The hall, in their name, honors Professor Beth Hopkins and her late husband, Larry Hopkins, M.D. We spoke with Beth about their enduring legacies.
When Professor Beth Hopkins walked onto Wake Forest University’s campus in 1969, she knew it would not be easy. She was attending not only to learn and earn her degree, but she would also do so while being one of the first two Black women to integrate the school’s dormitories.
Wake Forest University, which is in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, announced earlier this year that a residence hall would be renamed in honor of Hopkins and her late husband, Larry Hopkins, M.D., a beloved physician and Wake Forest football star.
When Hopkins received the call informing her of the university’s decision, she was stunned. “I was speechless, and the tears just flowed,” she recalls. “I couldn’t even say thank you, because I was so overcome. I’m very pleased. I’m humbled by this.”
According to the professor, there were approximately 20 Black students on campus in the late 1960s. Even though the fight for civil rights had already begun to have an impact across the country at that time, they still had to endure both subtle and overt racism…