Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker made history in 1963 when she was one of two Black women to enroll at Florida State University, marking the school’s first enrollment of African-American women.
Two years later in 1965, Fred Flowers became the school’s first Black athlete as a member of FSU’s baseball team. He was also one of the first members of a Black fraternity on campus. Flowers’ sister, Doby, was one of the school’s first Black students to participate in a homecoming parade, the first member of a Black sorority and became in 1970 the first Black woman to be voted homecoming queen.
These and other firsts were celebrated Thursday and will continue today and tomorrow during Florida State’s 50th anniversary of racial integration. The school is partnering with the Tallahassee community on events to commemorate the anniversary.
On Thursday, celebrants were scheduled to form a 1,500-person human chain labeled “Hand in Hand Across Time” on the campus to honor the Flowers siblings and Maxwell Courtney, the school’s first Black student in 1962. Courtney was killed in a boating crash in 1975.
Today, Fred Flowers will be honored when the Florida State baseball team hosts the University of Miami. A graduation reception will also be held to honor minority students. And on Saturday, renowned poet and author Maya Angelou will speak at the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center to commemorate FSU’s integration anniversary. This event is free and open to the public with 5,000 seats available.
Dupont-Walker’s experience at Florida State was academically fulfilling, but was also isolated, with only four Black students on the all-White campus she said was known as “crackers paradise.”
“[White] people would spit in places we would sit. The [Black] custodial staff would clean it up before we sat down. It was not the college experience most of us look forward to,” Dupont-Walker, 66, said during an interview with Diverse, who graduated in less than three years from FSU in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in social welfare, becoming the school’s first Black female graduate.
