Lucile H. Bluford

Lucile Bluford, who led the Kansas City Call newspaper for five decades, tried 11 times to enter the University of Missouri, filing the first of her lawsuits in 1939. The school learned what most of Ms. Bluford’s opponents learned: that she was going to ace any test of wills.

Seven years after graduating from the University of Kansas’ journalism school, she applied to the University of Missouri’s graduate journalism school and was accepted – until school officials saw that she was African American.

By 1941, the state Supreme Court ruled in her favor but the School of Journalism closed its graduate program rather than admit her.

Over the decades, Bluford became a leading voice in the local civil rights movement and helped make The Call one of the most important black newspapers in the nation.

Eventually, the University of Missouri honored her. In 1984, a year after her nephew Guion Bluford became the first black man in space, Ms. Bluford received an Honor Medal for Distinguished Service from Missouri. In 1989, the university gave her an honorary doctorate.

Ms. Bluford accepted the degree for herself, and “for the thousands of black students” the university had wronged over the years.

associated sites

content provided by: