Auburn University student recalls being one of MLK Jr.’s foot soldiers

Some decisions are as natural as breathing.

In October 1960, not long after she turned 19, Marilyn Pryce Hoyt made the easiest and perhaps one of the most significant decisions of her young life. Atlanta college students were planning a sit-in demonstration, much like the ones staged in Greensboro, N.C., earlier that year. The night before, leaders asked the assembled group who among them was willing to get arrested. The idea of black students sitting down at a white lunch counter and demanding service was bound to have consequences.

Hoyt was a drama major at Spelman College, but needed no direction for this. She stood with those willing to do whatever it took to show that segregation was wrong.

“We all agreed it was time for Jim Crow to go,” she said.

Student demonstrators arrived at the Magnolia Tea Room in Rich’s Department Store the next day, dressed in their Sunday’s best, but it didn’t matter. They were denied service and asked to leave. All of them, including Hoyt and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., refused and were subsequently arrested for trespassing.

On their way out, a photographer caught their image. One appeared in the next day’s newspaper. A similar copy is displayed on the mantle of Hoyt’s parent’s home, as well as the lobby of the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, part of which is Rich’s former downtown location. The 30-foot mural depicts student leader Lonnie King on the left, Dr. King on the right, and Hoyt one step behind them.

Her college roommate was standing beside her, but is not visible behind Dr. King. Her purse is, however. Hoyt joked that, since they anticipated the arrest, they filled their purses with everything they would need for an extended jail stay, including school books. They had to keep up with their studies, she said.

City and county jail cells quickly filled up in the preceding days as more students from the five-college Atlanta University Center led similar demonstrations throughout downtown. Eventually, the college presidents and Atlanta’s mayor reached a deal to release all the students.

“Some people thought we were young and naive, but I don’t think so. We were fully prepared,” Hoyt said. “I look back at a movement I was proud to be a part of.”

Hoyt left the following year to study in Paris, and after graduation in 1963, she lived abroad for a number of years. She missed it when segregation laws were changed and when Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and King were killed. And yet, she regrets nothing.

Even though, growing up in Tuskegee, Hoyt wanted to go to Auburn University, she appreciates the experiences she has had since going to Spelman. Besides, she’s at Auburn now, studying for a master’s in foreign language education. After she graduates in December, Hoyt plans to finish writing a book based on their incarceration.

It was only recently that Hoyt learned how Dr. King felt about that event. In a letter to the “girls,” she said King complimented them for being so courageous and being arrested right alongside him. When Hoyt read it the first time, she said his eloquent words made her cry.

“We didn’t know the man,” she said. “We were just foot soldiers.”

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