Celebrating UT Austin’s First Black Graduate Degree-Holders in Zoology

February 13, 2025 • by Staff Writer

Making discoveries about health and the natural world were among Oscar Thompson’s and Exalton Delco’s achievements.

A black-and-white image of a campus building with a pond and garden outside.

A 1952 Graduate of The University of Texas at Austin who is African American in a suit and glasses appears in a photo from the mid 20th Century.

Rather, it was Oscar Leonard Thompson who in January 1952 became UT’s first Black graduate. Reared in Rosebud, near Waco, his college aspirations were first back-burnered by the Great Depression, then by his service in the Pacific during World War II. When he returned from war, he used the GI Bill to finish his degree at Paul Quinn College in Dallas.

He capitalized on the Sweatt decision and came to UT to pursue a master’s degree in zoology, with an emphasis on genetics. He was 45 when he became UT’s first Black graduate. Thompson became a research scientist assisting UT geneticist C.P. Oliver in investigating sickle cell anemia.

Just months after Thompson completed his thesis and graduated, John Chase earned his master’s of architecture. [Editor’s note: In January 2025, the UT Architecture library was named for Chase.] In 1956, UT admitted its first Black undergraduates, of which there were about 75.

When he died in 1962 at 55, Thompson was working on his Ph.D. and teaching at Huston-Tillotson College in Austin. UT flew its flags at half-mast.

A collection of cells, some of them with unusual shapes, in a petri dish.

Sickle cell anemia red blood cells under microscope. Credit: iStock

A 1962 graduate of The University of Texas at Austin in glasses is a home environment.

Delco attended Jack Yates High School, where he graduated in 1945 as valedictorian, and at the age of 15, he entered Fisk University, a private historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee. At Fisk, he majored in biology and was involved with the research of embryologist Lloyd Alexander, who studied the way the eye formed. Delco also met his wife, Wilhelmina Delco, while they were both students at Fisk. They would marry in 1952 and go on to have four children. After graduation from Fisk in 1949, Delco attended the University of Michigan for his master’s studies. There, Delco became interested in entomology and worked with beetles and maze learning.

After obtaining his master’s, Delco taught at Texas Southern University in Houston, educating noteworthy students such as Barbara Jordan, who would serve in Congress and become a nationally recognized civil rights leader.

In 1954, Delco applied for admission at UT Austin to continue his education but was instead drafted into the U.S. Army. He served in a MASH unit (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) in Germany where he worked as a surgical tech, or a “scrub nurse” as they were called. When he returned, he used his veteran benefits from the GI Bill to attend UT.

As one of only around a dozen students then involved in Ph.D.-level coursework in the Department of Zoology and as the only African American in 1957, Delco studied ichthyology under Clark Hubbs, widely considered one of Texas’ foremost researchers in the subject and the force behind establishing UT’s Ichthyology Collection.

A small fish with natural and bright hues against a blank background

Cyprinella lutrensis. Source: UT’s Ichthyology Collection and Fishes of Texas. Credit: Ben Labay

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