A new scholarship at Auburn University will provide
assistance to minority students while honoring the memory
of four Civil Rights heroes.
Claude W. Gossett Jr. and his wife, Sylvia, of Lindale,
Texas, have donated $10,000 to assist in funding a $25,000
scholarship endowment that will help educate a diverse student
body.
The Four Little Girls Memorial Scholarship is named for
Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole
Robertson who were killed in September 1963 in the bombing
of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
According to the Gossetts, they saw a need to recognize
the four young girls whose deaths focused the nation’s
attention on the Civil Rights movement. They also wanted
to reward the scholastic aptitude of minority students at
Auburn University.
“It is in the spirit of memorializing and celebrating
both the lives of the four little girls killed in 1963 and
the spirit of grace and forgiveness that we wish to make
this gift,” said Gossett, a former Auburn University
music professor and the first faculty advisor to the Auburn
University Gospel Choir. “Our gift to establish this
scholarship is our small effort to help encourage the celebration
of the diversity that so richly endows our human population.”
This scholarship is open to any student, but because of
the background and inspiration for the original endowment,
it has a preference toward minority students. A student
of any school within the university is welcome to apply.
Additional contributions to help the current endowment
reach the $25,000 level are encouraged and should be mailed
to the AU Foundation, Attn: Accounting, 317 S. College Street,
Auburn, AL 36849. Please designate your gift to go to the
Four Little Girls Scholarship Endowment.
