game between Georgia and Georgia Tech (Georgia lost in overtime, 89–80). Sports reporter Jim Minter, later to become editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was on campus covering the game. Years later he wrote about the evening in a newspaper column: “I walked out of the gymnasium into rioting. Rocks were thrown, torches burned, threats shouted. The dean of students was hit in the head by a brick.” Minter recalled that eighteen students left the university following the incident; some were expelled, others just refused to attend school with blacks.
Holmes and Hunter were escorted back to Atlanta by state troopers. Dean of Students J. A. Williams told them he was suspending them “in the interest of your personal safety and the welfare of more than seven thousand other students at the University of Georgia.” More than four hundred faculty members signed a petition protesting the removal of Hunter and Holmes and calling for their return. A few days later, the pair did return, under the protection of a court order. Still, there was talk of closing the university. In 1956, the Georgia legislature had passed a resolution that forbade integration of schools and threatened the funding of any schools that did desegregate. However, Governor Ernest Vandiver, himself a Georgia graduate, kept the university from closing.
Hunter and Holmes graduated in 1963 (both had already gained some college credits elsewhere while their lawsuit was pending). Holmes had earned cum laude distinction and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to receive a medical degree from Emory University and became an orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta. Hunter-Gault became a distinguished journalist, first in newspapers and later with PBS and CNN, winning two Emmys and two Peabodys. In 1988, she returned to the University of Georgia as the school’s first black commencement speaker. Horace Ward was later appointed a U.S. district judge and presided over the 1986 Jan Kemp lawsuit (see Chapter 6). The University gave Donald Hollowell an honorary degree in 2002 in recognition of his legal battles on behalf of Hamilton and Hunter-Gault.
The generations of white Georgia alumni may have gotten over their resentment of integration more easily than they have accepted the loss of legacy admission entitlement for their children and grandchildren. The roots of this particular change can be traced to the 1990 gubernatorial campaign. Long-time Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller was seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor against four other candidates. Lottery fever was sweeping the nation but few Southern states had taken the plunge into state-sanctioned gambling. Many state politicians felt Georgia voters were too conservative and too “Baptist” to approve a lottery. But Miller was watching the caravans of Georgians streaming into Florida every week to play the numbers. Where other candidates saw danger, Miller saw opportunity.
An astute observer of all human condition except his own, Miller had been Georgia’s lieutenant governor for sixteen years. His habit of taking multiple positions on every major issue had earned him the nickname “Zig-Zag Zell.” Miller was not the favorite in a primary field that included Andrew Young and State Senator Roy Barnes. Young was popular and a civil rights legend, former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., former congressman, former ambassador, and two-term former mayor of Atlanta. Barnes, considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, had the strong backing of the politically powerful Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy, an arch-enemy of the lottery and Zell Miller.
Miller had cut his teeth in the executive branch as the chief of staff for segregationist Governor Lester Maddox, he of ax-handle and backwards-bicycle-riding fame. After the Georgia House of Representatives bottled up legislation to put the lottery issue on the ballot in 1990, Miller vowed to make it the central issue of his campaign. Miller had seen politically unknown Kentucky businessman Wallace Wilkinson ride the lottery issue into the governor’s office in that state three years earlier. Wilkinson’s campaign manager, James Carville, the “Ragin’ Cajun” who would head Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, signed on as Miller’s campaign manager.
Miller won 41 percent of the vote in the five-man primary and defeated Young in the runoff. Young had also supported a lottery but Miller had established himself as the lottery candidate. Miller then defeated the Republican nominee, State Senator Johnny Isakson, by 100,000 votes in the November general election.
Miller’s election was seen as a mandate to create a state lottery for education and he quickly drove a proposed constitutional amendment through the General Assembly. Georgia voters approved it in 1992. The lottery proceeds were earmarked for pre-kindergarten, technology, and, most importantly, the HOPE Scholarship Program which pays the full tuition for any Georgia high school student who graduates with at least a “B” average in a core curriculum. Since its inception in 1993, the HOPE scholarships have paid more than $4 billion to students in tuition, books, and fees.
Many of Georgia’s best and brightest students who once routinely left the state to attend other acclaimed universities are now staying home to take advantage of free tuition. Nearly 80 percent of the freshmen who enrolled at the University of Georgia in the fall of 2007 were from Georgia and 99 percent had received HOPE scholarships; they also had an average SAT score of 1233.
This rising tide of high-scoring students had unintended consequences for some of Georgia’s most loyal alumni. Many among the generations of Georgians who have followed one another to Athens over recent decades have done so using so-called “legacy” points awarded to the sons and daughters of Georgia alumni. In some cases, those points meant the difference between admission and rejection.
Former Governor Roy Barnes, himself a UGA graduate, acknowledged that many Georgians view attending the state’s flagship university as a birthright. And when their sons and daughters began being turned away, it ruffled feathers. “Some of these folks on the [University of Georgia] Foundation have been big givers,” Barnes said. “Now a lot of their children can’t get in the university and they blame [school officials]. I hear that all the time: ‘I’ve been giving to the university and four generations have gone there and now my kid can’t get in.’”
The University of Georgia is a top-tier state university. Its sixteen schools and colleges offer twenty-two baccalaureate degrees in 140 fields, thirty master’s degrees in 124 fields, and four doctoral degrees in 87 fields. And Georgia is a financial bargain. U.S. News and World Report has ranked UGA as high as seventh among public universities on its “Great Schools, Great Prices” list, which relates a school’s academic quality to the cost of attending. Kiplinger’s magazine has ranked UGA tenth on its list of best values among public colleges and universities based on academic quality, cost, and financial aid. The Princeton Review’s “Best Academic Bang for Your Buck” has ranked UGA ninth among 345 public and private colleges. And because nearly all in-state first-year students come to Georgia on the HOPE scholarship, the university has been ranked by Money magazine as one of nine “unbeatable deals” nationwide where students can attend college tuition-free.
Princeton Review, by the way, has also ranked the university twelfth among the nation’s best party schools, but if parties and academics aren’t enough, Georgia has one of the most storied athletic programs in the country. The university fields competitive NCAA teams in basketball, track, swimming, gymnastics, baseball, and other sports, though football dominates. On a typical Saturday afternoon each fall more than ninety thousand crazed red-and-black-clad loyalists pour into Sanford Stadium to watch their Dawgs do battle, as they say, “between the hedges.” Thousands more tailgate outside the stadium or tune into the radio broadcasts where for decades they listened to the legendary voice of the Bulldogs, Larry Munson. Georgia played its first football game in 1892, beating Mercer University 50–0. A month later UGA and Alabama Polytechnic Institute, better known today as Auburn University, met for the first time in what has become the Deep South’s oldest football rivalry. UGA won that game 10–0. In 115 seasons, the Bulldogs have an overall record of 713–381 with 34 ties. The football team has won five national championships, and 1982 Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker no doubt could have gotten even the votes of geriatric woolhat segregationists if he had announced for governor after leading the Bulldogs to a 32-3 record in his three varsity years.
And Georgia has
