Vivian Malone Jones, the first black University of Alabama graduate, has been hospitalized in Atlanta. A woman answering the telephone at Atlanta Medical Center confirmed Thursday that Jones is being treated in the hospital's intensive care unit.

Jones grew up in Mobile, Ala., and had enrolled at historically black Alabama A&M University in Huntsville when she transferred to the University of Alabama in 1963. The move led to former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace's infamous "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" in defiance of orders to admit black students.

Jones said later she did not actually confront Wallace eye-to-eye on that day. Then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach asked Wallace to step aside and admit Jones and James Hood. Wallace refused and was forced to step aside.