Days after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 —a bullet that echoed from Memphis throughout the world, Denver resident Rachael B. Noel, disheartened but undeterred, knew the work wasn’t finished. But before work began, there needed to be a precise, visual roadmap to turn ideas into an executable plan, a blueprint.
Elected to the Denver Board of Education in 1965, Noel was serving as the first African American woman on the school board and the first elected to any public office in Colorado. With Board Member Auburn Edgar Benton beside her, they drafted Resolution 1490, also known as the Noel Resolution. The comprehensive blueprint for integration outlined decisive measures: magnet schools to pull kids across lines, busing routes snaking through white flight zones, and intercultural mandates—no more “separate but equal” lies. This wasn’t the time for half measures.
The resolution was passed by the school board with a strong majority, 5-2, in May 1968. Months later in 1969, new board members were elected and the resolution was repealed.
Noel’s unyielding push was vindicated in 1973, when the Supreme Court’s Keyes v. School District No. 1 ruling held that a single segregated pocket proved the entire Denver school system rotten. School officials—not families—had to disprove racist intent. Busing rolled out nationwide. That decision cracked open the North to busing wars, grouping Black and Latino kids as equal victims of white-flight classrooms. As the blueprint won nationwide, de facto excuses died hard.
Noel later taught sociology at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and chaired the African American Studies Department from 1971 to 1980. The year after she left, the Rachael B. Noel Professorship was created to honor cultural heavyweights who don’t just lecture, but go further to spark debates on race and power, from classroom timelines to redlining walks. Beyond education and events at MSU Denver, the selected professors visit churches, high school gyms, and other community centers, turning theory into block-by-block action.
The professorship has pulled in Princeton professor and provocative democratic intellectual Cornel West for fiery talks, best-selling author and Emmy Award winner Iyanla Vanzant for healing circles, and local cultural legend Cleo Parker Robinson for dance that hits history hard. For 2026, the Noel Professorship will be held by Pulitzer Prize-winning Nikole Hannah-Jones who cut her teeth reporting on busing’s scars in Iowa.
Noel’s Legacy Carried on by Hannah-Jones
As Hannah-Jones arrives in Denver this month, her 1619 Project serves as both a battleground and a blueprint. Seven years after its original version was released, it continues to be a lightning rod in what some call “curriculum panic.” The 1619 Project asserts that the beginning of American slavery began when 20+ Africans landed in Jamestown, Virginia, one year before the Puritans and 157 years before English colonists in 1776.
Her work on the 1619 Project reframes American history similar to the way that Rachel B. Noel pushed Americans to rethink education, centering Black voices and lived experience as the foundation for real equity. Continuing Noel’s legacy, the professorship at MSU Denver invites a nationally recognized scholar, artist, or public figure to collaborate with students and faculty, and lead public discussions on race, justice, and community.
Emmy-winning journalist Tamara Banks has more than a decade of experience emceeing the event that introduces the new professor to the community. This year, Hannah-Jones will give the Noel Professorship community keynote at Shorter AME Community Church on March 17, followed by a Student Leaders Lunch and a Campus Keynote at on March 18 on campus. The campus keynote will be moderated by MSU Denver Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Dr. Michael Benitez.
Hannah-Jones fits with Noel’s legacy, said Banks, especially during this chaotic time where the debate is about ‘whose America is this?’ and our right to tell our own stories.
Hannah‑Jones covers racial injustice and civil rights for The New York Times Magazine and serves as Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism & She has earned a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, and multiple National Magazine Awards, among other honors for her work. Her passion traces back to her middle and high school years in Iowa, when she reported on school desegregation for ProPublica, The Oregonian, and The News & Observer.
Though Denver civil rights pioneer and educator Noel died at 90 in 2008, Hannah-Jones joins the many renowned artists and public figures in picking up the fight for concise education and equity. She doesn’t mince words on her website: “We’ve got to face our hypocrisy and the ugly truths we dodge.”
The 1619 Project kicked off with a New York Times Magazine story in 2019, then exploded into books, lesson plans, podcasts, and a Hulu series, which attracted 1.63 million viewers during its ABC premiere on May 31, 2023, according to USTVDB.com, the U.S. Television Database that analyzes viewership trends.
The six-episode series digs into six pillars shaped by slavery: Democracy, Race, Music, Capitalism, Fear, and Justice. Each unpacks how the history of 1619 threads through America’s core.
Noel lived those historical consequences firsthand, having drafted that her education resolution just days after King’s assassination on April 25, 1968. Her proposals aroused fierce backlash that brought death threats and hate mail to her family.
For Hannah-Jones, the historical consequences were also not abstract—they echo through her own childhood. She has spoken extensively about growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, with a voluntary desegregation busing program, riding an hour each way to an all‑white school—an experience that would shape how she reports on segregation.
Her work on The 1619 Project reframes American history by centering slavery and Black experiences as foundational to the United States, a move that echoes Noel’s push for Denver schools to rethink curriculum and integration by foregrounding students’ lived experiences as the foundation for real equity.
From Essays to Classroom Reality
The 1619 Project became a flashpoint in the national debate over teaching race, and was slammed it as “revisionist history.” Reactions to the ideas in The 1619 Project, often not even read by those who criticized the loudest, led to laws against teaching Critical Race Theory in at least 25 states. The intent has been to limit discussions of systemic racism or “divisive concepts” in classrooms, kindergarten through 12th grade. Even though The 1619 project was never adopted in any statewide curriculums, it was specifically banned in Texas, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Louisiana. Texas banned its materials outright, and Iowa threatened to withhold school funding from districts that used them.
Hannah-Jones writes, “None of us can be held responsible for the wrongs of our ancestors. But if today we choose not to do the right and necessary thing, that burden we own.”
The 1619 Project has quietly grown beyond a magazine feature into infrastructure: A K-12 curriculum connected to teacher conferences, grants, and a growing network of classroom projects and local history initiatives. The Pulitzer Center’s 1619 Education Conference takes place annually, and the 1619 Education Impact Grant supports teacher-designed projects.
Just as a blueprint outlines a building’s structure before the walls go up, The 1619 Project maps out slavery’s lasting impact.
The Noel children, Buddy and Angie, regularly attend the professorship events named for their mother. They recall how she admitted that praying before some of those hostile Denver school board meetings are what got her through. It wasn’t just faith and action, she said, but it was also prayer and action. Both needed then, and both sorely needed now, the children agreed.
“This is the perfect time to read or reread The 1619 Project and to get involved with the readers, the scholars, and the people doing the research,” said Banks. “One person can make a difference.”
Editor’s note: For times and more information about the Rachel B. Noel Professorship Keynote events on March 17 and 18, see Featured Events links at https://www.msudenver.edu/noel-professorship/.
