In October 1962, my parents filed a federal law suit against the State of Virginia to win admission for my oldest sister, Hazel Ruth Adams Hairston, into the Patrick Henry Community College Campus of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.

I was four years old. The youngest of seven children. I could not read. But I could watch TV. Seeing my big sister on TV made me know she was either a movie star or she was in BIG trouble. Years later, I learned it was a little of both.

It was October 1962 in rural southwestern Virginia (Cascade 24069). The headlines in the local papers and AP read "Negro Girl Enrolled at Virginia College", Negro Girl Integrates Area College". The articles went on to say "... the first of her race to break the classroom color barrier in the staunchly segregationist Southside Virginia". Another article accused her of "... breaching the color of the classrooms of Virginia".

The Negro girl was the daughter of the late Richard and Rebecca Adams. The Negro girl was seventeen (17) years old, weighing just 90 pounds and about to take on the age-old giant of racism. The Negro girl was, and is, my oldest sister, the second of seven children, Hazel Ruth Adams Hairston.

All she wanted to do was go to college—the one she passed by several times each week on her way to church, to work, or to just visit her friends in Martinsville, VA (24112). She applied for admission to Patrick Henry Community College, the local branch of the prestigious University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Her application was to become a student. Her application was the first of its "kind." She was a Negro. She was denied.

There were letters of support, letters of hate and even threatening telephone calls referring to her as, as the old folks used to say, "every name under the sun, except a child of God". Many of those terms have now unfortunately become adjectives commonly used by some musical entertainers and well known, recently fired, media personalities.

Letters of support came from as far as Africa, and letters of hate came from as near as our same zip code. One letter arrived from a Mr. J.A.A. Ahomaning, Mounted Squadron Office, Ghana Police, and read, in part "...I was very pleased when I read in local papers here that you have been admitted. I hope your admission will open ways of which we in Ghana also wish...."

The denied application was unacceptable to my parents and my sister. They were peaceful, but persistent. And, it was not until they and their lawyer, the late Lawyer Jerry L. Williams, Sr. and his constituents of Danville, Virginia 24541, filed a Federal Law suit against the University (Adams v. State of Virginia), did the University accept her application (having previously cited some technical deadlines being missed). The newspaper acknowledges "... Shermon Dutton, director, kept his office open in order to register Miss Adams, who won admission to the all-white college in a federal court suit ...."

My sister, now a retired executive from the Fieldcrest and Karastan Textile Mills, Inc. of Eden, North Carolina 27288, drove alone in my fathers 1959 Ford Galaxy 500 to her first day of class. She walked alone through the front door as local police and news media overtly monitored the situation. They were unaware that my father and his supporters covertly monitored the situation from nearby the campus, appropriately "prepared" to maintain her safety. Our father was a lawful citizen, a building contractor, a preacher and a patient man, but protecting his daughter against the racist threats superceded all other priorities on this day.

In October 1962, weeks after classes had officially started, Hazel sat alone in an all-white classroom, in an all-white college. Today, although "covert entry technicalities" still exist, people of color, women of color, sit freely in colleges and universities as students, faculty, and staff, surrounded by diverse classmates. There were a few "firsts" in the civil rights movement. I am proud that my sister was among those few who fought to become a first, opening the doors for others to follow.

Indeed, she was not a movie star, but she was in BIG trouble. Trouble started by segregated admissions policies, and trouble ended through patient, persistent, and peaceful civil rights activism. She was not a movie star. She was my BIG sister.