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Celebration of Desegregation: First African-American students at UNT honored with march Oct. 4
By UNT News Service
Oct 3, 2008

DENTON (UNT), Texas ¾ The enrollment of the African-American students at the University of North Texas, beginning in 1954, will be commemorated with the third annual Celebration of Desegregation march at 10 a.m. Oct. 4 (Saturday). The marchers will begin gathering at 9 a.m.

The UNT Phi Gamma Chapter of Omega Psi Phi, Multicultural Center and the Trailblazers, the university’s alumni association that consists solely of its pioneering African-American students, will host the march in honor of those first students, who were not allowed to live on campus. The group will lead the march through a path similar to the ones taken by the students to get to class each day. The march begins at Denton’s Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center, located at 1300 Wilson, and ends in the One O’Clock Lounge in UNT’s University Union, located one block west of Welch and West Prairie streets.

A ceremony will follow the march in the One O’Clock Lounge, which is on the first floor of the union. The program will include speaker Joel Bennet, founding president of the Phi Gamma Chapter, the university’s first African-American fraternity, and performances by the UNT Gospel Choir and saxophonist Perry Richardson.

For more than half a decade, North Texas State University, now UNT, kept its doors closed to African-American students. In the 1950s, would-be students like Alfred Tennyson Miller, Joe Atkins and Irma E.L. Sephas challenged the status quo and paved the way for the university’s desegregation. Throughout the next 50 years, more than 30,000 African-American students would follow their lead.

In 1954, Miller became the first African-American student to attend UNT following the Sweatt v. Painter U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which allowed Miller to enroll because the doctoral course he wished to pursue was unavailable at Texas’ African-American colleges.

The following year, when Atkins was denied admission as an undergraduate student, the university’s Board of Regents decided to let him sue, rather than grant him admission. Atkins’ father sued on his son’s behalf while his son attended Texas Western College, now the University of Texas at El Paso.

In December 1955, U.S. District Judge Joe Sheehy issued an injunction that prohibited the school from denying admission on the basis of race. As a result of the injunction, in February 1956, Sephas became the first African-American student to attend as an undergraduate. Atkins, who was at school in El Paso, would later enroll as a master’s candidate in 1962.

Despite a relatively peaceful period of desegregation at North Texas for its first African-American students, they were not completely treated equal to their white counterparts. While the students could not legally be denied admission, they were denied on-campus housing. Compelled to stay in Denton’s traditionally African-American community, many had to walk miles to get to and from class.

UNT student Haskel Harvey, who has participated in the march before, says that walking along the same path as the original students “makes you appreciate the sacrifices that they made.” He adds, “It makes you want to take full advantage of the opportunities that you have. It’s very rewarding for us to pay tribute to them and recognize their struggle during that period.”

For the past three years, the UNT Trailblazers, the Multicultural Center and the Phi Gamma fraternity have remembered the sacrifices of these students.

Harvey says that the march is not just geared toward African-Americans. “We’re bridging the gap between all nationalities. This is a unifying experience and makes you more culturally aware and more culturally diverse.”

For more information, contact Harvey, event organizer, at (832) 875-1418 or hjh0027@unt.edu.

Photos of the event will be taken by UNT’s Division of University Relations, Communications and Marketing. To receive a copy, contact Buddy Price at buddy.price@unt.edu  or (940) 565-2943 or Monique Bird at monique.bird@unt.edu or (940) 369-7017.