorary degrees in May 2010.

A federal lawsuit filed by six of the expelled students became a landmark case — Dixon v. Alabama — in which the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded in 1961 that public schools and universities must give students due process before they are disciplined or expelled.

Moten said the case set a precedent, adding that none of the ASU students or faculty had a fair shake.

“What happened to these individuals, these students and the faculty, in my mind, is a crime," he said.

McFadden said he accepts the board’s apology, but said it would be "another injustice" for the state to erase all the records, including its role in the wrongful expulsions.

“I appreciate the efforts from the state and the board of education, but I’m still suspicious," said McFadden, a native of Prichard, Ala. “I want the record to show what the state has done. I don’t want history destroyed.”

In the months and years following their expulsions, Peterson and McFadden continued to work on civil rights issues in Montgomery and other places.

“I wanted to be a soldier on the battlefield,” said McFadden, who graduated from West Chester University outside Philadelphia and now travels the country talking about his role as a civil rights veteran. “I’m more committed now and I’m more convinced that I was right than ever before.”

Peterson went on to work for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in New York and eventually graduated from New York University. One of his grandsons recently got his master's degree in accounting from ASU.

Peterson said he appreciates the honorary degree and the apology, even though they came late in life. But he’s concerned some issues he and others fought for are still concerns.

“You never get off the battlefield,” he said.

More: Lawmakers push to make civil rights landmarks national monuments

More: 1968: Nashville, civil rights and the 'destiny of dissent'

More: MLK daughter 'emotional' about new exhibit at National Civil Rights Museum