USD Magazine Fall 2020

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by Liz Harman L Reflections from USD’s first woman Black graduate RESILIENCE AND STRENGTH iving in Washington, D.C. for more than 50 years, El- lissia (Darley) Price-Fagin

attending the College for Women. Being in the minority “was not something different or new,” she says. “I had decided if people didn’t like me, they didn’t like me because of me the person, not my color,” she says with a laugh. Still, her life experiences stood out. For example, in her civics class, her professor told students that poll taxes had ended in the South. When she reported that her grandmother in Louisiana was still paying them, “the class got very quiet,” she recalls. While there were two Black students in her class initially, they did not stay, Price-Fagin recalls. When she graduated in 1966,

an infant where she was adopted by a military veteran and his wife. From an early age, the family attended Christ the King church, a parish that had Latino, Black and white members. Her father worked for the Navy and remind- ed her “almost every day” that she was expected to attend college. After winning a poetry competi- tion, she attended the awards cer-

emony at USD. “I saw the campus and said, ‘That’s where I want to go to school,’” she recalls. Her adopted mother had passed away when she was only seven, but had left her brother in Los Angeles some land. When Price- Fagin graduated from high school, he presented her with a check from its sale to pay for college. Price-Fagin was unfazed about

’66 (BA) has seen plenty of history up close. And as a student in the San Diego College for Women, she made history of her own. Her life story is more interest- ing than many novels. Price-Fagin was born on the East Coast and arrived by train to San Diego as

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