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WHEREAS, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People soon brought an action for a declaratory judgment to require
the University to admit Lyman Johnson, a Louisville school teacher,
to its Graduate School to pursue a program for a Ph.D. in history.
This case was heard in federal court before Judge H. Church Ford in
Lexington on June 25, 1949. Judge Ford promptly decided that the
"Day Law" violated the guarantees of equal protection of law under
the United States Constitution and ordered the University to admit
all black students who were otherwise qualified to graduate and
professional courses at the University of Kentucky, and

WHEREAS, John Wesley Hatch thereupon entered his third semester of
law studies at Lafferty Hall on the University's campus in
Lexington with his classmates of the Class of 1952. He was made
welcome by faculty and students alike.

THEREFORE, today the Board salutes Dr. John Wesley Hatch for his
important role in the termination of racial segregation in higher
education in Kentucky. It was his dream, his determination, and
his courage as a young student which emboldened the Board of
Trustees to arrange his admission in 1948, as the first black
student in the eighty-three years since the University's founding
in 1865, and

WHEREAS, John Wesley Hatch's unique experience as a solo student
throughout his first year of law school, his shift from a faculty
of touring professors in his first semester to a faculty of
Frankfort practitioners in his second semester, the loss of the
give and take of his law school classmates, the law school library,
and adequate study facilities in Lafferty Hall inevitably
negatively impacted his education. The Board applauds John Wesley
Hatch for his admirable patience, fortitude, and good will in what
must have been a very trying year, and

WHEREAS, John Wesley Hatch left the University in 1950 to enter the
United States Army during the Korean War. After his discharge, he
proceeded to finish his A.B. degree at Knoxville College, his M.A.
from Atlanta University and his Ph.D. degree from the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a Professor of Health
Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the past twenty
years, currently holding the William R. Kenan Chair in Health
Behavior. He has co-authored eight books and eighteen articles,
and made over a hundred presentations in his chosen field. He has
been involved in governmental hearings and consultations throughout
the United States and around the world during the past twenty years.

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Board expresses its great
admiration for Dr. Hatch's extraordinary contributions in his
chosen field of Public Health. He will always be remembered as the
young man whose initiative and courage first desegregated this
University by spending three semesters in 1948-50 as a student at
the University of Kentucky College of Law.



Dr. Plattner seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously.