February 02, 2018 - 9:40 AM
COLUMBIA, Mo. - The University of Missouri is naming a new residence hall after a late journalist who was repeatedly denied admission to the school starting in the 1930s because she was black.
The Board of Curators unanimously voted Thursday to honour Lucile Bluford by bestowing her name on the 279-student dorm at the Columbia campus. The board also voted to name the hall's atrium after Gus Ridgel, the university's first black graduate.
Bluford was denied admission to the university's journalism school 11 times. Five decades after her first application, the university granted her an honorary doctorate degree in humanities in 1989.
Bluford spent decades working at the Kansas City Call newspaper before her death in 2003.
Ridgel received a master's degree in economics from the school in 1951. The 91-year-old taught, researched and worked as an administrator at the university level. He says the board's decision is "humbling."
News from © The Associated Press, 2018