Growing up in Nashville, in the deeply segregated South of the 1940s and 1950s, it was almost a given that Pauline Knight-Ofosu would stay in town and attend Tennessee State University.
Most of her relatives -- except a brother who got a full scholarship to Fisk University, also in Nashville -- had attended TSU, and both schools served as beacons for black achievement.
“When I was growing up, an HBCU was really the most prestigious place for anybody to work in or come out of,” Knight-Ofosu said. “There was a time when our professionals were comprised of teachers, undertakers, people at the post office and maybe people who owned barber and beauty shops. We didn’t have that many people – because of segregation -- who could express their talents the way they could be expressed. But HBCUs were that place.”
Knight-Ofosu 's stay at TSU would prove to be eventful. While her classmates, the Tigerbelles were becoming legends after winning several gold medals in track & field at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, she was risking her life – and her education -- as a Freedom Rider, traversing the South to bring attention to segregated facilities.
On Friday, she and 15 other members of the TSU Freedom Riders – including Atlanta residents William Harbour and Larry Hunter -- will be inducted into the National Black College Hall of Fame.
“It is a heartwarming thing for all of us to be honored by the people who we have admired all of our lives,” said Knight-Ofosu, a retired biologist from the Environmental Protection Agency, who now lives in Rex. “We weren’t doing it for whatever it might bring us. It was hard to watch your mother and father -- who deserved to be treated like citizens – being treated unjustly. That was wrong and if something is going on you don’t like stop complaining and do something.”
The TSU Freedom Riders are being inducted specifically for the contributions they made in college. In 1961 they were at the forefront as early Freedom Riders, along with students from other Nashville colleges like Fisk and Meharry Medical School.
Braving beatings and death, TSU students who were arrested were expelled from school, before suing for re-admission.
“We were thought of as bad people, because we railed against the establishment in a way they had never seen. The sit-ins were one thing, but the Freedom Rides were on a whole different level,” Hunter said. “I am happy about this honor, but the original intent was not to be inducted into a hall of fame. It was to set this country on a path to where it is now -- moving to a society that is not biased towards anyone."
The induction is the highlight of the 26th Annual Hall of Fame Weekend Conference, which shines a spotlight on the history and importance of historically black colleges. Other activities include a lectures, a recruitment fair, a golf tournament, a gospel choir competition and queens pageant.
Other inductees into the hall of fame Friday include:
Two Spelman College graduates and Atlanta residents Pearl Cleage in Arts & Entertainment and Brenda Hill Cole in Law; Lonnie Bartley of Fort Valley State University in Athletics; Johnnie B. Booker of Hampton University in Business; Ruth Crawford of Paine College in Community Service; Henry Tisdale of Claflin College in Education; the Rev. Charles B. Jackson of Benedict College in Faith & Theology; and Henry M. Michaux of North Carolina Central University in Government.
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