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First Negro to Graduate University of Georgia Marries White Man

Sept. 2, 1963 - The first Negro woman to enter and graduate from the University of Georgia disclosed today she had married a white southern student she met on campus. The couple, who now live in New York, are expecting a baby in December. The woman, Charlayne Hunter, was secretly married last spring to Walter Stovall of Douglas, Ga., while both were attending the university. They declined to give the date or place of the ceremony, but Mr. Stovall said they were married in the North and had “spent our honeymoon on the turnpike.” Mr. Stovall is 25 years old; his wife, 21. She graduated from the university in June, and has been working as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker magazine. At the university, Miss Hunter’s friends took her relationship with Mr. Stovall in stride. “Mine weren’t exactly comradely about it,” Mr. Stovall said. Mr. Stovall is the son of Mr. and Mrs. George Stovall of Douglas, Ga., population 9,000. His father manufactures chicken feed. “This is the end of the world,” his father commented according to Mr. Stovall. The Stovall family still maintains contact with their son, though on a rather strained basis. They refuse to talk about his wife, Mr. Stovall said.

© 2024 by Joe Rubenstein

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