09/25/2026
In 1937, Clara Belle Williams earned a college degree from a school where at least one professor had made her stand in the hallway to hear the lecture.
Williams was 51 when she became the first Black graduate of what is now New Mexico State University. She had enrolled in 1928 while already working as a teacher in segregated Las Cruces schools, taking courses during the summers until she completed a bachelor’s degree in English.
The discrimination was not subtle. Williams later recalled that some faculty members would not speak to Black students. At least one professor refused to allow her into the classroom, leaving her to stand in the hallway and take notes because there were no seats outside. When she finally earned her degree, she was prevented from participating normally in commencement.
She kept teaching.
Williams spent more than 20 years educating Black children at Booker T. Washington School in Las Cruces. Education also shaped her own family. She and her husband, Jasper Williams, raised three sons, Jasper, James and Charles. All three became physicians. Two later helped establish the Williams Clinic in Chicago.
Decades later, the university began honoring the woman it had once excluded. NMSU named a campus street for Williams in 1961. In 1980, it awarded her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and formally apologized for her treatment as a student. In 2005, its English building was renamed Clara Belle Williams Hall.
Williams lived to be 108, dying in 1994.
There is a remarkable symmetry to her story. A university once made Clara Belle Williams listen from the hallway. Today, students walk into a university building bearing her name.
