Following the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v.
Board of Education, administrators at the University of Texas at
Austin reluctantly decided to admit undergraduate African American
students for the 1956 academic year, thus making the University of Texas
the first southern school to integrate. While nominally accepting the
decision, University of Texas administrators would do as little as they
could to help Black students, and they did whatever they could both easily
and legally to integrate less than fully. For example, after a faculty
committee chose African American Barbara Smith to play the romantic lead
in a school opera opposite a White male, the University of Texas president
removed her from the production just days before she was to appear, after
several White legislators objected and threatened to withhold the
University's appropriations. This incident reflected not only the
difficulty southern states faced when deciding how—and
whether—to fully comply with the Court's mandate in
Brown, but also how difficult it was for public universities to
achieve full and equal integration in the face of “passive”
resistance. Those in power at the University of Texas did, in fact,
desegregate their school, but their policies ensured that the University
would remain segregated in other meaningful ways. What happened at the
University of Texas is instructive in showing how racial equality was
never embraced as wholeheartedly as most Americans seem to think.
Administrators were able to construct a fantasy of integration, all the
while enacting racial policies made through “silent covenants”
that ensured that policies conformed to priorities set by the Texas
legislators and their White constituents.