The University Cabinet voted unanimously today to recommend that two facilities at the University of Georgia be named for several of the institution’s early African American graduates.
It recommended that the Science Library be named the Shirley Mathis McBay Science Library, in honor of the woman who became the first African American to earn a doctorate from UGA. McBay earned her doctorate in math in 1966 and went on to teach at Spelman College and later became MIT’s dean for student affairs.
The cabinet also recommended that the new student residence hall, rising at the corner of Baxter Street and Cloverhurst Avenue, be named Black-Diallo-Miller Hall, to honor Harold Black, UGA’s first African American male freshman, Mary Diallo, UGA’s first African American student from Athens, and Kerry Miller, the first African American to earn a bachelor’s degree from UGA in math.