MARTIN Tenn. — Jessie Pryor remembers the isolation of being the first Black student to enroll at the University of Tennessee Martin.
In a ceremony on Thursday marking 50 years of integration, Pryor recalled her first day of class in 1961, when she was just 16 years old.
“It wasn’t welcoming,” Pryor said. “I sat in the second row to the front and when the other students walked in, they didn’t sit. They stood against the wall around the perimeter. When the professor walked in, he said ‘I’ve been hired to teach, and I don’t care if I teach one student or 100 students.’ ”
After that, the other students sat down, but they left the desks around Pryor empty, according to The Jackson Sun (https://bit.ly/pD23qG).
The anecdote made the contrast with Thursday’s scene all the more impressive.
“I was the only one in 1961 and to stand here now among 1,000 Black students is humbling,” she said. “It was (a) lonely year by myself.”
Pryor, who now lives outside of Washington, D.C., majored in education and played the piano and sang while at UT Martin. She graduated in 1965.
