On January 9, 1961, mobs of white students yelled racial slurs and hung in effigy Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes after they became the first Black students to integrate the University of Georgia. Their enrollment came days after federal judge William Bootle ordered the university to admit them, ending a two-year administrative and legal fight to integrate the school.

In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Georgia legislature passed a law establishing that funds would be cut off from any school that integrated. Gov. Ernest Vandiver promised that “not one, no, not one” Black person would ever attend classes with white students in Georgia. The University of Georgia put forth numerous excuses, including that the dorms were too crowded, to repeatedly deny admission to Mr. Holmes and Ms. Hunter, who were exceptional students. By the time Judge Bootle ordered the university to integrate, nearly seven years had passed since the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in schools.

When Ms. Hunter and Mr. Holmes arrived to register for classes on January 9, they were met by some 1,000 white students who yelled racial slurs, hung in effigy Ms. Hunter and Mr. Holmes, and marched through downtown Athens carrying a Confederate flag in protest of integration. The next night, a group rioted outside of Ms. Hunter’s dorm. On the third night, law students organized a riot outside Ms. Hunter’s dorm that grew to include nearly 2,000 white students, local residents, and Ku Klux Klan members. The rioters set fires, hurled bricks and bottles through Ms. Hunter’s dorm window, and yelled racist epithets. At least one student in the dormitory was injured by a flying object. After several hours, campus officers, city police, and local firefighters quelled the riot.

School officials took no steps to discipline the many white students from the university who violently rioted. Instead, they suspended Ms. Hunter and Mr. Holmes, and Georgia state troopers escorted the pair off campus. The white students received encouragement from the governor’s office, as the governor’s executive secretary issued a statement lauding “the character and courage” of the rioters.

Days later, Judge Bootle ordered the university to readmit Ms. Hunter and Mr. Holmes. They both completed their studies in 1963, becoming the first Black undergraduate students to graduate from the University of Georgia.

Learn more about this day in an interview with Ms. Hunter (now Hunter-Gault) on NPR.