ATHENS, Ohio

Ohio University says it will honor its first Black journalism graduate by dedicating a new residence hall in his name on Friday.

The late Alvin Adams graduated from the university in 1959 and went on to cover the Civil Rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

Adams wrote for the Chicago Defender, the nation's first and largest daily newspaper serving Blacks. He also worked for Jet magazine, covering Malcolm X's 1965 assassination and interviewing Muhammad Ali and other minority icons.

Adams returned to the Athens area in 1998 and co-founded a nonprofit organization that studies the history of multicultural people in the Ohio River Valley going back to slavery.