As progress continues, Baylor, Waco still face historic racial injustices
Linda Lewis, resident of Waco since 1946, said that growing up in Waco, she was warned not to cross the Brazos River without an adult, go downtown or ride the bus alone.
“My grandfather didn’t believe that we should get in the back, so we just didn’t ride the bus,” Lewis said.
She said the Baylor campus was referred to as a “Sundown Town” while she was growing up, an area where Black citizens were warned not to be after sundown.
Her pen pal and friend, John Westbrook, was one of Baylor’s first Black students and the first Black athlete to play for both Baylor and the Southwest Conference. Westbrook often told Lewis stories of blatant aggression and racism on campus through letters throughout the late 1960s.
“His father was a Baptist preacher, and he thought he would open doors,” Lewis said.
While Baylor has made progressive steps since then, including the launch of the Commission on Historic Campus Representations within Baylor, it is undeniable that this history played a role in the early days of the university.
Baylor University was chartered in 1845, the same year Frederick Douglass released his famous story of slave brutality and freedom in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and just 16 years before the Civil War began in 1861.
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