Clarke Central High School students gather on the University of Georgia campus prior to hearing UGA pioneer and journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault address the crowd at the UGA Chapel on Feb. 15. Hunter-Gault’s lecture was part of the Holmes-Hunter Lecture series and covered a variety of topics, ranging from diversity to the current American political climate. “You could tell she was a very humble person. I always that of her as this big celebrity cause she has accomplished so many great things and has been on TV and all that (…) but she was just such a kind, wholesome woman,” Clarke Central High School junior Amy Kamagate said. Photos by Hannah Gale
Clarke Central High School students attend a lecture by University of Georgia pioneer and journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who was one of the first Black students to attend UGA.
On Feb. 15, students from the Gifted Minorities Achieving group and the ODYSSEY Media Group attended the Hunter-Holmes signature lecture at the University of Georgia Chapel.
This year’s keynote speaker was journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of the first two Black students to attend UGA, who has since gone on to build a successful career in both print and broadcast journalism.
“I think having the annual tradition of the lecture is an important sort of legacy of the university, but I think when times are more charged in the national conversation, it becomes an opportunity to comment on that or to shift the conversation,” Clarke Central High School counselor Heidi Nibbelink, a chaperone on the field trip, said. “It sort of just places the events at UGA in the context of a bigger story in our country.”
Prior to the lecture, students in attendance were given a presentation on journalistic opportunities and the Peabody Awards in the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Library, as well as given the opportunity to view a collection of documents focusing on the desegregation of UGA.
“My group had documents from her high school years like a yearbook, a photo of her from when she was a teenager, and another photo of her that was signed by friends and teachers. She was a really popular girl,” Kamagate said. “Another group’s documents that interested me was the group that had the letters from her to her in-laws. I never knew she was with a white man. From the letters we saw that at first, they weren’t really that close — I mean, people were very racist and interracial marriage was illegal. But, it seems like she kind of changed their hearts in the end because some later letters had different rhetoric — like, she called them mom and dad, and it was just very comfortable.”
Nibbelink agrees that the portion of the trip in the Special Collections Library was a particularly enlightening experience.
“The most meaningful part of that whole field trip was being in the special collections library and getting to see those actual documents that Charlayne Hunter had written, and watch a little bit of the footage of the day that they were there, and recognizing the Athens that we know on the screen,” Nibbelink said. “It just made it more real. That really happened, and it really wasn’t that long ago, and it was right here where we are every day.”
For Kamagate, who attended the 2017 Holmes-Hunter signature lecture featuring keynote speaker and Marta CEO Keith Parker, the experience defied her expectations.
“I expected Mrs. Hunter to talk more about herself and her last few experiences, but she didn’t,” Kamagate said. “She talked a lot about the youth and how important we are, and she talked about Twitter and Donald Trump and all these different things, but in the end it all kind of related back to her in a way (that) also related to us as young people.”
Click here to read a blog about the Hunter-Holme’s lecture from Senior Copy Editor Jordan Rhym.
