While delivering his opening remarks to the congregation of Friendship Baptist Church in Yorba Linda, Cal State Fullerton President Ronald Rochon showed an image of George W. McLaurin, a Black man who was denied entry to the law school at the University of Oklahoma because of his race.
After a federal court ruling, McLaurin was ultimately admitted to the university, but as the 1948 image showed, he was forced to sit outside the classroom so the white students wouldn’t have to see him.