Historic Walker County

of the Walker County NAACP, joined with New
Waverly residents Robert C. Harris and Milton
Perry in a lawsuit requesting that the county
commissioners desegregate the restrooms and
drinking fountains at the county courthouse. 96
One year later, the activists got their way, when
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned all forms of
racial discrimination in public places. Despite
this victory, however, privately-owned
businesses in Walker County continued to
discriminate against African Americans. In July
1965, eight days of demonstrations took place in
downtown Huntsville as young people
demanded the desegregation of Café Raven, Café
Texan, and Life Theater. Although the
demonstrations were controversial, they
succeeded in desegregating the businesses on the
downtown square and opened a new era in the
history of Walker County. 97
During the 1960s, few local whites supported
the civil rights demonstrators, but Rupert
Koeninger did. As chair of the sociology
department at SHSTC, Koeninger was a devoted
civil rights advocate. He sponsored the campus’s
“young Democrats” and set up voter registration
tables with his students at Guerrant Grocery Store
and other sites frequented by blacks. Koeninger’s
activities came at a cost, however. In 1962,
William H. Kellogg, the leader of Huntsville’s John
Birch Society, used his influence to have Koeninger
dismissed as a professor from the college he had
faithfully served for fifteen years. Koeninger’s
dismissal became a national story, covered even by
the dean of Southern history, C. Vann Woodward,
in a blistering article that appeared in Harper’s
magazine. Ultimately, Koeninger took a new job at
Texas Southern University, and fifteen professors
left SHSTC in protest of his firing. The American
Association of University Professors (AAUP) also
put Sam Houston on its censured list for violating
Koeninger’s academic freedom. The case was not
resolved until 1970, when the school settled with
Koeninger and paid him $10,000. 98
F R O M T H E K E N N E D Y
A S S A S S I N A T I O N T O T H E
V I E T N A M W A R
Although Walker County citizens had their
differences, on November 22, 1963, they put
them aside to mourn the assassination of the
❖
Above: John Arthur Patrick, the first
African American student to attend
Sam Houston State University.
COURTESY OF THE SAM HOUSTON STATE
UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.
Below: The Rupert Koeninger family.
The photograph was taken in 1948 at
their SHSTC’s faculty house at
County Campus.
COURTESY OF FRIEDA KOENINGER.
C h a p t e r V I I ✦ 4 5