duke's first black undergraduate students
By Hadeel Abdelhy
In the fall of 1963, Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke, Mary Mitchell Harris, Gene Kendall, Cassandra Smith Ru and Nathaniel White, Jr. were the first black undergraduates enrolled at Duke, among the last segregated schools in the South.[1] Some trustees opposed their admission, as President Douglas Knight noted. “There were abstentions from the vote, and a good deal of silent unhappiness among alumni and others in the region.”[2] In September 1964, Nigerian student Anthony Oyewole transferred to Duke as a junior, graduating in 1966 as the first black undergraduate to earn his degree from Duke.