![](https://utincontext.la.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/East-Mall-wide-views-documenting-before-the-modifications-2022-136092.jpg)
We Are Texas East Mall Project
The first cohort of Black undergraduates, who refer to themselves as the Precursors,
started classes in 1956.
![](https://utincontext.la.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CCI_Foster_Wilson_Barbara_L_Portrait_009-683x1024.jpg)
Barbara L. Foster Wilson
Barbara L. Foster Wilson entered UT in 1960.
“I didn’t fear it, because I knew I wanted to go to school, and I knew that I had to come here, to UT… I always kept it in the back of my mind because [my parents] wanted all of us to go to college. And I never really thought about trying to go somewhere else after then, I just wanted to make sure I kept my grades so that I could stay here.”
Interview
Photographed and interviewed on May 15, 2022 at the Moody School of Communications, UT Austin, Austin, Texas.