UH graduate reflects on time as student during racial integration

This Black History Month we are delighted to highlight Gene Locke, who helped make a huge difference in achieving equality for African Americans by being one of the first Black students to integrate the University of Houston.

HOUSTON - Walking around the University of Houston now and the faces come in all shades, but that hasn’t always been true.

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Gene Locke knows the reality of UH now and then, back when the university first allowed Black students to attend.

"Well it was difficult," Locke explains as we meet him back on the campus where he helped change and make history. "That was a challenge for the University to accept us."

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"The University was totally unprepared, and had not taken any steps to accommodate the reality that Black students and white students who had been legally separated for centuries, now were able to go to school together," he adds.

UH integrated in the summer of 1962. Gene Locke enrolled in 1965.

"And there really were only a handful of us here in ’65," he says. "How many times did I run into situations where somebody wanted to touch my hair just because it was different."

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Locke had a friend who every time he’d take a seat his classmate would visibly tremble.

"He asked her, ‘is everything ok?’ And she said, ‘well you know I’ve never sat next to a Black man, don’t know what’s going to happen.'"

While some White students and staff welcomed the Black students, "there were others who were very resistant, and that resistance was shown in overt and covert ways and then there was a large number of people who just ignored us and the sin of being ignored is just as biting as the sin of being opposed," Locke explains.

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So Locke says he and the other Black students courageously came together.

"Because we came into an environment that was hostile and for our own survival we had to organize," he adds.

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They rallied for women’s rights and against police brutality and racism. Several old photos and articles show Locke leading a march and delivering a speech to a large crowd from the steps of the student center, a speech that just after delivering Locke was arrested.

"I was taken to jail and actually taken to trial," he says. "We ended up, that thing went away because the jury was hung. There was no conviction. That’s sometimes the price you pay for taking a stand."

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They were just kids, just out of high school, taking many brave stands from getting Blacks hired at the university to fair pay for those already employed.

"Literally in 1969 we placed a series of demands at the university saying you must change now. (And the university complied?) It was a struggle, but it happened," Locke explains.

In 1968, students from all walks of life united, getting Lynn Eusan crowned as UH's first Black Homecoming Queen, beating five white candidates, and becoming the first Black Homecoming Queen at a predominantly White college in the south.

"We began to work together to make sure that we did something different and so Lynn was the symbol of change at the University, and she also was a beautiful woman, and she was an extremely wonderful representative of UH," Locke says. "We just knew the time was right for change."

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"We drew strength from each other," he continues. "While my experience at UH was painful it was also gratifying in the sense that it made me who I am today."

Locke graduated from the University of Houston in 1969, becoming a successful lawyer, the Houston City Attorney, and a Harris County Commissioner.

"You don’t know what’s in front of you, but we sure knew what was behind us, and we’re glad those days are past, and we don’t ever want those days to resurface and repeat themselves again," he concludes.

Gene Locke also played a role in getting an African American Studies program at UH.

Locke, Lynn Eusan, and the other students came together first demanding a Black history class, then an African American Studies Department, and 50 years after that achievement in 2018 UH actually began offering a Bachelor’s Degree in African American studies, the very program that group of kids fought for.