Gwendolyn DuBose Rogers was a student at Talladega College in Birmingham, Alabama, in the late 1940s. That’s where she met Professor Lore Rasmussen.

Rasmussen fled Germany for the U.S. in 1938. While at Talladega, she developed Gwendolyn’s interest in elementary education, encouraged her to get advanced degrees, and emboldened her to move to the North. The two women formed a friendship that would last a lifetime. She spoke to Eight Forty-Eight about her friend and instructor.