There are many lions of the Civil Rights Movement—including those in the American West, miles from the movement's southern vortex—who labored to end institutional segregation.

In 1965, Rachel B. Noel, retired chair and founder of Metro's African American Studies Department, became the first African American elected to the Denver Public School board and the first black woman ever to serve elected office in Colorado. On April 25, 1968, she presented the DPS board with the Noel Resolution, which asked the superintendent to develop a plan to integrate Denver's public schools. Under a cloud of threats to Noel and her family, the resolution passed in 1970.

The U.S. Supreme Court would eventually echo her position in its landmark decision of 1973, Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1, making Denver the first city outside the American South to receive instructions by the country's highest court to address segregation with school busing.

In honoring Noel this past December with the Anti-Defamation League's 2004 Civil Rights Award, Sheldon Steinhauser, associate professor of sociology and former League director, remarked that Noel has "played a leading role in ensuring that our city, our state, our nation delivers on the American dream."

Among Noel's other accomplishments, she holds degrees from Hampton and Fisk Universities and an honorary doctorate from the University of Denver, was appointed in 1976 by former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm to serve on the University of Colorado Board of Regents, was elected to that same board in 1978 for a six-year term, served as a member of the Chancellor Advisory Committee for the Health Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Denver and was a commissioner for the Denver Housing Authority.

Noel, who was born in 1918, has lived to see a Denver middle school named in her honor as well as Metro State's Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Professorship, which brings distinguished scholars and artists to campus to lecture and perform. In October, Metro welcomed human rights activist Naomi Tutu, the daughter of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as the 11th Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Professor. Other luminaries, including jazz singer Dianne Reeves, Harvard Professor Cornel West, pianist Billy Taylor, author Iyanla Vanzant, the late actor and civil rights activist Ossie Davis, and executive editor of Ebony magazine Lerone Bennett Jr., have been Noel Professors.

Rachel Noel's other honors

• Served on the Advisory Board of the United States Civil Rights Commission
• Earned the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award in 1990
• Inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1996
• Named among Top 100 Citizens of the Century in a list compiled by the Rocky Mountain News in 2000

Editor's Note: Now 86 years old, Rachel Noel has been in declining health for several years and was unavailable for comment.