When Charles Miles arrived at The University of Texas campus as a freshman in 1956, his first stop was the small cluster of dormitories for black students on the outskirts of campus, across from Texas Memorial Stadium.
As he carried his belongings into the converted army barracks, he thought of life in segregated Hearne, Texas, where he'd gone to school in old World War II barracks for several years after the wooden schoolhouse for African-Americans burned down. Despite the University's best attempts to make its first black undergraduates feel like outsiders on campus, Miles realized it felt somewhat like home.