Desegregation at Wofford - Part 3

While commendations and condemnations continued to arrive in the daily mail throughout the summer of 1964, the Marsh administration moved forward with plans to admit Wofford’s first African-American student.

President Marsh informed the trustees that the college had received inquiries from two seniors at Spartanburg’s Carver High School on the day the Board voted to expand the admissions policy. These inquiries came before the public announcement of the policy change, but acting under Marsh’s direction, Registrar and Admissions Director Bates Scoggins sent the students an application packet. A few days later, three more inquiries from Carver students arrived and were handled the same way. After the public announcement, three students from another Spartanburg County high school visited the admissions office and were given application materials.

As of June 3, only one student of the eight had actually submitted an application, a student at Carver High School. He had good recommendations and high class rank, according to Marsh, and when his file was complete, the admissions committee would make a decision. Marsh believed it was likely that the committee would find him eligible for admission.

The committee did find him eligible, and in September 1964, Albert Gray of Spartanburg enrolled, becoming Wofford’s first African-American student. The AP wire story read as follows:

“Spartanburg, SC, Sept. 8 (AP).—Albert Gray, 18, of Spartanburg, became Wofford College’s first Negro student yesterday.
“He enrolled at the Methodist school as a freshman. He will major in sociology.
“Young Gray finished third in his class atCarver High School here. His father is a construction worker at the World’s Fair in New York.
“‘I made the decision to enter Wofford myself,’ the student told newsmen. He called the school ‘a wonderful college’ and said he was not influenced to register by any group.”

Gray’s enrollment at Wofford was interrupted by a summons from the Army to serve in Vietnam. Though he had failed to pass a physical when he applied for ROTC, he passed it when he was later drafted. After he returned from Vietnam, he came back to Wofford and finished his degree in 1971. After becoming a successful businessman in Spartanburg, Mr. Gray joined the Wofford Board of Trustees.

In a 1992 interview in the Old Gold and Black, Mr. Gray attributed his decision to enroll at Wofford as a “mixture of necessity and youthful naiveté.” “You had to be rather naïve to do what I did. I didn’t have any fear.”

The next fall, freshman Douglas L. Jones enrolled as the college’s second African-American student. At Wofford, he wrote in the Old Gold and Black, was in the Baptist Student Union, ROTC, and Hyperopics. He lived on campus as a freshman, but lived off campus after that. He started off as a math major but was inspired, he later explained, by Professor Dan Olds to add a physics major as well. He graduated in 1969, becoming the college’s first black graduate. He went on to graduate school at USC, and pursued an engineering career. He works for Michelin as a customer engineering support manager. Two of his children are also Wofford alums.

Pictures: Albert Gray as a first year student; Doug Jones, President Joe Lesesne, and Albert Gray in 1999, on the 35^th anniversary of Gray’s enrollment and the 30^th anniversary of Jones’ graduation. Also, President Charles Marsh’s letter to the campus announcing Gray’s enrollment.