Spring Hill College, a Jesuit institution 7 miles west of downtown Mobile, was the first Alabama school of any kind to desegregate. It began the process in 1947 and graduated its first African-American student in the spring of 1956. On May 29 of that year, Fannie Ernestine Motley took her place among her white classmates for the graduation procession down Spring Hill's historic Avenue of the Oaks. In his famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. praised Spring Hill for its leadership role.