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Emmanuel Baptist Church. May, 1996. Kim Cunningham, a friend of mine, stands before me with a perplexed expression on her face.
"You say what? You're going to school in Fayetteville?"
"Yeah."
"Now, I thought you of all people would be at a black college. I mean, you're Mr. Pro Black and everything."
"No, girl. In August, I'll be in Fayetteville."
"With all those white people." Kim shakes her head.
"Well. . ."
"Hey, we all gotta live together. But good luck to you," Kim says. "You just might need it."
I bet someone told Silas Hunt the same thing back in '48. Good luck. You just might need it. The young wounded World War II hero was the first black of historical record to enroll at the University of Arkansas. In the spring of that year, Hunt, who had graduated from what is now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff a year earlier, entered the law school. His presence was indeed a turning point at UA. It was the beginning of a story rich with black voices, and it still unfolds here on The Hill.
Without armed troops, lawsuits or demonstrations, Hunt's admission into the UA School of Law was routine, which is important to note since surrounding states (Alabama and Mississippi especially) were mired in litigation and resistance regarding integration.
But according to Gordon Morgan's "The Edge of Campus: A Journal of the Black Experience at the University of Arkansas", attempts at integrating UA were made seven years prior to Hunt's admission. In 1941 Scipio A. Jones, a black attorney in Little Rock, tested the issue of black enrollment at the UA School of Law on behalf of Prentice A. Hilburn, a client of his. Jones, Morgan writes, "suggested that [UA] pay Hilburn's tuition to attend the law school." But the University chose to pay Hilburn's tuition at a black institution instead. He was awarded $134.50 to attend Howard University in Washington D.C. Arkansas had no tuition fund before 1943, Morgan writes. So, the Hilburn matter was handled informally, making it unclear from which fund Hilburn's tuition was paid.
In '43, Arkansas Legislative Act 345 established the State Tuition Fund for Negroes. This fund was designed to enable blacks to pursue professional training or graduate studies outside the state. Such opportunities were, of course, widely available within the state for whites. The maximum allowance from Act 345 was $312 per academic year. So if the cost of an academic course exceeded the cost of a similar one offered in the state, you, the black student, were out of luck.
After Hunt's successful enrollment into the UA School of Law, blacks of various backgrounds and interests applied for entry into the University. Morgan says the "guiding concept of the University was to limit enrollment to blacks who could not study particular fields at what was then known as AM&N College [UAPB today] because the courses were not offered." If you wanted to earn a master's degree, you had to spend some time on the Fayetteville campus. Two years after Hunt enrolled, black students dotted UA's campus, especially during the summer months.
It was 1955. Black people and black expression made bold progress in America. Crooner Nat "King" Cole had his own variety show on NBC. Honey-toned beauty Dorothy Dandridge received an Oscar nomination for her role in "Carmen Jones". A tired Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man. And Elvis Presley, a fleshy-faced white guy from Memphis, married the blues with greasy jukejoint gyrations and called it rock 'n roll.
In the spring, a thin young man with moon-shaped eyes moved on to UA's campus. He had just served in the Korean War and was about to begin graduate work in sociology. And now, more than 40 years later, he sits at a cluttered desk in his Old Main office, scratching his head with a plastic fork.
"There were just a few African Americans
here 
when I came,"
says sociology professor Gordon Morgan. He places the fork back
in the top desk drawer. "We lived in a place called Loyd
Hall F, which was an old barrack. . .That building was about where
the Animal Science building is today."
Morgan made history 14 years after earning his master's by becoming UA's first black faculty member.
"I came as a professor," he says. "My official rank was associate professor, and I was [a sociology professor] at Lincoln University in Jefferson City for four years before coming here."
Why did he choose to come back?
"Well, after Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot," he says, leaning back in his chair, "the black [college] students around the country got a little bit hard to handle. They were restless, and one of their non-negotiable demands [here at UA] was that they have regular black faculty members, not just teaching assistants."
At first, Morgan was reluctant to leave Lincoln and Jefferson City, Missouri. He had tenure. His wife and their four small children were comfortable and settled. But the University just kept calling.
"They made such a case that I was needed down here," Morgan says, gazing out the window. "They were willing to pay me a little more. They gave me free housing, practically free utilities. And they moved me down and gave me around $1500 more than Lincoln was paying," he says. "So, the University gave me more incentives after worrying me to death. They must have spent almost $300 on telephone calls."
You didn't know what to call the place. It had no name. Hamburger grease thickened the air. And Sarah Vaughan and Fats Domino records blared on the jukebox in the corner.
"The place was across the ditch from St.
James Methodist Church," Morgan says, smiling. "You
could buy beer, hamburgers, dance to the music on the jukebox.
It was just, you know, a hole in the wall, a 
place
in the black community."
Back when he was a UA graduate student, years before he lectured to sociology majors, Morgan liked to laugh and "jive talk" with friends at this "hole in the wall." But recreation in Fayetteville was limited if you were black.
"Some of us went to Little Rock," Morgan says. "Some went to Kansas City on the weekends, where ever we could strike up friendships."
Down in Alabama at this time (Montgomery to be exact) Negroes refused to ride the city buses after Ms. Parks spent a night in jail. Emmitt, Ms. Till's hazel-eyed son, floated to the top of a Mississippi lake without a face. The 14 year-old boy had been beaten to death for whistling at a white woman. But in Fayetteville, under stars and soft hanging lights, blacks and whites mingled at public dances.
"We went to the movies too," Morgan says, "and we ate in the dining hall. The books were the most intimidating thing. There may have been a few students who felt like they didn't get a fair shake," he says, "but on the whole, I would say that the black students were treated very well, socially and otherwise."
Maxine Sutton-Cannon, who was among the first three black undergraduates in UA's nursing program, didn't have any bitter memories about that time either. We chatted last spring when she came back to UA for the Black Alumni Reunion. The woman hadn't been here in 40 years.
"I was [at UA] from 1955 'til I graduated in June of 1958," said Sutton-Cannon, a registered nurse in El Centro, Calif. "I was never harassed or anything, nothing like the teenagers in Little Rock," she says, referring to the turbulent 1957 integration of Central High School.
"We were ignored," she said. "It was like we weren't there."
Sutton-Cannon along with Billy Rose Whitfield-Jacobs and Marjorie Wilkins-Williams lived in a small house off campus.
"We couldn't live in the dorms," said Whitfield-Jacobs, a retired public school educator in St. Louis. She was also here during the reunion, her first time back since the late '50s. "We were responsible for shopping for and cooking our own meals. It was a good thing Marjorie, Maxine and I knew each other before [moving to Fayetteville]."
Christopher Mercer, a Little Rock attorney, and George Haley, the former vice chairman of the U.S. postal rate commission, entered the UA School of Law in '49. They were also close, sticking together around campus.
"We were not welcomed with open arms," Mercer says. "George and I were the first two students to sit in the classroom. The whole time that Silas Hunt was [there], he was segregated within the law school."
"We would enter the classroom," Haley says, "and all the chattering would stop. It would get quiet."
Poet and UA English professor Miller Williams was a student during those times. Last spring, he recounted those days at a symposium celebrating the 50th' anniversary of Silas Hunt's enrollment.
"My parents were civil right workers," Williams said. "There were students on campus who couldn't go home if their parents found out that they were [in favor of integration]."
Because of his frequent association with Haley and Mercer, Williams was harassed at times.
"I'd get to the dormitory," Williams said, "and there would be a picture of a dagger or skull and crossed bones taped to the door or stuck to the door with a knife. I got two good knives that way."
"There was this one young man," Haley remembers, "whose father [worked] sharecroppers. I was typing something, and he stopped and said, 'You can type just as well as me.' He was amazed that a black equaled him in terms of ability. We were in the process of beginning communications."
A change had come. Silas Hunt had been dead and gone for 20 years, and black students at the University weren't taking any shit.
"We missed class to express our opinions," says J. Harris Moore, a student development specialist here at UA and a 1972 graduate. "We were organizing. We were at the administrative building. The 70s was a time when that was going on all over campus. Black students were demanding things. Yes, we had an attitude."
Moore excuses himself to answer the phone. We're in his office. His insanely neat office. Books about Native Americans, black Americans, sociology and, of course, student development line the walls. A fake fern tickles my knee as I sit in the chair facing his desk. George Benson plays low on the computer.
"You have to keep in mind the times we
were in," Moore says, hanging up the phone. "We were
in the midst of the Vietnam War. There was a lot of tension in
society then. The blacks on campus were very political. So, whenever
you have social change, there will be some tension."
Amen. America was indeed a turbulent place 30 years ago. Beloved civil rights advocates Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been shot to death in public places. Even the music at that time 'Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin' bristled with anger and defiance. James Brown had a hit with "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)."
"Whenever we [black students] gathered in the Union," Moore says, "people thought we were organizing or something."
In the early '70s, the black students formed what is now the Black Students Association. And when they decided that they had had enough with European history, they marched and protested until a course in black studies appeared.
"I was here when the financial aid director was black," Moore says. "The dean of students was black. They had a little bit more openness and authority to make decisions for black students at that time."
Gene McKissic became the first black president of UA's student government.
"I campaigned very heavily for Gene," Moore says. "I began to work with many of the black students to get black students programs on campus."
Moore, who's part Native American, is from Huntington, Arkansas, a coal mining town 25 miles south of Fort Smith. In this town, Moore played and socialized with people of various cultural backgrounds.
"It wasn't strange to me to be in Fayetteville because an uncle lived here," Moore says. "When I came back here as a student in 1970, I tried not to be concerned about the racial differences."
But as the only black face in many of his classes, Moore, a history major, noticed differences.
"I knew they existed," Moore says. "I got hit in the face with the [racial] climate when I was in the classroom. I would ask questions, and sometimes they were answered. Sometimes they were not," he says. "Being the only minority in the class, I could [determine] that they were ignoring me because of my skin color. Some professors were very comfortable with me. Some were not."
Beer bottles sailed through the air and crashed on the ground. Black students ran for safety, dodging shards of glass.
"The one time I felt racial tension at the University was during Texas Week," Moore says. "I would go home during this week."
Texas Week?
"That was when we played the University of Texas here or in Austin," Moore says. "There would be a parade that would start on Sunday. People [in the parade] waved Confederate flags. And at night, many of us black students wouldn't come out the dorm, because they would throw beer bottles at us as we walked down Maple," he says. "These were the University of Arkansas white students. That's where I really saw the racial drama on campus."
But despite the few episodes of racial intolerance at UA, Moore has been a dedicated employee in Student Support Services since 1982.
"I love the University," he says. "But it bothers me that minority students today [don't seem to appreciate] us who came before them and paved a way. Black students today are removed from straight-out racism and prejudices. They've been privileged with an integrated education."
Five decades after Hunt studied cases in the basement of the UA School of Law, I'm standing in the grassy courtyard of the Law Quad, surrounded by more than 100 law students. I'm at a cookout with Tiffany, my roommate, who has just completed two worrisome weeks of law school. A plastic cup of red wine in my hand, I take in all the activity around me.
About five students encircle two law professors, discussing last week's lectures. A live band plays tepid versions of Bob Marley's "Greatest Hits." And a blonde-haired woman flips burgers and fans flies away. But the crowd isn't completely lily white this year. Only seven black law students showed up at the barbecue, but 13 are enrolled this semester, making it one of the most racially diverse groups the UA law school has ever seen.
Congregated by the grill, the black law students smile easily as they introduce themselves. I later find out that a few of them are still asking themselves, "Why the hell am I in law school?" Some, however, are quite focused, driven by an influential parent or mysterious incident.
"I'm from Ghana, West Africa, and I've always wanted to be a lawyer," says second-year student Kwame Afrifa. He has what my Big Mama calls "soft, lovin' eyes." They're wide, clear and attentive as he talks about his dream.
"When I was a kid, I had a way of arguing things," he says. "My family said that I would always be a lawyer. But my interest became stronger after a brush with the law."
Afrifa refuses to divulge any specific details about the event. He says, "After that incident, I wanted to be well-informed about my rights and the law."
Before heading down South to Arkansas, Afrifa lived in the Washington D.C. area where his girlfriend still resides.
"It's hard to manage a long distance relationship," says the "30-something" student, who wants to practice international law in the nation's capital one day. "In order to do what you really want, you have to make some sacrifices.
Tracy Wilks, 26, knows about sacrifices. She put her nursing career on hold to attend law school. And it must have been a lucrative one for this petite, caramel-skinned woman. She pulls up at the Law Quad in a shiny late model BMW.
"I wasn't happy with nursing," Wilks says, tossing her past-the-shoulders-long, penny-colored hair. "You had white nurses making a few more dollars than me, which wasn't fair because I have a master's in nursing and many of them did not."
Wilks didn't like this. At all.
"I was always fighting," she says with a heavy sigh, "and arguing about something regarding pay or other administrative matters, so I decided to go to law school and know the law for myself."
Wilks, who earned her master's from the University of Arkansas Medical School, doesn't think she will be returning to nursing, though.
"I'm still sort of undecided about what kind of law I want to go into," she says. "But I've thought about going to D.C. and doing something in health care. I would like to leave Arkansas."
Yedea Walker, also 26, wants to eventually come back to the Natural State after practicing law elsewhere.
"Because I'm a native, you know, I do want to know the law of the state," Walker says. "But I think I want to be in D.C. initially, then I'll come back."
She has a distinctive, throaty voice, and if you're from Little Rock and listen to Power 92 F.M., then you know That Voice. Walker is radio personality Mahogany Brown, who hosted a popular mid-afternoon R&B show called "Sista to Sista." But she doesn't want to talk about her radio career.
"Can we please not get into that," she asks.
Instead, we talk about her father, Woodson Walker, a well-known lawyer in Little Rock. Late at night, his commercial frequently pops on TV. Picture it: A stern-faced, middle-aged black man in a suit and glasses, looking directly in the camera, saying, "Hi. I'm Attorney Woodson Walker. Have you been hurt?"
"With my father being a successful lawyer and everything," Walker says, "it made it more difficult for me to decide to come to law school. The reason it took three years to get here is because I wanted to be sure about this."
After graduating with an English degree from Grambling State University, Walker also taught writing and test-taking skills at Forrest Heights Junior High School in Little Rock. Her time there inspired her to study law as it applies to juveniles.
"I had a student who was constantly in trouble," she says. "He told me something his attorney told him, and I don't remember what that comment was, but it made me think, 'Man, these kids are not getting a fair shake."
But Walker insists her father didn't push her into studying law.
"Oh, no, this is what I want to do," she says. "I can't let my father's success become added pressure. We're all here 'black and white' starting at ground zero."
Donning a tan head wrap, Walker sips her beer, flashes a quick smile.
"But you know," she says, "I don't want to let my father down. I don't want him to be like, 'Damn, baby, you waited three years to go back and you messed up."
Thanks to Silas Hunt, Christopher Mercer and many others, she at least has the opportunity.