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Champion of freedom
By Mellisa Blackburn
mblackb4@mscd.edu

Photo by William Blackburn • wblackb2@mscd.edu Rachel B. Noel’s hands are youthful, not showing the wrinkles, callouses or scars that might be expected from such an illustrious career.

Rachel Louise Bassette Noel stood up on Apr. 25, 1968, during a meeting of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education, and proposed that the segregated schools unite so every child could receive equal education and be exposed to a different way of life.

“The city was ripe for embracing this open way of living and of working, and certainly of education,” Noel said. “I found there were other people – white people, blue people -– who carried the ideas of equality, and you could be judged on your merits and not on the color of your skin.”

Noel is an 89-year-old mild and unassuming grandmother of five.

She is glad for company this beautiful Tuesday afternoon, sunlight streaming through the large windows in her Denver apartment. Pictures crowd the walls of her spacious living room. Awards are intermingled with trinkets from Africa and other far-away places. Books cram her shelves, between overflowing plants and memories of her past. She doesn’t see herself as a visionary or a fighter, but the changes she’s left in her wake say otherwise.

Noel was “very gentle, very modest, very thoughtful, inspirational but very effective in terms of getting things done. She did not hesitate to fight for things she believed in. Metro, as an institution, was privileged to have her as faculty,” said Ali Thobhani, a former African and African American Studies Department chair and retired Metro professor.

As the first black woman on the Denver Public School Board of Education, Noel headed the effort to integrate Denver schools. Her drive led to the Noel Resolution, which called for the desegregation of the school system. The resolution caused furor among board members and citizens alike, and amid threatening calls and hate mail it finally passed in 1970.

“I ran for the board of education so they would have a black voice and integrate the schools,” Noel said.

Segregation was a daily part of her life growing up in Hampton, Va. Noel remembers the beautiful beaches along the coast that attracted many visitors, but she also recalled that her family had to go to the beach set aside for black people.

“That’s what I had grown up with – you were separate, and you didn’t know how the white people felt, and they certainly didn’t know how you felt. Many were kind. The sentiment overall was not… because we were not good enough. If you get right down to it, we were not good enough to go to schools where there was white people,” Noel said.

Despite discrimination, Noel’s family placed a heavy emphasis on education and civil rights. Her grandfather was a former slave who founded an elementary school, and her father was a lawyer who advocated for black suffrage.

In 1971, Noel became the first black woman to chair what was then known as the Department of Afro-American Studies at Metro.

“When we included black studies in the college, that put it on the same level as any other kind of studies. (There are) not many places that have black studies that you can major in,” Noel said. “It’s not some stories about some people who made some contributions … I wanted people to know that because we were black we didn’t have less worth or value. We were not to be judged by the color of our skins.”

After she retired in 1980, Wilton Flemon, the first chair of the African American Studies Department and a Metro chemistry professor, founded the Woodrow Wilson/Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Professorship. Every year the program brings in a distinguished member of the community to head a program of classes and seminars.

“Rachel Noel and other local African-Americans epitomize excellence in education and are role models for all students at Metro,” Flemon said. This program is about putting those people in the spotlight and giving them a chance to spread their knowledge.

Noel said she is honored that the professorship is in place and that it has brought several people who have been wonderful in the position.

This year’s Noel Professor is Callie Crossley, producer and director of the critically acclaimed PBS documentary series “Eyes on the Prize,” who will present a series of lectures and workshops on Feb. 5-7 at Metro and in the Denver metropolitan area.

After a lifetime of achievement, Noel is moving soon to Oakland, Calif., to be with her daughter Angela for a while.

“We were brought up in a close family and my going with her reflects the culture of that and the fact that I’m getting to be an old lady and she thinks that I should be by her. I may (miss Denver), but it’s an air flight away,” Noel said.

She might miss Denver, but she won’t be forgotten by the city she changed. A lifetime of fighting for equal rights isn’t given up that easily.