Silas Herbert Hunt pioneered the integration of higher education in Arkansas and the South when he enrolled at the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1948, becoming the first African-American student to successfully seek admission to a Southern university since Reconstruction. Born to Jessie Gulley Moton and R.D. Hunt on March 1, 1922, in the community of Red Bluff near Ashdown, Arkansas, he became president of Booker T. Washington High School in Texarkana and graduated as class salutatorian in 1941. He enrolled in the Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College at Pine Bluff, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, but his studies were interrupted by service in the U.S. Army during the Second World War. He served with construction engineers in Europe for nearly two years, was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, and after returning to the United States completed his Bachelor of Arts in English in 1947. Though accepted for admission at the University of Indiana, he changed course after being inspired by classmate Ada Lois Sipuel, who was pursuing legal action against the University of Oklahoma's exclusion of Black students, and decided to seek admission to the University of Arkansas. On February 2, 1948, accompanied by classmate Wiley Branton, attorney Harold Flowers, and photographer Geleve Grice, he met with Robert Leflar, dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law, who reviewed his academic record and admitted him. His instruction was at first segregated from white students, although white students often sat in on his class. By mid summer he had contracted tuberculosis, and he died nine months later on April 22, 1949, at the Veteran's Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, and was buried at Stateline Cemetery in Texarkana. Campus officials remembered him as a confidant and intelligent student whose sensitive way of dealing with others helped quiet conflict. His achievement soon led to the admission of other African American students at the University of Arkansas and helped set in motion the eventual racial integration of universities across the southern United States. In 2008, the University of Arkansas awarded him a posthumous law degree and created a legacy award honoring African American alumni, faculty, and staff who have contributed significantly to Arkansas and the nation.