Crowd talking. Song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is in the background.
Chancellor Jimmy Cheek (voice over): "Today marks an important milestone in our university's history."
Chancellor Jimmy Cheek (voice over): "We today are commemorating the 50th anniversary of African American undergraduate enrollment at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville."
Chancellor Jimmy Cheek (voice over): "In 1961, on a chilly January morning, our students climbed the Hill for their 8 a.m. classes."
Chancellor Jimmy Cheek (voice over): They were starting a new semester, new faculty, new classes, new opportunities, and new challenges.
Chancellor Jimmy Cheek (voice over): But for three young students, it would be the start of a new world."
Chancellor Jimmy Cheek (voice over): Those students were Theotis Robinson Jr., Willie Mae Gillespie, and Charles Edgar Blair. Please join me in welcoming Theotis Robinson."
Applause
Theotis Robinson: One thing I can assure everyone here, when Charles and I enrolled in January of 1961, we didn't receive a standing ovation like that.
I can assure you of that.
Having just graduated from high school and believing that I should be able to sit at a lunch counter and order a hamburger and an order of french fries and a Coke assuming that I had money in my pocket to pay for it, which was not always necessarily
I joined the sit-in movement here in Knoxville. We started in June of 1960.
By July, the organization that was sponsoring the sit-in movement, took out an ad in the Sunday edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel listing a number of things that were wrong here in this city.
They included, for example, that the three church-related hospitals did not accept "Negroes" on any basis.
It listed further down that UT's undergraduate school did not accept "Negroes" although the graduate school had been desegregated some 8 years by this time.
As I read that ad that Sunday night at my family's kitchen table, I decided that this is something I could do something about.
And so I sat down, and I had just graduated from high school and was about to enroll in September at Knoxville College where I had a scholarship.
And I wrote a letter to the university applying for admission.
I didn't mention the high school that I had graduated from, which was Austin High. For those of you who are familiar with Knoxville, you know this is never to be confused with Austin East. It was Austin High (laughter).
Austin High was the only high school in Knoxville that blacks could attend. As a matter of fact, I was a plaintiff in a lawsuit to change that status.
My family and I lived closer to East High, which was 2 or 3 blocks from where we lived, and about a mile-and-a-half to two miles from Austin High.
Our neighbors on both sides were white
I didn't mention my race, I didn't mention the high school, as I said, nothing in it that indicated race at all.
But I received a letter back from the admissions office saying that they were sorry but the undergraduate school could not accept "Negroes."
Now that begs the question, how did they know, which suggests that they were screening very carefully.
Because certainly they were anticipating that at some point in time, such an application would come through.
Subsequently, I wrote another letter asking for a meeting with my parents and me with the people in the admissions office, which they granted.
We came to the university and met with these two gentlemen, Grady Atkinson, who was dean of the Graduate School, and Dale Smythe, dean of the undergraduate school
I noticed Joe Johnson was nodding his head. He remembers these two men.
We met with them, they were very cordial, very gracious, but told us that they couldn't do anything about the policy.
They wanted to know if we wanted to meet with the president of the school, Dr. Andy Holt, a name that everybody in this room has heard countless times.
We told them that we did and so they scheduled such a meeting. We met with Dr. Holt and he wanted to know why I wanted to come to the University of Tennessee.
I explained to him that I was born in Tennessee, lived all my life in Tennessee, my parents and I paid sales tax, which meant of course that we were taxpayers in the state of Tennessee.
And that by law, I had a right to attend. He said that there was nothing that he could do, but wanted to know if we wanted him to take the matter to the Board of Trustees.
We told him that we did. He responded that he couldn't assure us what the Board might do. We told him that we understood that, but that he and the Board needed to understand that if they did not change the policy we planned to sue the university over
The Board met in special session on Nov. 18, 1960. For this occasion, they also brought in the state Attorney General.
Who informed them that there was no way he could win such a lawsuit if it were in fact filed.
After discussion, the Board voted to change the policy and I was admitted and on Jan. 4, along with Willie Mae Gillespie and Charles Edgar Blair, the three of us enrolled here at the university.
Three black faces on a campus of some 15,000 students, you were rather isolated and for those who are students here, to give you a sense of how long ago that was:
For in-state students who were not living in a dorm and not on any kind of meal plan, the tuition for the year, and it was quarters then -- fall, winter and spring, was $225. (Laughter)
As they say, things change. They certainly have changed.
But it was a very interesting experience taking classes with a group of people with whom I had never taken any classes with. I had gone to a segregated high school, so all of my classmates were black.
Suddenly, all of my classmates were white. Charles and I never took a class together, although we did have one English teacher who was not too very fond of black people that we took English from in subsequent quarters.
But it was, you know, you made friendships. You had some experiences that were not necessarily positive, but you had many others that were positive.
And looking back, thinking about this and coming to today where we are now.
In 2009, according to data from 2009, the African American student enrollment in undergraduate school was approximately 9 percent, or close to 1,700 students.
A far cry from the three of us who first came.
The Hispanic population here in 2009 was 90 students, or 1.7 percent of the student enrollment.
That's someplace where we have got to make more progress.
The graduate school, as of two years ago, there were 361 African Americans enrolled in graduate programs, or roughly 6 percent of the total enrollment.
The Hispanic graduate school enrollment was 106, or 1.7 percent.
Our faculty, which is a place where we really need to make more progress, as the chancellor has already pointed out on all of these issues where we need to make progress.
2009 we had approximately 100 African American faculty, or 4 percent. Hispanic-Americans in faculty positions was 49, or roughly 2.1 percent
And in executive and management, 2009 we had some 49 African Americans in executive and management roles, or 8.8 percent, and only 4 Hispanics, period, so the percentage is negligible.
So there's a lot of work that we have to do. We have to find ways to prepare students, and it's not just at the university level, but it is in our secondary education level, so people coming out of our high schools are ready to do college work.
They have to be prepared to do what has to be done here, which you will attest to, those of you who are students.
But we still have a way to go and so, with apologies to Robert Frost, because I'm going to change a line or two in one of his famous poems.
Rocky Top is lovely, dark and deep, but we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep. (APPLAUSE)