Albany State Awards Honorary Degrees to 32 Students Expelled for 1961 Protests: Henri Cohen and Opal Jones were originally set to graduate from Albany State College. Instead, they were among dozens of Black students arrested and ultimately expelled from the school in 1961 for defying the status quo.
The legal charge was disturbing the peace for trying to buy bus tickets at the Whites-only counter. The expulsions were for conduct unbecoming a student.
Fifty years later, and for the first time in Georgia history, the state’s university system bestowed 32 honorary degrees at a single university, what is now called Albany State University, during a single commencement.