The board of trustees at Alabama State University has voted to rename its graduate school in honor of Harold Lloyd Murphy. The Harold Lloyd Murphy Graduate School was named after the presiding judge in the historic desegregation case Knight v. Alabama.
In 1991, Judge Murphy of the U.S. District Court, issued a 840-page decision that ruled that historically Black Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University suffered from vestiges of racial segregation and that the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution required that the state correct the situation.
The decision resulted in an expansion of academic programs at Alabama State, including the establishment of the university’s graduate school.
