Goodwin had grown up in the then-segregated town of Denton, Texas, became a teacher and later worked for the military's USO, which brought her to Ogden. She was a stay-at-home mom concerned about teacher turnover at her daughter's school. So, she decided to go back to the classroom.

With a teacher shortage, she assumed her math degree and prior experience teaching in Texas and California would allow her to walk into the system.

But she said, the response to her application was that the school "didn't hire you people at that level."

Goodwin tried again the next year; that time the excuse was that she didn't have an elementary teaching certificate. So Goodwin took a class in Utah history at Weber State and earned the certificate. A year later, in 1961, she was hired to teach the sixth grade at the mostly white school. While district employment records don't date back that far, Goodwin said she was one of three black teachers in the district at the time.

While she experienced animosity at first — both from parents and white colleagues — Goodwin became a respected teacher.

"They had to get used to what I was doing," she said. "Other teachers were jealous."

Goodwin, who had grown up attending segregated schools and had previously taught in segregated classrooms, said it wasn't too much of an adjustment to teach in an integrated classroom.

"I always looked at people as people. I've never been a person who hates," Goodwin said. "I tried to integrate the children."

A profound change

Robert Grey Jr., who will become the second president of color of the American Bar Association later this year, said the 1954 Brown v. Board decision was "a profound change in the fabric of this culture."

Nationally, in 1952, only 15 percent of blacks over age 25 were high school graduates, according to the census. By 2002, that number had grown to 79 percent. The number of college graduates has risen from about 252,000 in 1957 to 3.5 million in 2002, according to the census.

"It forever changed our view of what it meant to aspire to an equal and just society," he said. "And I think it forever changed the view of the rest of the world about whether America was very serious about being a democracy or not."

"We are still, I believe, evolving 50 years later, working for the achievement of a balanced and just society, one that is free of discrimination and values diversity in all aspects of American life," he said.

Goodwin remains somewhat pessimistic about progress toward equality since Brown v. Board. She pointed to areas such as the state's graduation rates: Every racial group lags behind white students; what she deems a shortage of professionals of color in the state; and schools that remain mostly white or mostly minority.

"They didn't integrate the teachers," she said. "When they integrated the schools they got rid of the black teachers. . . . We've stepped back quite a ways since integration."

Grey said while he did lose the comfort that went along with a tight-knit community when he first attended an integrated school, he doubts he would be preparing to head the ABA if the nation had remained segregated.

"The country's better off," he said, "without a doubt."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com