- Rachel Noel was a visionary and she was fierce.

- It was time for the school board to change, and our democracy to be represented by more than elderly white men.

- There is nothing that you can't accomplish if you choose to be involved.

- She took a big risk so that other people could have a better life.

- She believed that education was not a privilege, it was a right.

[dramatic music] - [Reynelda] As strong and enduring as the Rocky Mountains they stood beside, as visionary as the views of the Grand Plains they looked across, the women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame are trailblazers whose work has improved and enriched our lives.

They are teachers, scientists, ranchers, leaders in business, education, religion, and the arts.

Women who have been recognized for their many contributions to our state, our country, and the world.

I'm Reynelda Muse, and these are the stories of Great Colorado Women.

- I would describe Rachel Noel as fiercely devoted and fiercely determined.

- She speaks softly and carries a big stick.

- Because that's the kind of quiet, gentle giant that she was.

- She was totally committed to making sure that excellence is the standard, and education is the vehicle for pursuing your excellence.

- Rachel was a beautiful person in every way.

And she was one of the most persuasive public servants I've ever known.

- There was a need to have representation that looked like the rest of us.

- It was time for the school board to change, not only its policies, it needed more board members of a certain understanding and sensitivity about diversity, and equality, and justice.

And it needed more Rachel Noels.

- Rachel was the first person of color to run for the board.

She was a powerful force to be reckoned with.

- She sought equal opportunity to education, regardless of people's backgrounds.

And that issue is still front and center today.

- She had compassion, she sought justice.

And it's important anywhere to have voices like that, to help inspire people, and guide people to try to make a difference.

- I wasn't doing anything for myself, that it was for our people.

My heart and soul is in that.

- She wasn't afraid to kind of step out and say, "We're doing this because it's right."

And I think young girls need that kind of a role model, even today.

- She came from an extraordinary background.

- When Mom was growing up, the patriarch in the Bassette family was her grandfather, A.W.E.

Bassette Sr., he was born in slavery.

He was eight years old when slavery ended, and he went on to pass the Virginia Bar.

- He founded a school for recently freed slaves.

- And instilled in his children and their children that there's excellence to be pursued and attained, to think of your family always, and also your people.

- Today in Hampton, Virginia, the Bassette School is still carrying a name reflective of that past history.

- [Angela] My mom was born January 15th, 1918, in Hampton, Virginia.

- [Edmond] My mother was very proud of being a Virginian.

- Hampton was a town of about 6,000 people.

It was a town in segregation, but there was a shining light of culture, and truth, and excellence at Hampton Institute.

It was a cultural center, a private college.

The staff was integrated.

There was no segregation at Hampton.

- Rachel was very grateful to have had the opportunity to have her own education.

- My mother got her degree in English and social studies.

Hampton was a good beginning, but Mom really found her way professionally at Fisk.

That's where she got her master's degree, but I think she got a chance to not only engage herself intellectually, but also to explore with compassion, the social issues of the day.

- The values that she learned from her family.

She believed that education was not a privilege, it was a right.

- It is right for all of us as human beings to be together, to work together, to learn together, to be better people, really, because of that.

[jazz music] - My parents got married.

My father went off to war, he was in World War II.

The way he tells it, my mom was like this waif from Hampton, and he was a big man on campus.

And they were both excellent students, both tops in their class.

- Dad might've been a great guy, but Mom was the chief find, and he was probably the luckiest guy on the face of the Earth and he knew it.

- [Angela] You know, they were a match there, and a great match in life.

- My father was a surgeon drafted out of his residency.

Because the war was segregated, it was an insult to the Black soldiers not to be able to fight.

Men like my father, I'm sure, made the best of it.

- While he was gone, my mother worked with Dr. Johnson in the Fisk Institute of Race Relations.

They published a monthly magazine that was a summary of the trends in racial relations and events.

- I was so fortunate to have Dr. Johnson at Fisk, who is an eminent Black sociologist, as my mentor and as my teacher.

- Her first professional job coming out of Fisk, she worked at the settlement house.

Dr. Johnson found her that job.

My mom's interest in Girl Scouting started when she started a troop there.

It teaches women an understanding of who they are, and what they want to be and do in life, and empowers them in making that decision.

So I think it was an appeal for Mom of Girl Scouting that was longstanding.

She joined the National Board of Girl Scouting at a time when Girl Scouting had decided they needed to be more diverse.

Mom was on a special committee that was trying to transform Girl Scouting not just along racial issues.

They took the handbook to make sure that every girl of every circumstance could find what she needed in that book.

They also looked at the uniform and requirements, and relaxed them for girls who maybe didn't have a uniform.

They wanted to make Girl Scouting open and available to everybody.

- Post-World War II, everyone was aware that things were going to change.

- And when my Dad comes back from war, they traveled across the country to find a place where my father could practice medicine.

- And Dr. Noel, an accomplished physician, had a hard time being recognized for his skills and his professionalism.

- Rose Memorial Hospital was being built when my father was arriving, and the Jewish doctors who were building it were affirmatively interested in having a diverse medical staff.

And my father was arriving serendipitously at the right moment.

He ended up being the first Black doctor with hospital privileges through this position at New Rose, the newest hospital in the country.

I don't believe that they thought Denver was some kind of euphoric place, and that there would be no segregation or discrimination.

The trip certainly corrected any misunderstandings they might've had.

- It certainly wasn't devoid of some of the problems that existed everywhere else in the country.

When Rachel Noel and her husband, Dr. Noel, moved to Denver, they lived in the Five Points community.

It's where most Black people who lived in Denver lived.

Just about that time in the early 60s, Black people did start to try to move into the Park Hill neighborhood, and they encountered some difficulty.

There were subtle messages about where Black people could live and where they couldn't.

Housing discrimination was very prevalent in those days because of racial bias covenants, and the actions of realtors.

- And the banks are redlining, keeping Blacks from moving, essentially, east to Colorado Boulevard.

- That invisible red line, if you will.

I think the redlining was happening quite a bit in Denver.

I know my father being Black and my mother white, we tried to buy in Park Hill and it just wasn't available to a mixed couple.

- But they also encountered a whole group of Park Hill neighbors, white families who began to take a stand and say, "You know, this is not right, "and we have to take a stand in support "of people being able to live wherever they want."

You went to the school that was in your neighborhood.

And it just so happened at all the Black people lived in these particular neighborhoods.

They decided to build a new school under the pretense that it would address the overcrowding, but it was very coincidental that the new school was built right in the heart of the Black community.

- Barrett got built out of that school board need to continue to segregate.

So the day it opened, it was all Black.

- Meanwhile, there were white children across Colorado Boulevard, crowded in a school that needed relief, but they were not sent to Barrett.

- Parkdale was a crowded school.

That beginning of the effort to de-segregate Park Hill and to promote integration, that began a movement, which eventually led to why Rachel ran for the school board and was able to be successful because the community, the allies in that Park Hill community recognized what was going on was wrong.

- She was moved by compassion, and she was also moved by political savvy.

It was in her DNA.

And if it was about education, then you really got her.

- Nothing but the best for our children.

We won't have a better world unless that happens.

- [Angela] She felt there was a need to have representation that looked like the rest of us.

- Well, almost all elected officials were white men.

- It was time for the school board to change, not only its policies, but in this instance, it needed more board members of a certain understanding and sensitivity about diversity, and equality, and justice.

And it needed more Rachel Noels.

- Rachel was the first person of color to run for the board.

- I'm sure that Black people didn't feel they had much voice until Rachel was elected to the school board.

- When she got on the school board, you know, then she really was sweet, but fierce about what needed to happen.

- She was there to make change.

And that's what she was starting to do from, I'm sure, from day one.

- [Woman] And she was aware that many of our schools were suffering.

- The community is aware of this segregation too.

And clearly aware that the schools that are primarily Black are not getting the same resources.

They're not getting the same, kids are not getting an equal opportunity.

- And when she walked into the schools and visited, then she knew that and she used the data we had, but it was about the resources available to the children and the families.

- The more inexperienced teachers were all teaching in the Black schools, and the turnover rates, all of that kind of data is what led her to understand the inequities that existed in the difference between the schools that Black children attended and the schools that other children attended.

- She wanted to be sure that things were equitable so that if a school was deficient in something, we need to be sure that the opportunities are there for all kids to be successful.

- If there were white parents and white kids in schools, they would demand the kinds of resources, and attention, and high quality that all schools should have.

So she didn't set out at the beginning to de-segregate.

She came to that later, when she was convinced the only way to get Black kids and Brown kids access to the resources and to the best education was to get them into the white schools, because that's where that good education was.

- [Woman] Rachel met Dr. King a couple of times.

- [Edmond] She was in a smaller group meeting after he had made his speech at Montview Presbyterian Church.

And she had a question, "What can people like me do at our local level?"

- Dr. King said to her, "If you are in a position to have an impact "on the lives of other people, and you have an opportunity, "you should take it.

"If you can change the course of history, "you have an obligation to do that."

- I'm sure that was in the back of Mom's mind always.

And they were in the throes of doing that work, when Martin Luther king Jr. was assassinated.

- After he was assassinated, she reflected back on what he'd said to her, and realizing that as a member of the Board of Education, you have a platform from which to speak and an opportunity to change the course of what happens in the school district.

- Dr. King's death created an urgency.

It ended up that Mom and Ed Benton wrote the Noel Resolution and decided to present it at a board meeting.

In essence, what the Noel Resolution was, was a statement of the problem, the discrimination and segregated state of the Denver Public School system.

- The Noel Resolution was controversial because it said, "We are going to put children on buses, "and we are going to move them around the district "to integrate the schools," and that's 1968.

South High School was the site.

- Before I went to the school board meetings in all those controversial, terrible times, before I left home, I asked the Lord for strength, because I didn't know how I was gonna be able to make it, but made it.

- And the vote was five to two, to pass that particular resolution.

- And the minute they passed this resolution, all hell broke loose.

- [Edmond] When the superintendent comes back with a plan that has limited busing, the city erupts.

- There were families around the city who said, "Yes, this is something that we need to do."

But for some folks, they were terrified.

"If I have to sit next to a Black child or a Brown child, "my kid is going to be hurt by that."

And so you saw the blatant racism as folks upped and moved.

- It was a time when the city changed a lot.

White flight was real.

When the resolution passed, the hate mail and the threats that her family endured, it was just unimaginable.

- [Edmond] Mom went to meetings by herself, and people followed her at home to make sure she was safe.

We had heard the FBI was watching our house, or there's some kind of surveillance.

- I knew that it was a serious situation going on.

- It was scary, it was very frightening, you know, when the buses were bombed and things like that.

- That just made her more determined about what needed to happen for our kids, but it was hard.

- The 1969 spring is when we have school board elections.

There were campaigns, "Save our neighborhood schools."

"We don't want to integrate."

"Stop the busing."

And those were platforms that folks ran on.

Two gentlemen in particular, ran on the "save our neighborhood schools" platform.

And they were elected.

- So now, day one, first board meeting.

There's a new majority, four to three against busing, which means against the plan.

And the very first official action the new board takes is to rescind the plan.

- It was a big blow to the community, to Rachel.

- The Black community was very discouraged because they thought Denver was different.

- Legally what it did was the plans could have no legal effect and we would go back to whatever the status quo was before that vote.

- It was heartbreaking, I know, but they were determined.

"Uh-uh, we've come too far, we're not turning back."

And so in order to make sure that what Dr. Noel had put in place, what the board had voted on a year previously, it was necessary for someone to file a lawsuit.

Lylaus Keyes and her husband decided that they would be part of an eight-family group, and they filed the lawsuit, and it ended up going to the Supreme Court.

- The racial motive of preserving discrimination was patent because all of this study had been done leading up to the decision and to rescind on it as your first action was clearly a bad motive.

The board lost every motion, every stage of the case for 15 years.

But in that first three months, they lost quickly going up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

- Four days before school was to start, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the district to integrate Park Hill.

- [Edmond] That put the plan back in effect in the fall of 1969, and the litigation continued from there.

- There were boards of education along the way that weren't committed to it, the way Rachel had been with the Noel Resolution.

And so there were mixed feelings about how successful the court-ordered busing and desegregation was in schools.

- The court continued to supervise the Denver Public Schools till 1995.

So it was a 26-year case.

The sad thing is that the schools re-segregated almost immediately, and they're more segregated now than they were then.

- The lasting effect was, we didn't take advantage of an opportunity.

We retrenched perhaps even further.

And we're still finding our way out of that hole we created 50 years later.

She was disappointed, hurt that the school system had retrenched so badly, but on balance, what happened too, was that a whole, several new generations of people, Black and white, joined forces from that difficult failure.

The school system may not have remedied itself, but neighborhoods like Park Hill showed the people who do desire to do the right thing, can and will live together.

- And of course, it's unjust to deny a particular culture or peoples their right in the sun.

- And that's what was lacking in our education anyway, is to see ourselves and know ourselves.

- For the society as a whole, we all should know about the history and culture of all the different people who make up the American experience.

And before Black studies departments were around, it was as if that culture, those achievements didn't exist.

- And we weren't sure because of the small Black community that we had in Denver, that we would really have anyone that would focus like that.

- The Departments of Ethnic Studies or African-American Studies are part of shining the light on the truth.

- Keeping the tradition of the African-American experience alive.

- But there was a major fight going on in academia throughout the country about the appropriateness of it.

So here, you have a relatively brand new college already beginning to embrace this concept ahead of everybody else, led by this amazing woman.

- I think that the program is following along the way we had set it out in the beginning.

- [Woman] She would really work very hard to fight for that department.

- So she does that for nine years.

- And I was lucky enough to be in one of her classes.

She was an excellent professor, and she pulled a lot out of you.

And we learned a lot about each other and a lot about her, because she shared her journey.

- I loved it when I would come home to Denver and found out that my mom and the students that she was working with were raising the same issues that we were raising.

It's like your mom and you are out battling for justice together, I loved it.

- I'm not gonna say that she [laughs] probably didn't have to move mountains to get the faculty to agree to make it into a department, but she was successful, because not only did she accomplish it, but it has flourished in this university today.

If it wasn't for the leadership of Rachel Noel, that wouldn't have happened.

- [Angela] Teaching at Metro, she really enjoyed doing that.

- Metro has recognized Mom's contribution and her legacy.

- [Angela] The university created a distinguished chair in her honor.

- [Edmond] The Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professorship that just celebrated its 40th year, and Metro's commitment to that, our family is very appreciative.

- If someone knows where they came from and appreciates it, what a different way they walk in the world.

She could see it from her personal frame, and certainly from a political and educational frame.

- What was happening in our state colleges and universities with regard to access and to equal opportunity for kids of color, again, was just what Rachel had discovered in Denver Public Schools.

- [Man] I think there's no question in my mind that that was on the Governor's mind when he appointed her, someone who could begin to come in and address those issues.

- [Woman] Governor Dick Lamm called upon her when a vacancy occurred.

- [Edmond] The fact that that person could be first Black on the Board of Regents was a clear note by Governor Lamm.

- As a professor in a college, she knew what our students were facing and what they needed, especially in our flagship institution, where it was hard for kids of color to get accepted, to make it, the atmosphere was tough there.

- She is now, a force to be reckoned with, and she is elected the first African-American to serve on the Board of Regents.

- She was quietly, but assertively pushing the university administration to try to put in place a program that would support African-American students and Latino students.

- And that same timeframe, Governor Lamm was appointing me to the Governing Board for CSU.

It was unique that we were both on the board.

And then, for a period of a year, it was unique that we were both presidents of those two boards at the same time.

- [Man] "Ebony" magazine decided to come down and do a story on Rachel and Buddy, as this very unique mother/son combination in America.

- [Edmond] We appreciated the magnitude of the moment that our community was being represented in this way.

And we happened to be the two people doing it.

And then, we happened to be mother and son.

- Within Denver Public Schools, new buildings are named usually for people who are deceased, but as they were building schools in the far northeast, they really began to look at minority leaders and people in education.

When the school was named for Rachel, she was obviously very much alive.

And the night of the dedication was a wonderful experience.

The auditorium was full of all these little kids who are in the middle school and singing Rachel's praises, and doing little skits and things, and she's there.

And she's able to soak all this in.

- We, again, don't know where this effort to create a more perfect union will be 100 years from now.

My hope is that 100 years from now, people can look back and look at what were the critical milestones that led us to the point that all people are accepted equally, that this will be one of the stories that they will be reminded of.

- We're a great country, but it could be greater.

And when there is a problem that our country has, it's our problem.

And let us figure out how to solve that.

And that's what she did for me.

- She was an incredible leader.

And it was because she listened, a careful listener to what you had to say.

- That led to her being on the school board.

It led her to start teaching.

- [Woman] Rachel received so many awards and recognitions, and she was very humble.

- My mother's lasting effect was the change she made in the hearts of people that she encountered.

- She was one of the sweetest, nicest people I've ever met.

And she was my role model.

- She wanted to be sure that people get taken care of.

So she was always a giver, always a giver.

- What I learned from Rachel Noel was you stood up when your name was called.

When it was time for you to stand up for your community, you answered the call.

- Because I believe our strength is unity.

I truly believe that.

We can't lose that human knitting together, that love brings, that understanding brings for other people, and that you can come together and work together.

And I know that we can be strong when we do that.