When Rachel Bassette Noel was honored by the Anti-Defamation League in 2004, longtime ADL director Sheldon Steinhauser quoted from Chapter 31 of the Book of Proverbs to perfectly capture her spirit:
A woman of valor who can find? For her price is far above rubies. Many daughters have done valiantly but thou excellest them all.
Noel, who died Monday in Oakland, Calif., at age 90, fought valiantly all her life to vanquish the bigotry and inequality she first encountered in the segregated South.
Moving to the West after World War II, she expected to find a better life. But she and her husband, Dr. Edmond F. Noel, found many of the same prejudices entrenched in Denver that she had encountered in her native Hampton, Va.
Edmond Noel was the first African-American surgeon in Colorado but was refused operating room privileges in every city hospital except the Jewish hospital then known as General Rose, now Rose Medical Center. Rose had been founded at a time when Jewish doctors were also denied privileges in other city hospitals. He died in 1986.
Rachel Noel had received a master’s degree in sociology from Fisk University but also found many doors closed to her in Denver before taking a job with the Denver Human Rights Commission.
Elected to the Denver School Board in 1965, she later introduced a resolution calling for a comprehensive school integration plan. After much community opposition, it passed in 1970.
In 1973, a U.S. Supreme Court decision led to mandatory desegregation of Denver’s public schools, including busing for racial balance.
Noel’s resolution and the subsequent desegregation efforts weren’t always popular. In particular, Hispanic families feared that having their children bused to other neighborhoods would undercut the community control and bilingual education programs they saw as important for their own children. After federal court supervision of Denver’s desegregation plan ended in 1995, the district sought and continues to use means other than mandatory busing to improve educational opportunities for all its children.
But the simple fact is that until Rachel Noel stood up and valiantly called for change, Denver had a long and shameful history of denying equality and opportunity to children of color. After her statement of conscience, the school district and the citizenry at large would debate the best means for achieving equality and opportunity for all its students — but that goal itself would never again be called into question.
Rachel Noel was indeed a woman of valor and her legacy enriched us all.
