"Courage," said Hemingway, "is grace under pressure." Evidently, sixty-one-year-old George McLaurin had plenty of it. Below, a powerfully poignant image of McLaurin seated in a segregated classroom at Oklahoma University on Oct.14, 1948. He learned in a closet looking out over the room where his white classmates sat; he dined at separate tables at separate times; and he used a different table in the library to study. At the time he began classes, he was 61 years old. He had already earned his master’s in education from the University of Kansas and taught at Langston University, Oklahoma’s historically all-black institution, for 33 years. “This is a happy day in my life,” he told Sooner Magazine on the day of this picture. “If things continue the way they have gone today, I think everything is going to be all right.” George W. McLaurin died in Los Angeles on September 4, 1968, at the home of his son, who followed in his father's footsteps as a college professor