“This is a great day at Claflin University. The Golden Class is blessed to have arrived at this milestone in our lives. Some of us are entrepreneurs, doctors and educators. We are a product of Claflin University,”
said Dorothy Z. Elmore, a member of the Claflin University Golden Class of 1961. On Friday, May 6, the Golden Class came together at Ministers’ Hall for The President’s Luncheon in their honor. It was the first time some members of the Class had seen each other since May 1960. Armstead Leon Salters recalled he used to work at Ministers’ Hall when it was the campus dining hall. With much affection, he noted the institution’s outstanding and committed professors. They instilled in Salters the lessons of hard work.
“Those days were good days. Being as poor as I could be, I was a workaholic when I was here. I don’t know what I would be without this institution,” Salters said.
Salters is a retired principal with nearly five decades of service in the education field. He was the Student Government Association President at Claflin. Another member of the Golden Class, Gladys Pressley Morgan, was happy to see her former professor, the Rev. Geneva Williams, who has worked at the University for the past 59 years. She also reminisced about meeting at the Claflin Band Stand, a popular social spot on campus in the 60s that was also the epicenter of Orangeburg’s Civil Rights activism.
“We have traveled a long road,” said Morgan, a retired school administrator.
Robert Wilson recalled him and many of his classmates were jailed protesting the social injustice of their era. He remembered the late Rev. James Mack, a former science professor at the University, once came down to the county jail with a shotgun demanding their release.
