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HATTIESBURG, Miss. (AP) — Myron Noonkester well remembers when the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on his family's lawn. He was 8 years old.
"It was right out at the corner of the yard," said the current dean of the Noonkester School of Arts and Letters at William Carey University. "We were all gathered in a central room upstairs and (my parents) were concerned about the possibility of a physical attack."
His father, J. Ralph Noonkester, was president of William Carey 50 years ago, when the Baptist-affiliated college enrolled its first two black students, Vermester Jackson Bester and Linda Williams Cross.
"My father had been very idealistic about civil rights issues," Noonkester, 58, said. "My parents always took an enlightened view of racial issues."
His father was also pragmatic.
"In order to receive federal aid you had to show you were compliant with federal civil rights law," Noonkester said. "There was a fundamental reality that this place struggled financially, and my dad wanted to keep the doors open and people paid."
Nonetheless, it wasn't an easy decision.
"I don't believe I've ever been as scared as I was the day that two young black women enrolled," J. Ralph Noonkester said in a 2007 article. "But it was sensible, peaceable and voluntary to the point of being carefully planned."
Bester and Cross also experienced fear after learning of the cross burning.
"I kept thinking they were going to burn one in my yard, and it never happened," Cross said in 2007. "Our transition was quite easy, as far as racial tensions were concerned."
William Carey University has spent the past several months celebrating the 50th anniversary of campus integration, when in August 1965 the two Rowan High School graduates enrolled.
"I didn't know I was doing this fantastic thing," Bester said 2007. "I didn't have sense enough to be afraid."
Carey had voluntarily integrated on Feb. 4, 1965, when the board of trustees unanimously approved J. Ralph Noonkester's recommendation to sign the civil rights compliance document with the U.S. Office of Education. This action made Carey the first college in Mississippi and the first Baptist college in the Deep South to voluntarily enroll black students.
Noonkester said his father went to the principal of Rowan High School and asked for two of the best students, then invited them to apply. He said he remembers his father receiving hate mail.
William Carey had several activities Tuesday to mark the 50th anniversary of integration, including worship services.
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