Desegregation: Trial Re-enactment

For about an hour in the Hatton Lovejoy Courtroom, it was once again Jan. 6, 1961 and Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes were once again fighting for admission into the University of Georgia.

On Feb. 25, the Davenport-Benham Black Law Students Association and the UGA school of law performed a reenactment of the fateful trial that eventually lead to the admission of UGA’s first black students: Hunter and Holmes.

After the fictitious Judge Bootle, played by Ronald L. Carlson (Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law Emeritus), welcomed the audience to the year 1961 with some historical background, the “trial” began.

The actors were accurately dressed in 60s garb and performed their roles quite well, considering all of the participants were law students.

There was a general shudder amongst the spectators when the word “negro” made its first appearance in the dialogue, but after that, the rest of the “trial” carried on smoothly.

All of the members involved in the reenactment have been working on this project for quite a while. “We came up with the idea for the event last semester and it’s kind of been rolling from fall until now,” said Sherida Jones, who portrayed Hunter in the “trial.”

They somehow managed to cram the original trial, which was four and a half days long, into just under an hour.

“To do it with the punch and conciseness that we did, we had to take a lot of the testimony out,” said Carlson. “This is the first time that anyone has gone to the original trial records in the case and extracted testimony.”

When the trial reenactment concluded, there was a panel discussion featuring some distinguished UGA graduates, a reporter from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Horace T. Ward.

Ward, who was denied admission to UGA’s law school in 1950, played a crucial role in the university’s desegregation.

He reflected on his memories from the trial and said that the whole process was “very tense.”

In 1961, after the actual trial was over, the judge ordered that both students be admitted right at that instant. Ward said, “I was a little afraid for Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes to come down here so quickly.”

Other various members of the panel also offered recollections of their past experiences involving desegregation and discussed about the racial issues that are still going on today.

The general consensus of the discussions as well as the event itself can best be summed up with a quote from Ward. "Things are looking up, but there is still a lot to be done."