![](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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Freeman L. Andrews
Freeman L. Andrews entered UT in 1959.
“My first day in classes, I was floored by the number of people in a large lecture hall… If you had 20 or 30 people in a lecture hall that was in a class, that was a lot. But to have more than 100 people in a lecture hall, that really floored me. And the vastness of the campus. And the coldness of the environment. Because you had been reduced to a number, seating charts, you’re going to sit in a seat number. And so, you weren’t a person anymore. It just seemed like you had been reduced a little bit over on that first day.”
Interview
Photographed and interviewed on May 15, 2022 at the Moody School of Communications, UT Austin, Austin, Texas.