- [Narrator] A cross burned on the lawn the day Amarillo College opened its doors to black students.

- [Willetta] I have never been so afraid as I was on that day, when that cross was laying on the ground burning.

As I went across, I started praying.

Our calls wasn't nothing but to get an education.

Willetta Jackson, February, 1999.

Within hours of the college's decision.

Jackson headed to class along with her sister-in-law, Freddie Imogene Jackson, Celia Ann Bennett and Dorothy Reese.

- [Willetta] That was years before we ever heard about Dr. King or Rosa Parks.

I just knew it wasn't right to pay tax and we couldn't go.

That's man's inhumanity to man.

Willetta Jackson, February 1999.

- [Narrator] Black residents in Amarillo had finally gained access to a college that had been receiving their property tax payments for years.

Amarillo College became one of the first three colleges in Texas to integrate, within limits - Amarillo college, wanted make it clear that integration was only for students from Amarillo.

For black students from Amarillo.

And that they did not want to have black students from elsewhere in the state.

- [Narrator] It would be nearly three years before a Supreme Court ruling would bar segregation.

- When I first come to Amarillo college, there was a few blacks.

They weren't very many.

If I had to guess probably 15-18 black students.

But, I had one very negative experience.

I was in a rush to get to the next class and I was reaching up into a locker to get my book, my English book.

And I looked to my right and I saw two white guys.

And I looked to my left, I saw two more white guys.

When I looked back to my right, I saw this fist coming.

This fist hit me in the face.

And I do remember one of the white guys said we don't want any niggers out here.

That was his word for me.

I got knocked to the floor of course.

And they beat up on me, kicked me in my ribs.

I had bruised ribs.

- [Narrator] It would be 1960 before black students were accepted into West Texas State College, which is now West Texas A&M University.

But to tell that story, means first looking at some earlier history.

In 1909 the city of Canyon made the winning bid to the state to become home to West Texas Normal School, a college for teachers that was the earliest version of WT.

Then a community of about 1400 people.

Canyon lured the college with 40 acres of land, $100,000 in cash, and a lack of saloons.

The bid also mentioned something else the city lacked.

- One thing that they, they told the state, why we should get it, is because we have no Negros, no Mexicans, no foreigners.

- [Narrator] The college opened its stores to "any white person of good moral standing,' in the fall of 1910.

Canyon allowed no black people to live in its limits for many years.

It was what's called a Sundown town.

- The Sundown town is ought to be, a town which usually will have a sign at the edge of the town which Canyon did.

Which says that blacks are not supposed to in the town after the sun goes down, during this time.

From what we have found, this really first appears in the 1930s.

And this was because of a all black unit of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

That was put into collegial fund.

Of course, that help, you know build the road, things like that obvious.

But there was a lot of fear.

You know, obvious people wrote letters from Canyon and from Amarillo, we don't like that.

- [Narrator] Canyon residents reinforced their preference for segregation, in August, 1953.

When the Canyon news published an article asking whether blacks should be allowed to move there.

Most of the anonymous letter writers spoke against the idea.

The next year a Canyon news editorial reacted to the Supreme Court decision, to strike down segregation in schools.

- [Man Narrator] As we have repeated time and time again, we know nothing about the Negro, since we have never lived in a community with him.

Fortunately, Randall County in Canyon have no blacks with which to contend.

Canyon News, May 26th 1954.

- [Narrator] In 1956 West Texas state college denied admission to Guy Raleigh Tomlin.

A civilian instructor at the Amarillo air force base.

But it was not due to his lack of qualifications.

Before working for the air force base Tomlin was principal of Frederick Douglass elementary school and Patent High School.

Two schools for black students in Amarillo.

He already had a bachelor's degree from Wiley college and a master's from the University of Southern California.

- What had happened is Texas had outlawed the NAACP in 1956 and '57.

So he didn't have that support group to go to.

- [Narrator] In 1959, Amarillo college graduate, John Matthew Shipp Jr, applied to continue his education at WT and was refused.

- But what the difference is that this time NAACP is not outlaw.

- [Narrator] Attorney W. J. Durham filed a lawsuit on Shipp's behalf.

With the help of NAACP, chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first black justice on the Supreme Court.

- And they do take it to court.

And the state of Texas is gonna say, we're gonna help WT maintain segregation.

They admitted that the reason Matthew Shipp was not allowed into the university was because of race.

But they said, in Texas, we have the three tier system.

They said now the Brown decision, the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education, had said that, you have to have integrated schools in your state.

And Texas said, well we do have integrated schools.

Now, there are these segregated school and that's all that the brown decision said we had to do.

They didn't say we have to integrate all schools.

- [Narrator] Shipp won his case in federal court, in February, 1960.

But he attended college elsewhere.

Betty Jo Thomas, Mae Dean Franklin and Roy Watson became the first black students at WT that fall.

A year later, the college had its first black graduate, Helen Neal.

By the way, the 1960 census counted more than 5,800 residents in Canyon.

None were black.

Claudia Stuart started classes at WT in 1967.

She became the first black student elected to the WT student senate.

And the first elected to the Homecoming Queens chord.

- I can remember being very idealistic, coming to school at WT was like a culture shock to me.

Because I came from Germany.

Military, you know we all live on the same bases together.

A lot of diversity, people from all over the world.

And coming to WT and it was like a fish out of water.

It was at a time when there was a lot of rebellion.

There were a lot of marches nationwide and we'd all marched together.

We'd all marched together.

- So the students they were accepting was the institution?

- Not really, not really.

We had to break down barriers.

We had a big controversy at the time that I was there with the Confederate flag.

The Confederate flag was a part of the Kappa Alpha fraternity.

- And they bring it to all the football games.

And they would wave it.

And they bring it to the basketball games then wave it and all this.

That actually the Kappa Alpha would dress up in some Confederate uniforms and they would parade through town.

- They had Old South Day.

They even had auctions.

They had people dress up in black face and have auctions in the student union building.

You know, all that had to change.

- [Narrator] In 1996, Stuart became WT's first full time, black female instructor.

- My deal, when I walked into the classroom, the first thing I said to my students who were all white, was I bet you've never had anybody that looked like me teaching you in a classroom.

And they said, never.

Never have I ever had anybody black teaching me in the classroom.

Okay, well now we go from there.

Okay, because we're here together, we're in it together.

And I wanna get to know you and I want you to get to know me.