George Pruitt, left, was a TSU administrator under President Fred Humphries, right. Humphries fought for the merger of TSU and UT Nashville in the 1970s. (Photo: Courtesy of George Pruitt)
This story was produced by Tennessee Lookout and WPLN News, with support from the Pulitzer Center and the Education Writers Association.
Less than two months after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, a Black law student in Nashville named Rita Geier set off a series of events that ultimately reshaped higher education in Tennessee and around the country…