This is old Magnolia Hall, sitting on what is today Magnolia Avenue, and then Magnolia Street. Magnolia had a twin, Noble Hall, which was just to the left of the photograph's margin. All of this area is clearly undergoing a lot of construction work in 1952, but both Magnolia and Noble are gone now.

Magnolia Hall is the site of the Lowder Business Building. Not sure what the white building in the corner is, it is also long since gone. Noble was razed a few years after I left Auburn, indeed students lived in what was a condemned facility in it's last year of existence. The stories they can tell.

Not condemned, but Magnolia was a crowded place. This is one of the lounges, and they really packed in there for a rousing game of checkers.

A little more than a decade from this time Magnolia would be where the first African-American student would be housed. Harold Franklin enrolled at Auburn in 1964 before ultimately graduating at Alabama State and the University of Denver. He was given a whole wing of Magnolia to himself. A few other black students would soon follow; Samuel L. Pettijohn became Auburn's first African-American graduate. He and six other young African-American students were given rooms in an isolated Magnolia, but he would say that his experience at Auburn was otherwise "without incident."

During my time as a student minority enrolled reached six percent, the numbers in 2005 stood at >11.5 percent, with efforts to increase minority numbers on campus.

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