Auburn University officials, students and the families of some of the school’s first Black groundbreakers gathered on campus this week to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Auburn’s integration and its first Black student, Harold A. Franklin.
“It is so fitting that we gather today at the very location where the late Dr. Harold Franklin literally took the first steps toward integration at Auburn 60 years ago,” said Quentin Riggins, an Auburn alumnus and president pro tempore of the Auburn Board of Trustees, according to a statement from the university.
“It was inside the Ralph Brown Draughon Library right behind me where everything started, and it is quite a surreal moment to stand in this spot and realize all that has occurred since that important day on Jan. 4, 1964.”
Franklin, a native of Talladega, was a 31-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran when he enrolled in graduate school at Auburn.
He was not allowed to defend his thesis, a wrong the university said it corrected decades later. In 2001, Auburn honored Franklin with an honorary doctor of arts degree.
After leaving Auburn in the late 1960s, he pursued and was awarded a master’s degree from the University of Denver, and later had a teaching career that included Alabama State University, Tuskegee Institute and Talladega College.
Auburn recognized Franklin’s courage with a bronze plaque and courtyard next to the library in 2021, the same year he died.
Among the guests at the event Tuesday were the families of Franklin and two other Auburn trailblazers, Jossetta Brittain Matthews, the first Black person to receive a graduate degree from Auburn, and James Owens, the university’s first Black football player.
“Auburn is a better institution for Harold Franklin’s bravery,” said Taffye Benson, vice president and associate provost for the Office of Inclusion and Diversity at Auburn University.
Auburn University Trustee Elizabeth Huntley noted that Franklin embodied what it means to be an Auburn student, and said “his legacy is one firmly rooted in doing the right thing and, in turn, creating opportunity for others.”