Dr. Mamon Powers, Jr. (BSCE '70 and HDR '14) delivered this keynote lecture as part of our First Step event on February 26, 2019. This event honored the legacy and significance of David Robert Lewis (BSCE 1894), Purdue University's first black graduate.

Drawing upon numerous sources, including books on Purdue, newspaper archives, yearbooks and nearly 25 hours of personal interviews with black alumni, this documentary begins at a time when black students were denied campus food and housing, were barred from campus social life, and banned from college sports. It records the subsequent decades of struggle, the on-campus protests in the 1960s and the steady progress over the years that accorded black students equal rights.