He persuaded the Fathers of the Lyonnais Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to take possession of the college. The new regime was inaugurated with Father Francis Gautrelet, S.J., as president in September 1847. Since that time the institution has continued under Jesuit direction. Many boys were sent to Spring Hill during the American Civil War as they neared the draft age. But numerous students wanted to be part of the war effort. The college eventually formed two military companies. Some of Spring Hill's Jesuit fathers became chaplains for the Confederacy. A recruiter tried to conscript all forty of the Jesuit brothers at the college into the Confederate Army. The college president, Gautrelet, dispatched an urgent message to the assistant secretary of war in Richmond, who granted a temporary reprieve of the brothers' conscription. During the Reconstruction era, the College recruited students from among the sons of Central American and Cuban leaders. Following student complaints that Spanish was challenging the dominance of English on the campus, the Jesuits organized a Spanish–American league. In 1869 a fire destroyed the main building. Students and faculty had to relocate for a time to St. Charles College in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Bishop John Quinlan and other benefactors assisted in rebuilding the college, which reopened at Spring Hill before the year's end. As the enrollment increased, Quinlan Hall, St. Joseph's Chapel, the Thomas Byrne Memorial Library, and Mobile Hall were erected. In 1935, the high school, which had been a unit distinct from the college since 1923, was discontinued. In the space vacated by the high school, the Jesuit House of Studies was opened in 1937, and the Scholasticate of the Sacred Heart opened on a site adjoining the college a few years later. After World War II, a great influx of veterans taxed the facilities of the college, which erected numerous temporary buildings on the campus to handle the new students. At the request of Archbishop Thomas Joseph Toolen of Mobile, the college became co-educational in 1952. In 1954 the college accepted African-American students into all departments, before the United States Supreme Court ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Fannie E. Motley was the first black graduate from the institution in 1956. Spring Hill College was a leading institution in Alabama to press for racial equality. It was praised by civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who referred to the college in his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail."