In September 1966, six local African American women integrated the Mississippi State College for Women. Undergraduate students Diane Hardy, Barbara Turner, and Laverne Greene, and graduate students Jacqueline Edwards, Mary Flowers, and Eula Houser faced isolation and harassment while overturning eighty-two years of segregation at the institution. Edwards became the first Black student to graduate, earning a master's degree in 1968. They paved the way for the education of future generations of African Americans.
