The history of Amarillo’s influential men and women is written throughout the city, within the names of neighborhood subdivisions (Wolflin, Bivins) and on the names of elementary schools (Alice Landergin, Gene Howe). You can find that history on street signs, too. Prominent north-to-south streets like Hayden and Hughes originally had other names, but were rechristened a century ago to honor some of the city’s earliest law enforcement officers.
Those historic names are familiar, but few locals know the stories behind these white pioneers. Even less recognized are the stories of Amarillo’s influential Black residents. On the north side of town, Amarilloans encounter names like J.O. Wyatt, Charles Warford and Bones Hooks, but not everyone recalls the enormous contributions of those individuals—whether to Amarillo’s Black community or the city as a whole.
“These stories are being lost,” says David Lovejoy, a longtime local radio broadcaster and the current first vice president of the Amarillo Branch NAACP. “I learned my history in the home. That’s where I was taught. I learned a lot at the feet of my grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and older cousins.”
We asked Lovejoy and other local leaders to tell those stories, helping contextualize the legacies left by prominent historical figures in Amarillo’s African American community.
Jerry Calloway
Known as the first Black resident of Amarillo, Jerry Calloway arrived in the city when he was 18 years old. He came to Amarillo as an employee of the white Callaway family, who settled here in 1888. (Note: In the 19th century, many slaves ended up taking the family names of their owners. A generation after slavery ended, Amarillo history records Jerry’s name being spelled with an O, while the Callaway family spelled their name with an A.) Another member of the family—the wealthy heiress Melissa Dora Callaway Oliver-Eakle—eventually followed her brothers to Amarillo.
In those early days, the city wasn’t known for being welcoming to people of color, but Calloway’s connection to a prominent family offered him protection. So did his size and demeanor. According to historian Paul Howard Carlson’s Amarillo: The Story of a Western Town, Jerry was “a giant of a man.”
Claudia Stuart
Local educator and author Claudia Stuart says Jerry used his size and position to stand up for the local Black community as the city began to diversify. “Because Jerry was the first, he became the protector of others,” says Stuart, who coauthored the book African Americans in Amarillo with Jean Stuntz.
When Black families arrived in town, many women would get jobs as domestic help for wealthy families. Jerry was known to carry a whip and would keep an eye on these women as they traveled from their homes in “The Flats”—the Black community north of downtown—to their workplaces at homes and local hotels. As local Klan activity picked up in the 1920s, white men would sometimes harass those women. The jeering would stop as soon as Calloway showed up.
“People knew Jerry. They knew his temperament and knew he was protected by this pioneer family,” Stuart says. She notes in her book that Calloway was widely recognized as “the bravest man in Amarillo.”
Later in his life, Calloway worked for the Amarillo Hotel and, with other Black leaders, helped start Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where he was known as “Brother Jerry.”
Bones Hooks
Born in 1867 to former slaves, Mathew “Bones” Hooks—so named because of his skinny frame—first arrived in the area with a reputation for being one of the best horse breakers in the West, attracting the attention of legendary figures like Charles Goodnight. One of the first Black cowboys to work alongside white ranch hands, Bones initially spent time on a Clarendon ranch, where he helped establish one of the first Black churches in West Texas. In 1900, though, he moved to Amarillo, first working as a hotel porter and then for the Santa Fe Railroad.
Thanks to his legend, Bones rose to prominence within the city’s Black and white communities. In the 1920s, he used those connections to create the North Heights addition, a community designed for Amarillo’s growing Black population.
When Bones had arrived, Amarillo had barely a dozen Black residents. But during the oil boom in the 1920s, many more families arrived and housing grew scarce. Black residents either lived in “the Flats”—an area of four square blocks near the railroad tracks—or in the servants’ quarters of wealthy white neighborhoods. To give these families more housing options, Bones worked with civic leader Lee Bivins and developer A.P. McSwain to purchase the higher land north of Amarillo, which he eventually developed into the North Heights.
Floyd Anthony
“I would say that he is the father of the Black community here in Amarillo,” says Floyd Anthony, a longtime Amarillo resident and former president of the local chapter of the NAACP. “As I was told, he would come in on cattle drives and they would stop and water their horses at Wild Horse Lake. He used to look up the hill there and saw all that land. He got [city leaders] to allot land for Blacks to build houses.”
He also played the role of goodwill ambassador. While Cal Farley’s Maverick Club was only open to underprivileged white children in those early years, Bones founded the Dogie Club to keep young Black boys out of trouble and teach them life skills. He was a charter member of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society. He became the first African American to sit on a Potter County Grand Jury.
And he was known worldwide for giving out single white carnations to visiting dignitaries, to the families of deceased pioneers, and even to world leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Newspaper accounts suggest he distributed more than 500 flowers in his lifetime—often accompanied by letters identifying himself as “Spokesman for the Colored Citizens of Amarillo.” His historical papers include dozens of letters of gratitude and commendation from people all over the world.
“He was so widely respected by the community. A lot of Blacks didn’t have the status he had,” says Anthony. “By doing what he did, he opened up a lot of opportunities for African Americans, because he helped the white community look more favorably upon the Black community in the era of Jim Crow.”
Bones passed away in 1951 at the age of 83. In 1976, the city named Bones Hooks park in the North Heights in his honor.
Mary Lou Harris Hazelrigg
Mrs. Hazelrigg grew up on her grandfather’s farm near Mount Pleasant, Texas, but moved to Amarillo in 1940 with her husband, Alexander. The couple spent the next 20 years working as janitors for the City of Amarillo, and then did private domestic work in the evenings for local families. They retired in 1960.
In 1965, the couple began hosting Christmas parties in their 900-square-foot home at 206 N. Madison St. They invited underprivileged children from the North Heights community, recognizing that those families were likely too poor to give Christmas gifts. The first year, a dozen children attended and received gifts from the Hazelriggs. Even more came the next year. In the following years, the giveaway grew exponentially. Churches and businesses began contributing and, at one point, as many as 700 children would come to the Hazelrigg’s home to receive toys before the parties moved to the North Heights school.
Keith Grays
“I grew up at 202 N. Jefferson,” says Keith Grays, who serves in the music ministry at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church and owns In This Moment, a downtown event venue. “I used to walk one block over, across the alley, to Mrs. Hazelrigg’s house. I would get there and stand in line then go in the front door, through the living room, and out the back door and she would have a toy for you. She was an amazing woman.”
Society often associates philanthropy with wealth, but Grays says Mrs. Hazelrigg showed him that the purest philanthropy comes from a heart for others rather than financial resources. “She was our philanthropist. She had a lot of love,” he says. Grays points out that today’s successful Northside Toy Drive has roots in her legacy. “That vision was written with Mary Hazelrigg.”
In the late 1960s, she lobbied the City for a park on a vacant half-block in her neighborhood, and eventually convinced the Parks and Recreation Board to establish one, complete with trees and playground equipment. Mary Hazelrigg Park, at Northwest Fourth Avenue and Jefferson Street, is now located right across from her former home.
Hazelrigg was named the Amarillo Globe-News Woman of the Year in 1982—the first African American to earn that honor—and passed away in 1990.
Dr. Melvin and Kathlyn Hines
After Dr. Melvin Hines and his wife, Kathlyn, moved to Amarillo in 1937, he broke ground as the first African-American dentist accepted into the Amarillo Dental Society. His family soon rose to prominence in the North Heights. He served as a trustee of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church and became a charter member of the Amarillo branch of the NAACP.
Linda and Alphonso Vaughn
“He was the epitome of what could be for an African American,” says Alphonso Vaughn, a past NAACP president and current Potter County Commissioner. “This was a man who had been one of the first African Americans to be admitted to his dental school. He meant a lot to this community—he was a man who had prestige but was still a man of the people. He believed in serving his community, he and his wife.”
His wife was a teacher. Kathlyn Hines eventually became the first African-American member of the Amarillo Teachers Association and the city’s first Black Girl Scout leader. Beyond that, she was known for giving music lessons in her home and leading music at Mount Zion. “Sister Hines was the musician when I attended [Mount Zion] as a little boy,” Alphonso says.
Linda Vaughn, a longtime local educator who was recently honored as the 2021 Amarillo Globe-News Woman of the Year, remembers the Hines’ home being one of the most beautiful in the neighborhood. “People were always going in and out,” she says. “I heard my mother talking about going to Christmas teas at the Hines’ home. It was a social place to be. When you have a community when everyone is working together and building community, it becomes like family.”
The home still stands at 14th and Hughes.
Having a Black dentist was vital to the community, Alphonso says. “During the earlier days, African American people were not treated with as much respect as they should have been if they had to go to a white doctor or dentist.”
Dr. Hines practiced dentistry for 50 years, retiring not long before his death in 1988. Hines Memorial Park, located along North Ong between Northwest 18th and 20th streets, near the Warford Community Center, is named for the family.
Ruby Lewis (Lady Cool Breeze)
Born in 1922, Ruby Lewis was the first Black radio disc jockey in the Texas Panhandle as well as the first female in that position. Her radio career began in the 1950s and lasted until she retired in 1987. “A woman like Ruby Lewis, she had two strikes against her,” says broadcaster David Lovejoy. “She was of color and she was a woman. But she didn’t let those obstacles deter her message. She was told several times ‘They’re not going to hire you. They won’t let you do that.’ But Ruby didn’t back down from a challenge.”
David Lovejoy
Her first job was at KAMQ-AM in 1954, where she played jazz and R&B music. Eventually landing on KGNC, Lewis applied her mellow voice to music, news, and even hosted a half-hour theater drama on weeknights. Though their careers didn’t overlap, Lovejoy remembers listening to Lady Cool Breeze during his childhood, and that influence drew him into his own radio career. “She felt comfortable in every corner of the community—black or white, poor or rich. She covered every aspect of the media. She was a broadcasting giant in this state,” he says.
She was even a ground-breaking leader before her radio career. As a young woman, Ruby Lewis became one of the first Black employees of the downtown Woolworth’s department store, working the counter and waiting on white patrons. Lovejoy remembers hearing stories about how she applied for the job multiple times—facing rejection after rejection—until they hired her. “That was a chance to show that if you’re good enough and you work hard, you can’t deny someone because of color,” Lovejoy says. “She broke the barrier and was an exemplary employee.”
Ruby Lewis was a member of Carter Chapel CME Church for more than six decades. She passed away in 2016.
Silas C. Patten
Known as one of the first North Heights residents to own a car, Silas C. Patten came to Amarillo from Houston and, in 1925, began serving as the principal of the Frederick Douglass School—the city’s first school for Black students. He was also a pastor and founded the church that later became Johnson Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Frederick Douglass school was located near the railroad tracks on the 100 block of Harrison. Linda Vaughn says her foster mother went to school there. “It was the only place African American kids could go,” Vaughn says.
The community knew Patten as “Professor Patten.” At the time, the Frederick Douglass school only served elementary-age children, Vaughn says. “Professor Patten thought ‘We’ve got to do something about this.’”
So in 1928, Patten donated his family home in the North Heights, at 18th and Hughes, to become the Patten School, the first high school in the entire Texas Panhandle for Black students. The road to the four-room school wasn’t yet paved, but “parents got their kids there,” Vaughn says. S.C. Patten acted as principal of the Patten School until the original Carver school opened in 1947.
“If you had a school in the community, then you had community development,” says Linda’s husband, Alphonso. “Everything revolved around the school.”
Linda says Professor Patten believed that every child needed to receive as much education as possible. “That was his goal and why
he gave so much back to the community.” She and Alphonso still attend Patten’s church, Johnson Chapel AME. “He was very influential in the community.”
Unfortunately, the building housing the Patten school and home no longer exist. A parking lot for North Heights Church of Christ now covers that original location.
Charles E. Warford
Charles Warford and his single mother, Nellie Parker, moved to Amarillo in 1937, just in time for him to become one of the original members of Bones Hooks’ Dogie Club. Warford graduated from the Patten School before joining the Navy, where he served on a destroyer during World War II. After the war, Warford attended mortuary school in Houston, then returned to Amarillo in 1962 to found Warford Mortuary. That business is still open today as the oldest continuously operated African-American business in the city.
Freda Powell, Amarillo’s Mayor Pro Tem and first Black councilwoman, is the general manager of the mortuary and worked with Warford prior to his death in 2017. “From 1962 until his death, his stance was he wanted to be the go-to person in the community and help the African American community with whatever need they had,” Powell says. She remembers local residents coming into the mortuary not to make funeral arrangements, but to get Warford’s help with opening a bank account or securing a birth certificate.
“He didn’t do anything elaborate,” she says. “He just focused on helping people at the time of their need and even before their need.” She says Warford was as interested in building and sustaining relationships as he was in building and sustaining a business. “His focus wasn’t on making money but on making friends. If you did that, the business would automatically come,” says Powell.
Mortuary science was one of the first integrated career fields, and the United States has a long history of Black-owned funeral homes. Those opportunities elevated morticians like Warford into leadership roles across the United States, particularly in communities like the North Heights. Warford and his wife, Wilma, took their leadership seriously. “He just truly loved people for who they were,” says Powell.
Warford served as a deacon and trustee at Mount Zion Baptist Church and helped establish Amarillo’s United Citizens Forum in 1981. The Amarillo chapter of the NAACP honored him in 2002 with its Lifetime Achievement Award, and the City of Amarillo’s Charles E. Warford Activity Center spotlights his ongoing legacy.
J.O. Wyatt
A graduate of Samuel Huston College in Austin and then Meharry Medical College in Nashville, James Odis Wyatt practiced medicine in San Angelo and Kerrville before moving to Amarillo in 1939, at the request of Bones Hooks. Because of his race, he was denied privileges at both local hospitals, so he opened his own clinic in the North Heights. Dr. Wyatt bought an entire block to serve the city’s Black residents as a primary care physician. He lived on his property, provided nurses’ quarters, and managed Wyatt Memorial Hospital-Clinic.
Most of the children born in the local Black community during the 1940s and 1950s were delivered by Dr. Wyatt, along with nurses including Billie Murphy and Marguerite Saunders. Wyatt successfully advocated for the desegregation of Amarillo College in 1951 (see page 45).
And after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954, Wyatt decided to run for the school board. He believed an African American should be involved in the coming school desegregation steps, and in the process became the first Black resident to seek public office in Amarillo. The day after he announced his candidacy in 1955, locals burned a cross on Wyatt’s lawn. He ignored it and continued his campaign, which was ultimately unsuccessful.
“He certainly was a hero in many aspects,” says Patrick Miller, the current Amarillo Branch NAACP President and one of two assistant principals at Eastridge Elementary School. “I’m amazed at the resilience he displayed. Despite being denied the privilege of admittance to the hospital, as a medical professional, he embraced that entrepreneurial spirit and opened his own clinic. He championed his own cause for the betterment of his community.”
Potter County Commissioner Alphonso Vaughn was born at J.O. Wyatt’s hospital in 1951, just a few months after Bones Hooks’ death. “We couldn’t go to Northwest Texas Hospital. His services mattered at the time,” Vaughn says.
Today, the Northwest J.O. Wyatt Clinic recognizes his legacy at 1411 Amarillo Boulevard East. His original property is now home to the Amarillo United Citizens Forum and Black Historical Culture Center. Dr. Wyatt passed away in 1958.
Paving the Way: The Stories of WT’s First Black Students
By Chip Chandler
Years removed from the excitement and tensions of charting a new path, several West Texas A&M University alumni found catharsis and a renewed connection during a recent anniversary event.
Several of WT’s first Black students, staff and faculty members were honored in October for their efforts in integrating WT’s campus. The Celebrating 60 Years of Integration dinner, held on Oct. 8 as part of WT’s Homecoming events, was an emotional evening for those who took part.
Dr. Lal Almas and Claudia Stuart of WTAMU
“That night was the first time many of our earliest Black students have returned to campus since they graduated, and they told me how meaningful this celebration was,” says Angela Allen, the University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. “The experiences they had at WT helped them become who they were meant to be in their personal and professional lives.”
Black students first arrived on campus at the then-West Texas State College beginning in 1960. They paved the way for countless other students of color who have earned their degrees at WT in the decades since, as well as faculty and staff members who help WT reflect the diverse population of the region it serves.
“Our Black students and all of our students of color today owe a debt of gratitude to those who took the first steps toward integration at WT,” Allen says. “Indeed, all students and the entire WT community need to hear these students’ stories. WT has a fundamental commitment to equity and dignity for all, and remembering and learning from our shared past shows us how far we’ve come and how far we have to go.”
WTSC denied applications from at least two male Black students in 1959, but when John Mathew Shipp Jr. took his case to court, U.S. District Judge Joe B. Dooley found in February 1960 Texas’ attempt to maintain racially exclusionary colleges to be unconstitutional. That opened the doors to Betty Jo Thomas, Mae Deane Franklin and Roy Watson, who enrolled in fall 1960. She was followed in spring 1961 by Helen Neal, who attended WT to complete a college degree begun at Langston College, a historically Black college in Oklahoma.
Delores Thompson and Angela Allen
WT’s mission of creating a diverse and inclusive student-centered community of learners is now a key tenet of the University’s long-term plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World. That plan is being fueled by the historic, $125 million One West comprehensive fundraising campaign.
“At WT, we embrace the opportunity of enhancing our experiences and cultural perspectives, and we also believe in learning from the past,” WT President Walter V. Wendler said in a video message at the dinner. “We continue to aspire to create a welcoming and inclusive campus that will engage in action-oriented solutions to address discrimination and support all who come to WT.”
Since that October event, Allen’s diversity office has received donations from alumni who had never before given to WT.
Neal, who graduated in 1962 and was a community leader in Amarillo until her 2013 death, wanted to set a good example for her four young girls, daughter Delores Thompson says.
“She and Daddy (Nathaniel ‘Nat’ Neal) met at Langston. When they got married, she didn’t get to finish her degree,” Thompson says. “She always thought that was important, and she wanted to be a good role model for us four girls.”
In that initial group’s footsteps, other Black students began arriving, encouraged by the willingness of Coach Joe Kerbel to recruit Black athletes.
Claudia Stuart, who arrived at WT in 1967, says she felt some racial tensions during her time as a student, particularly centering on the flying of the Confederate flag at football games.
“We formed a committee to go and talk about the flag with the administration and how things could be settled down a little bit because the history of the Confederate flag was different for us than it was for (white students),” Stuart says. “It took years—years—but we stayed with it.
“I was part of the Student Senate,” Stuart continues. “We were always having discussions on how to make things better for all of the students here at WT.”
Stuart later returned to WT for her master’s degree, then taught sociology and criminal justice for 20 years. Now a professor emeritus, Stuart this year was named a Distinguished Alumna.
Judy Turner, who started classes in 1967, had a harder time adjusting.
Roushell Hamilton Jr. and Roy Watson
“I remember a time when I went into a classroom and sat down kind of in the middle of the room,” Turner recalls. “I was the only Black student in there—in fact, that was the way it was from the time I entered WT until the time I graduated—and no one sat beside me or in front of me, so I felt out of place.
“I carried that with me until I graduated from WT. It was so stark that it was one of those things that never went away.”
In addition to Watson, Stuart, Turner and the Neal family, the dinner also honored former students and alumni Ron King and Billy Cannon, as well as Roger Scott, who was the first Black staff member hired at WT.
There’s a burden to being one of the first, says Turner, who went on to teach English at Caprock High School.
“But you can share what you’ve learned with those who are to come,” she says. “I’ve seen changes, and I’m hoping it continues, and I believe it will because I believe the younger generation is the one that will help that become a reality.”
From Desegregation to Anti-Racism at Amarillo College
By Joe Wyatt and Jason Boyett
On October 1, 1951, Amarillo College welcomed its first Black scholars into its student body, three years before Brown v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. In doing so, AC became one of the first three publicly supported Texas colleges to desegregate.
It may have been the first. But like so many stories related to desegregation, the history is complex.
In the early 1950s, leaders of Amarillo’s Black community, including Dr. J.O. Wyatt, began arguing that they had been paying taxes that supported Amarillo College, and that college courses should be available to graduates from Carver High School. The Amarillo College Board listened to these complaints, and offered to start separate college courses at Carver starting Sept. 1, 1951.
Initially the Black community agreed to this, but in the summer months leading up to the fall semester, leading citizens—including Amarillo’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Carver PTA—still had not heard any details from Amarillo College. No one knew who would be teaching the courses or even what courses would be available.
Dr. Wyatt, who was opposed to segregation in the first place, arranged for a meeting with the AC Board, leading a group not only to ask those questions, but to also take it a step further: The group informed AC that separate college classes at Carver were not enough. They asked for full admission to Amarillo College.
In what must have seemed like a surprise decision at the time, AC’s leadership not only listened to those requests but ultimately agreed to them. After a lengthy discussion, the Board voted to allow Black students immediate admission for the fall semester of 1951.
The First Black Students at AC
Celia Ann Bennett, Freddie Imogene Jackson, Willetta F. Jackson and Dorothy Reese enrolled at AC in October 1951 and began attending classes. By most public accounts, the integration went smoothly. But not everyone in the community was on board.
Within the next few days, right after the semester began, someone burned a cross on the Amarillo College campus. Willetta Jackson shared about this in Bruce G. Todd’s biography of Bones Hooks. “I have never been afraid as I was that day when the cross was laying on the ground burning,” she told Todd. The incident happened that October, and Jackson saw the cross as she arrived for morning classes. “As I went across, I started praying,” Jackson remembered.
The women weren’t deterred, however. Celia Ann Bennett went on, in the spring of 1953, to become AC’s first Black graduate.
The integration of Amarillo College had influence beyond its own campus, because around the same time, in the fall of 1951, Amarillo High School began allowing Black students to take certain classes at AHS if they weren’t available at Carver. Todd speculates that this partial desegregation was likely influenced by the AC decision.
In fact, AC may have been the first public undergraduate college
in Texas to integrate. The University of Texas Law School had allowed a Black student to enter following a Supreme Court ruling in 1950, and the private Wayland Baptist University voluntarily desegregated in May 1951.
That means Amarillo College was among the first of three public institutions of higher education in the state to admit Black students to regular classes. “Texas Southmost College in Brownsville and Howard County Junior College in Big Spring had also voted to admit Black students, but whether they had admitted any at that time isn’t clear,” wrote the late Dr. Joe F. Taylor in his 1979 book, The AC Story: Journal of a College.
Despite the complicated history, what is clear is that AC decided to desegregate before racial integration was common. In his book, Taylor pointed out that Texas state law at the time still provided for segregated schools.
He also describes the AC Board’s concerns about how the Amarillo community—along with AC students and faculty—might react to its decision. But as it turns out, community complaints “were minimal.” By the time other schools were being compelled to desegregate, years later, Black students were already common on the Amarillo College campus.
A Path Toward Anti-Racism
Today, AC continues to demonstrate a willingness to challenge the status quo. As recently as August 2020, the AC Board of Regents adopted a five-year Strategic Plan, and among its key elements is a focus on building systems for equity gains. This includes inclusivity training among the Board of Regents and employees, continued equitable access to AC and its resources, and a top-down desire that Amarillo College becomes an “anti-racist” institution.
The term anti-racist means more than “not being racist.” The latter is a passive response. As long as people are simply “not racist,” the long-standing, systematic inequalities of racism can continue. Anti-racism takes a more active response. It seeks to tear down that system, advocating and promoting equity for People of Color.
Anti-racism means asking hard institutional questions, and Amarillo College is committed to making changes based on that self-reflection. “This Board understands that this community is stronger when we are unified in purpose, when we are understanding of all facets of our community,” says AC President Russell Lowery-Hart. “The goal of our anti-racist initiative is to move us to a post-racial reality. We can get there only by understanding the role race plays in the decisions we make and the actions we take, and make a conscious effort to remove any and all impediments to racial tolerance.”
In the fall of 2020, in response to that summer’s protests against injustice, Amarillo College’s Student Life department launched a Black Student Union and a Hispanic Student Association. These student organizations strive to create a welcoming place for students of color by focusing on, among other things, networking, community service, personal growth and intercultural awareness.
The desegregation of Amarillo College may not be a simple story. But it is a story of hard conversations, a willingness to listen, and important steps forward. That progress continues today. With student participation on the upswing and an action plan in place, AC continues to work hard to serve all its constituents equally—echoing a historic decision it made more than 70 years ago.
A note from Jason & Michele
For space reasons, we limited this feature to eight historic leaders of Amarillo’s Black community. From pastors to business owners to the legendary coaches and school teachers at Carver High School, we know many, many other leaders had just as much influence. These include individuals like Clifford Austin, Rev. Inez Z. Chance, Eddie Lee Jones, Johnny N. and Jewelle Allen, Nathaniel and Helen Neal, Iris Lawrence, Marvell White, and Lola Whitaker. We regret that we could only profile a few of these men and women in this issue.
For a broader history of the local Black community, we recommend the books African Americans in Amarillo (by Claudia Stuart and Jean Stuntz) and the 2005 biography Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy (by Bruce G. Todd).
