In 1964, fourteen years after Wiley College student Heman Sweatt successfully broke down the walls of segregation in Texas higher education, another Wiley student, Willie Gene Whitaker, became the first of his race to receive a degree at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College. Though technically not the first - Whitaker was preceded in the first summer session of 1964 by an older African American preacher from Lufkin who did not earn a degree - President Ralph Steen used Whitaker's application as the opening gambit finally to integrate the college. At the time, only four Texas colleges; Stephen F. Austin, East Texas State Teachers College in Commerce, Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, and Prairie View A&M, one of the state's two predominantly black colleges, did not admit students of both races - black and white.

Steen began considering integrating SFA shortly after he assumed the presidency in 1958. His biographer, William F. Harlow, said neither Steen nor his mentor Walter Prescott Webb of the University of Texas were crusaders in the matter of race relations, neither were they segregationists. Webb delivered the principal address at Steen's inauguration in 1959. Though he never used the word "integration," Webb made his point that in the interest of practicality, it was a concept that could no longer be avoided. Robert Maxwell remembered the speech in which Webb said he regarded East Texas' obsession with the race issue as:

Preventing any other question from being considered and preventing progress ...in any other field. Webb said he regarded the race issue as something that, like the pioneer farmer in Texas, who, when he had a log that was too big to move and too green to burn, he plowed around it and moved on.....If we did nothing but fret about race relations we would fall behind the rest of the country.

So reform of racial injustice should be done "in order to get on with the crop" of educating East Texans. Replying to a complaint by members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity that they might be assigned housing units that could at some point be integrated, Steen wrote, "You are doubtless correct in believing that Stephen F. Austin will at some time be integrated....We can assign a building to a fraternity and it will be occupied only by members of that fraternity. The only way in which it could become integrated would be for the fraternity itself to integrate."

By 1964, Steen decided that the time had come to open admission to members of all races. He asked that the application by Whitaker "who has inquired several times about admission, be processed, even though the Board of Regents was still standing at the schoolhouse door in regards to the admission of African Americans. Steen wrote Whitaker:

At the present time the rules of the Board of Regents for Stephen F. Austin University state that an application from a person of your race must be referred directly to them. I am, therefore, sending our application to the Board, and there is a possibility that they will adopt new rules governing admission to the school before the beginning of the summer session. Meanwhile, if you have not already done so, I wish you would send a transcript of your work to the Registrar.

Minutes of the Board of Regents meetings indicate it began addressing the issue of race in 1941, under the presidency of Alton Birdwell. "The Bill pending in the legislature for exchange of students with Central and South American countries was discussed," the minutes of January read. "It was feared that it might bring about some complications because of color or race. No action was taken, but it was agreed that we should be on the alert."

By 1946, the state began to come to grips with the rights of the state's black citizens to a higher education. Three of the six colleges under the direction of the Board of Regents for State Teacher's Colleges had had requests from African Americans for admission - either on campus or as correspondence students. All were denied, but that same year there was a major demonstration at the University of Texas, led by University of Texas history professor J. Frank Dobie and Melvin Tolson, the Wiley College professor of English known as "the campus radical," and given credit by many Wiley College Students, including Sweatt, for the courage to challenge Texas' Jim Crow Laws.

Though nothing came immediately as a result of the Texas University protest, an effort to establish a "first class university for Negroes" was the subject of discussion around the state, including among members of the Board of Regents in their August meeting. However, by 1955, five years after the Sweatt decision, and a year after the U.S. Supreme Court put to rest any idea of the legality of the doctrine of separate but equal with its decision in Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Teacher's College Regents came to the following conclusion:

All applications from Negroes for admission to the six colleges under the jurisdiction of this board be referred to the President of this Board, and the President of the Board in turn will refer them to the Attorney General of Texas, asking for an opinion as to whether or not the Board of Regents should admit the Negroes to the six Colleges under its jurisdiction.

Two months later the board issued a directive which may have been based on the opinion requested of Attorney General:

The presidents of the respective colleges under the jurisdiction of the Board be instructed to advise each Negro applicant who has or may apply for admission to such college, that the admission is denied because (1) Neither the charter nor the existing facilities at the college in question permit such admission. (2) The citizenry of the respective communities has not yet been conditioned to the point of acceptance of the abolishment of segregation.

In early 1963, citing the college's charter prohibiting the admission of Negroes, Steen denied admission to Mrs. Bessie Gamble of Lufkin and Lovie Edwards, probably of the Austin area, both African Americans. He also found himself dealing with some increasingly uncomfortable situations. When integrated athletic teams played SFA at home in Nacogdoches, it was necessary for any black member of the team to be lodged in a private home. Historian Steen encouraged the American Studies Association to meet on the campus in December, 1964, but was forced to tell organizers that though he thought the campus would be integrated by that time, "If it is not, we will find some way to handle any problems that may arise in case colored students are in attendance."

Steen must have decided in 1964 that the community he was most concerned about - the one at the college itself - was "conditioned." History professor Robert Maxwell characterized Steen as a man "who anticipated problems and tried to diffuse them," and that was certainly the case in 1964. Ugly demonstrations by townspeople greeted the first black students at Lamar University in Beaumont and East Texas State University campus in Texarkana, and Steen did not want to see that disruption on his campus. He notified Whitaker to plan to enroll the second summer session, as Steen perceived a change of attitude in the Board of Regents which was to meet in June. Additionally, Steen hedged his bet in the person of Ulysses L. Sanders, an older black Baptist preacher from Lufkin. His intention was to enroll Sanders in the first summer session in 1964, then tell anyone who asked that the school had been integrated "for some time." "How could anyone object to an elderly Negro preacher who comes hat in hand to get an education?" he told a friend at the time.

Professor Carl Davis, also in the history department, said that the summer Steen - who reminded Davis of "a small block of concrete" - made up his mind that integration was to become a way of life at SFA, he ordered the "white" and "colored" signs to be removed from all campus facilities. When the cafeteria manager, whom Davis declined to identify, refused to do so, Steen did it himself. Davis said Steen marched out of his office with a screwdriver, went to the University Center, took the signs from their moorings and threw them on the floor, telling the cafeteria manager if they reappeared, the manager would be fired. According to Maxwell, several SFA professors, whom he also declined to name, said they would retire if SFA admitted African Americans, and did so in 1964.

Whitaker decided to come to Stephen F. Austin for the most practical of reasons, he said. He was living in Marshall, teaching and coaching in Mt. Pleasant, and didn't want to have to drive to the Houston area to get a master's degree in education at either Prairie View A&M or Texas Southern University. Moreover, he was married and the father of a three-year old daughter, so being away from home for a great length of time was not appealing. "My intent was to get a master's degree at the closest possible place - and as soon as possible. I knew I could do it," he said of the course work the endeavor would require.

Whitaker's experience with Steen was a positive one, unlike his earlier one with the registrar. "President Steen and I could sit down and talk eyeball to eyeball. I told him I was a taxpayer, and you're letting people from Louisiana in without paying out-of-state tuition." Whitaker said he suggested that he would take legal action if he wasn't admitted, but found such steps unnecessary. On June 8, 1964, Whitaker received a letter of acceptance from Steen for the second summer term and advising him to "come to the campus before that date to work out a degree plan."

As a commuter Whitaker neither sought nor experienced any social life at SFA. In addition to Steen, he credits two mentors, Dr. Morgan Moses and Dr. William Clark - and his ability to compete and do well in class - for his success. Other than being hassled occasionally by "a small group of white males," and one bad experience in a history class, "The Old South," which he was advised to drop by Clark and Moses, he had no race-related problems.

"When I graduated in 1966, the only black faces in the stands were [wife] Faye and [daughter] Angela." Faye Whitaker said a cordial reception preceded the actual ceremonies and baby Angela was invited to follow in her father's footsteps at SFA when time came for her to go to college.

A Nacogdoches resident, Nathaniel West, enrolled in the freshman class in the fall of 1964, and received his bachelor's degree in health and physical education in May, 1967, becoming the first black undergraduate. He earned his masters in education in 1972. In 1993, while he was principal at Francis Scott Key Middle School in Houston, a minority scholarship was established in his name by the SFA Alumni Association. West declined to be interviewed for this paper.

Whitaker recruited another Wileyite, Raymond Hall, into the graduate program at SFA, Hall became the second, and one of the university's most outstanding, graduate students. At the age of 28, Hall was also older than the average student, he had served a hitch oversees while in the Army, taught school in Nigeria, and was ready to enter Texas Southern University when told by Whitaker that he could enroll at SFA instead. Hall rented a room from an elderly black woman in Nacogdoches, but not because of discrimination in the dorms. The college's enrollment had burgeoned in the years following World War II and there was simply no room on the campus.

"Whitaker was one of my heroes - (He had been ) one of Marshall's first black policemen," said Hall. He admitted he was totally unfamiliar with the Nacogdoches college, when Whitaker told Hall he could get a better education at SFA. With funds from the GI Bill®, plus a job at Schmidt's Department Store in Nacogdoches, arranged for by Marshall department store owner Joe Hirsch, for whom Hall had worked since age 13, Hall began classes. He was unsure of his major, being interested in both history and sociology. Professor Allen Richman taught Hall Renaissance history. "He was brilliant - like a sponge," Richman remembers. Hall was also Professor Bobby Johnson's grader. Steen welcomed him, but Hall was denied a graduate assistantship in history. "My friends now tell me that C.K Chamberlain, who was chairman of the history department, wouldn't give me an assistantship," Hall said. "He was concerned about what parents might think if their daughters took courses from a black man." He did receive an assistantship in the sociology department, which he said determined his academic career. Hall is now one of Dartmouth College's outstanding professors.

His age and maturity made Hall as much a colleague as a student with the young, white activist professors - men like William Brophy, Ed Vetter, Rex and Westy Kleitz, Carl Childress, George Mears, and Bill Stiles and his wife. "We all went to Houston in the spring of 1967 to hear Martin Luther King," Hall said. "We actually made two trips to Houston. The second one was to a symposium at Rice University." Three outstanding panelists, including Rice Professor William McCord, were a part of the discussion of race in America. McCord, who moved to Syracuse University, had a good deal of influence on Hall's future, chairing Hall's dissertation committee when the SFA graduate earned his Ph.D. In 1966 and 1967, Hall's social life revolved around graduate student activities. "Of course they were integrated," he said. "I integrated them."

Two unique African American undergraduates arrived in Nacogdoches in time to help shepherd the college through one of the nation's crises - the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. The two, Harvey Rayson of Beckville, and Wilburt Love of Grapeland, enrolled in 1965.

Rayson, an outstanding basketball player from the all-black Sunset High School, had been recruited by SFA basketball coach Marshall Brown, who promised Rayson a basketball scholarship, making the Sunset High valedictorian the first black athlete at SFA. Rayson was typical of many graduates of the separate and inadequate black rural high schools. He had no opportunity to take chemistry, English composition, or advanced math, and the mysteries of college enrollment were just that - a mystery. "My high school had no counselor, so I had no clue as to what was required to go to SFA," he said. Rayson failed the ACT entrance exam on his first attempt, but admissions officer Larry Colvin, apparently recognizing Rayson's potential, took him under wing and saw that he met college requirements. Rayson said he floundered through the first year until he learned what classes and professors to take, and who and what to avoid. "I didn't know what that meant," Rayson said when asked about his major. By his sophomore year he was recognized campus leader - and unofficial academic advisor to his friends black and white. "I had learned the system.( I had) a nice guys list and a bad guys list. All around me, kids were failing because they weren't prepared. People would tell them, 'Go talk to Harvey'"

Dean of Education Robert McKibbon anticipated problems for students like Rayson. In his career prior to 1964, McKibbon spoke often to teachers groups in East Texas black schools, so he knew first hand the struggle some students would face. "I've said that the little schools in small East Texas towns had limited facilities and were able to give limited educational opportunities, diminish those by some great deal and you'll get the picture of what black education was like."

Love was also a valedictorian - of the segregated W.E. Banks High School in Grapeland. As such, he won state scholarship money that afforded him the means for a college education. He chose SFA, he said, because it was closer to home, and offered a better educational opportunity than equally close Sam Houston State Teachers College. He was an English and journalism major, becoming the first black student to write for the campus newspaper, The Pine Log. His solid high school English background paid off, he said, when he signed up for a journalism class. "Dr. Francine Hoffman (the professor) had a strong influence on me. She told me right off, 'You do not know how to write a newspaper story.'" but Love said she spent the afternoon teaching him. By 1967, he had the administrative beat. "It meant I had to be accurate with quotes, and be able to write objectively."

That ability stood Love in good stead during the events following King's assassination on April 4, 1968. King's death held the potential for an explosion. English professor Francis "Ab" Abernathy remembers lowering the flag to half-mast twice, only to go out and find it at the top of the pole. After the third time, he gave up. President Steen dismissed classes the next day. Rayson's dorm room filled with friends of both races, trying to make sense of the tragedy. "I knew we had to get some way for people to express how they felt without resorting to violence. There was so much going on among splinter groups. That's when the call came to meet," he said. On Tuesday following King's assassination, a memorial service was held on the campus. Rayson led it and Love covered it. Among the speakers were Father William F. Manger, instructor and director of the Catholic Bible Chair; William F. Brophy, assistant professor of history; Dr. Warren F. Austin of the English faculty; Mrs. William Macauley, wife of William Macauley of the political science faculty, and Rabbi Jerome N. Sherman of the Jewish Chautauqua Society. Love cast objectivity aside as he ended his lengthy story:

There followed what demonstrated perhaps more than any part of the program the spirit of brotherhood for which Dr. King lived and died. Led by Miss Alice Mallory, black and white members of the audience and program participants clasped hands and filled the auditorium with strains of We Shall Overcome.... Again, the service was simple. Probably, however, it is not an overstatement to say that few, if any, of the persons attending came from the service with their hearts and minds unchanged.

The day following King's death, sociology instructor William D. Perdue presented a memorial lecture, one he called "The Bell Tolls for America," to his classes. It was printed in both the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel and the Pine Log. On Friday following the memorial service, 40 people gathered to form some sort of organization to perpetuate King's memory. Again Rayson was the unofficial chairman, and Love the reporter. Fiery sociology professor George Mears was ready to lead a demonstration to the streets, remembers Regents History Professor Archie McDonald. That's when Brophy picked up a hat - no one seems to remember whose - emptied his wallet into it, and told the crowd the best thing to do to honor King's memory was to start a scholarship in his honor. In addition to the money raised that night, Father Manger proposed sending fund raising letters to local ministers. Professor Kleitz was put in charge of the scholarship funds. By the next Monday night the organization had grown to 250 members - drawing from students and faculty at SFA as well as townspeople of both races. Rayson was elected chairman, sociology instructor Travis Eaton vice chairman. Other offices were filled by both student and faculty.

The organization took the name "King's Men." In addition to the scholarship, it voted that night to present five questions to the administration, relating to room assignments in the dorms, the inclusion of a black history course in the curriculum, college employment, discrimination among the fraternities and sororities, and the intimidation of black students by whites. Before the year was over, several issues, including room assignments being made on a first-come-first served basis, hiring practices, and the black history course - taught by Brophy - had been addressed. In addition, the college Student Congress voted to endorse the right of students to participate in peaceful demonstrations, including one on December 7 at the West Side Washateria, where the owner still had signs designating which washing machines and dryers were to be used by white and which by African American patrons.

Although Rayson and Love said there were not many black students on the campus in 1967 and 1968, they were, in contrast to many white big city students, mostly from Lufkin and Nacogdoches, and small rural schools in the area. Photographs in The Pine Log, and the Stone Fort yearbooks of those years show a few black faces among the white ones in many of the clubs and campus organizations. Although many believed that most of the African Americans on the campus were athletes, Love and Rayson said the ration was about 50-50, and professors said they learned quickly not to ask their black students what kind of ball they played. However, there was no accurate record of the racial makeup of the students, according the university records. The first count was made in 1971, and it was based on observation by student employees of the admissions office as students enrolled. Data provided by the students on enrollment applications did not commence until the late 1970s.

The faculty included faces of both races in 1969, when Dr. Odis Rhodes joined the education faculty. Another product of Wiley College, Rhodes received his masters from Texas Southern and his Ed.D. from the University of Houston.

The King's Men survived only one year. By 1969, the desire of Martin Luther King, James Farmer, Whitney Young and Roy Wilkins for integration had given way to the politics of separatism of Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and Floyd McKissick. Additionally, its leaders had moved on. Rayson graduated that summer, Love, who was carrying enough hours to declare three majors upon graduation, became the co-editor of the Pine Log, and had no time for any other activity. Brophy's daughter was diagnosed with a terminal illness and he retreated from campus activism, and Mears, "for reasons of mutual agreement," according to his widow, left the university. "The King's Men was a spontaneous response - there could have been outrage - burn the place down. Everything is event-driven," said Love almost thirty years after the King's Men was organized. The Martin Luther King scholarship remains, awarded by the university's Multi-cultural Center - organized, ironically, during the time Brophy was acting president of SFA.

Some Stephen F. Austin students were involved in the much more confrontational demonstrations against the police, politicians and merchants of Nacogdoches in 1970, but that is a story for another day.