The Image

In 1961, Charlayne Hunter became the first Negro girl ever to enter the University of Georgia. Last June, she became the first Negro girl to graduate. Yet Charlayne always insisted that she should not be considered a symbol of the civil rights struggle or even a national representative of her race. "I'm not representing anybody," she once said. "I'm not an ideal girl or the perfect student." Though she was sometimes called upon to speak before civil rights groups, she felt "like a hypocrite ... all that We Shall Overcome business. I believe in it, sure. But there are some things I believe in that I just don't believe in talking about. And I have to break away from that image business sooner or later. I can't spend my life being an image."

But Charlayne remained a symbol despite her wishes. And it was that fact that gave special significance to the announcement last week of her marriage to a white fellow student at the University of Georgia.

Two Weddings. The husband is Walter Stovall, 25, son of a well-to-do south Georgia chicken-feed manufacturer. Stovall, like Charlayne a journalism major, befriended her soon after she entered the university. By early this year, it was common campus knowledge that they were dating. In fact, they said last week, they were married in March. But they declined to name the place--presumably because it was in some Southern state where miscegenation is punishable by prison sentence not only for the couple but for the person who performs the ceremony.

Last June 6, fearing that their March marriage was not binding by law, Charlayne and Walter Stovall applied for a marriage license in Cleveland. On the application form, Stovall said he had been married once before. He now explains: "I had been--to the same wife I now have, Charlayne." For whatever reason, they did not return to pick up the Cleveland license. They were instead married on June 8 in Detroit. After Charlayne's graduation, they moved to New York, took a Greenwich Village apartment. Charlayne, an editorial assistant for The New Yorker magazine, is expecting a baby in December.

"A Personal Thing." After the announcement of the marriage, Walter Stovall's father mourned that "this is the end of the world." Charlayne's mother said: "They didn't ask for my approval. Charlayne is 21 years old, and 1 can only advise her--I can't tell her what to do." Said Walter Stovall: "We are two young people who found ourselves in love and did what we feel is required of people when they are in love and want to spend the rest of their lives together. We got married."

And what of Charlayne, the girl who wanted to escape from "that image business?" Asked if she had considered the possible impact of the marriage on the Negro cause, she replied: "This is a very personal thing, and my personal life should not have anything to do with that which affects the masses of people. And so I can't be too terribly concerned about that because I have my own life to live."

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