![\"Baylor](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/BP-vivienne-malone-mays-1.jpg\")
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Dr. Vivienne Malone-Mayes<\/a>\u00a0first became\u00a0aware of segregation as a\u00a0preschooler, when she used the wrong public water fountain. Her mother, horrified, yanked her back and pushed her toward the other fountain. \u201cShe just explained to me that this was the way the world was, and we had to accept it, and there was nothing we can do about it, and we had to just sit there and adjust to it,\u201d she said in a 1987 interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Malone-Mayes was not one to \u201cjust sit there and adjust to it,\u201d and 30 years later — 50 years ago this fall — she became\u00a0Baylor\u2019s first African-American professor, and eventually a beloved institution at Baylor for more than a quarter-century.<\/p>\n Despite the\u00a0barriers that faced young black women in the 1940s and ’50s, Malone-Mayes graduated from Waco’s A.J. Moore High School in 1948 at just 16 years old and immediately enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville. There\u00a0she earned her bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees, studying both medicine and mathematics, and met her inspiration, Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville — the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. After graduation, she taught\u00a0for seven\u00a0years at Paul Quinn College and one more at Bishop College, chairing\u00a0the math departments at each stop.<\/p>\n In 1961, when Malone-Mayes decided\u00a0to get her own Ph.D. in mathematics, she applied to Baylor — but was rejected because of her race, and instead went to the University of Texas. By the time she had completed her doctoral studies, Baylor had officially integrated<\/a>, and in a beautiful twist of fate, the university hired her as its first African-American professor.<\/p>\n Malone-Mayes was absolutely adored by Baylor students. One of her favorites was actually a student who, all semester, heckled her throughout her math class out of frustration. \u201cHe would ask all of these questions and then comment, \u2018Why is that necessary to know? Why do we have to know that?\u2019\u201d she said in a 1994 interview<\/a>. \u201cBut the second semester, I walked in my room, who do you think was sitting on the first row in the middle? \u2026 When I walked through the door, I took a step and saw him and stopped in my tracks. And the whole class just fell out laughing. They just fell out laughing. And I said, \u2018Oh no, not again.\u2019 And he fell out laughing. And from that point on, we were just the best of friends.\u201d<\/p>\n