The University of Missouri is naming the newest residence hall on the Columbia campus after a prominent late black journalist once denied admission there.
The Board of Curators voted unanimously Thursday to name the 279-student dorm after Lucile Bluford. The hall's atrium will honor Gus Ridgel, the university's first African-American graduate.
Bluford was denied admission to the university's journalism school 11 times because of her race. In 1989, five decades after Bluford's first application, the university granted her an honorary doctorate degree in humanities. She spent decades working at the Kansas City Call newspaper before her death in 2003.
Ridgel received a master's degree from MU in economics in 1951. He taught, researched and worked as an administrator at the university level. The 91-year-old Ridgel described the naming as "humbling."
