![](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.
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Eugenia A. Gaines
Eugenia A. Gaines entered UT in 1957.
“They brought us to this this testing room and we all took the test. I don’t know if it was a choice, ‘Did you want to go? Or did you not want to go?’ I don’t remember. I just know that I was one of the ones that did come. I was one of the ones to pass the test. I was one of the ones that was said that you can go to UT in September. You know, no entrance exam, no nothing. I just passed the test and I was enrolled.”
Interview
Photographed and interviewed on May 15, 2022 at the Moody School of Communications, UT Austin, Austin, Texas.