A Legacy Unfolding | News Center
In fact, September 2021 marked 60 years since those students — Ford C. Greene, Ralph A. Long Jr., and Lawrence Williams — became the first Black students to enroll at Georgia Tech. The school was the first public university in the Deep South to integrate peacefully without a court order.
Last year, Dickens joined Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the African American Student Union at the opening of a civil rights memorial in Tech’s EcoCommons, a greenspace built on the site of a former symbol of racial oppression in Atlanta.
“I want Georgia Tech to raise its hand early and often for us and for the community — to make sure they say, ‘Hey, we fit in with you. So come on in and join.’”
To Dickens, that means opening up campus doors to the public, allowing the campus to become available for educational learning, for sports, and for conferences. For Atlanta Public Schools students, he hopes for more after-school programs, weekend programs, and summer camps. And as he continues in his role as mayor, Dickens is optimistic that he’ll build upon the great relationship he already has with the Institute.
“I believe that Tech can do it,” Dickens said. “It started with the inauguration at Bobby Dodd, and it’s going to continue.”
When he visited his alma mater earlier this month, Dickens was surprised to see a banner of himself displayed in front of the building where he spent six years as a student and another six as an employee. He hopes the Black students visiting campus would see a piece of themselves in him and believe whatever they dream up can be made true — whether that’s running for mayor of Atlanta or president of the United States, climbing the ladder to CEO of a company, or bettering their community as a thoughtful engineer.
“You have a mayor now who’s walked those same halls,” he said. “I invite all of you — the Tech alum[ni], all of the faculty and staff — to continue to join forces with the city of Atlanta in the excellent work we’re doing.”
