Man Receives Diploma 55 Years After Being Banned From Graduation Ceremony

Alva Earley told People, "You'll not graduate, You won't go to college" at the Galesburg High School for joining the civil rigghts movement, so "I was denied graduation coz i did."

A popular civil rights activist, Alva Earley has finally received his diploma from the Galesburg High School in Illinois, USA 55 years after he was banned from the graduation ceremony.

Alva recently told People Magazine, "As a black teen living in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, I knew that I wouldn't be welcome at an unofficially segregated Galesburg, Illinois, park. So I went anyway to the NAACP-sponsored picnic held on the "white side" of the park, even after a school counselor's threat that if I did attended, "You will not graduate. You will not go to college."

Well, even after 17-year-old Alva had earned all the proper credits to graduate with the other 360 students, Galesburg High School refused to give him his diploma and reportedly banned him from the ceremony.

But after 55 years of that injustice, Earley, now 73, finally got his long overdue diploma, last week.

"It's far beyond anything I've experienced to date," says a teary Earley, clad in an old graduation gown, before a gathering of almost 100 former classmates, according to the Chicago Tribune. "I wish I knew where to start. I wish I knew where to end."

He continued, "Not to be able to walk down the aisle ... it hurt so deeply," Earley says. "I can't even explain how deeply it hurt."

According to the old man, his education could have been over because he considered joining the Air Force. "The universities withdrew their acceptance letters," Earley says, "until the president of Knox College, a private liberal arts school in Galesburg, granted me acceptance after hearing my story."

As touching as this story looks, do you guys agree that Alva Earley should have still taken the diploma after 55 years? Is it necessary?