Friendly Hall is a landmark for UO’s progressive history

Sort of.

Emerald reporter Franklin Lewis has an excellent story on its history here:

… Built in 1893, Friendly Hall served as the first dormitory at UO. It was also the first dorm in the United States that was co-ed designed, according to the UO Libraries Architecture of the University of Oregon’s website. The two main entrances — which are still used today — distinguished the living quarters. The northern entrance led to the women’s rooms and the southern entrance led to the men’s rooms.

… But this was not the only groundbreaking moment for Friendly Hall. The ex-dorm housed the first students of color at the UO. According to the UO Special Archives “Unbound” blog, Bobby Robinson and Charles Williams, the first African American student athletes at the UO, moved into Friendly Hall as sophomores in the fall of 1927. The university forbade the two football stars from living in the dormitory their freshmen year for fear over the local reaction to desegregation.

“It was a Ku Klux town and they thought there might be trouble from the townspeople,” Williams said in a 1974 Register Guard article. “We accepted that.”