Give Me An 'A'!

Gloria West was just 15 years old when her father put her on a train in Chicago and sent her off to get an education at what was then called Moorhead State College.

“It wasn’t my choice,” said West, who now teaches at Lake Forest Academy, an independent prep school outside of Chicago. “I wanted to go to Fisk University, an all-black campus in Nashville. But my dad insisted that I go to this place way up north. I still don’t know how he picked Moorhead State. He never told me.”

Not only was West one of the youngest members of the Dragon freshman class of 1962, she was its only African-American.

“I really didn’t notice,” said West, who became a pom-pom girl, student senator and president of the Pep Club on campus. “Everyone was so nice that color never became an issue.”

She had no idea at the time that she was the first African-American to both enroll and, four years later, to graduate from Moorhead State.

Source: Minnesota Historical Society