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Charles Shepard of North Lawrence worked his way through Kansas University and into a teaching position.

Charles Shepard, 95, has seen Kansas University and Lawrence change.

The KU emeritus instructor of entomology still lives a few blocks from his parents' home in North Lawrence, in a house he bought many years ago. He remembers a time when he couldn't walk into a restaurant on Massachusetts Street and he couldn't get into medical school because of his skin color.

He was born on a farm in 1903 near Hoag in Leavenworth County. His parents, Albert and Amanda Shepard, came with their family in 1914 to North Lawrence. They had seven children, and most of the family remains in Lawrence today.

Working through school

Charles was the only of their children to attend college. Despite a stroke three years ago, he still remembers his student days during the 1920s at KU.

He worked in fraternities, he waited tables and he cleaned houses and buildings to pay tuition.

"I just took a few classes at a time," he said.

His summers were spent working on a farm.

"I would get out of school in time to go to work in the wheat fields," he said. "After the wheat was harvested, it was time to dig potatoes. After they were dug it was time to go back to school."

It wasn't easy. He was one of few black students attending KU. He doesn't remember any blacks teaching at the university. Stanley Shepard Sr., Charles' nephew, said racism was common -- blacks were constantly being told what they couldn't do.

"You had to be excellent and beyond" just to succeed, Stanley said. "" It was rough."

Dream of being a doctor

After years of hard work -- he's not quite sure how many -- Charles finished his bachelor's degree in pre-medicine in 1933.

"I was going to be a doctor," he said.

But that wasn't to be.

"Upon graduating I was told that being a black person, I would not be allowed to go to the medical school in Kansas City," he wrote in an autobiography on file at the university archives.

At that time, Charles couldn't even eat in any downtown Lawrence restaurants.

"The only way you got into the Eldridge House was if you were making beds," Stanley said.

When he couldn't go to medical school, Charles built on another interest of his -- entomology.

"I knew about (insects) because I grew up keeping them out of the potato patch," he said.

Insects, in fact, helped him pay tuition. He'd discovered that many of the women in his classes had no interest in collecting specimens for their final course collections. So he started a tidy business catching insects for them.

Teaching elsewhere

Charles' autobiography records what he did after graduating. While the country struggled through the Depression, he worked at a packing plant, for construction companies and on railroads.

In 1937, only a few credit hours short of his master's degree in entomology, he was asked to teach zoology at Miles College in Birmingham, Ala.

At Miles, Charles became the director of instructors and head of the zoology department. He returned briefly to KU in 1938 to complete his master's degree.

While away from Kansas, he married May Marshall, in 1940. Although the couple had no children, Charles counts several nieces and nephews among his close family.

He taught for several years in Alabama before going in 1948 to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. In 1957, he returned to Lawrence.

"Uncle Charlie ran into an old professor that liked him," Stanley said. That professor arranged a position running a lab for Charles in the entomology department.

"That's the only way he could've got back in," Stanley said. "They couldn't hire him."

At KU

While Charles was at KU, the world around him began to change slowly. He started teaching courses. The civil rights movement was stirring. As the years at the university passed, Charles also saw more black students attend KU, though he never taught any.

He said his students treated him with respect.

"He was always well-liked by the graduate students and the other students as well," said Charles Michener, a professor emeritus in entomology and evolutionary biology.

He retired from the entomology department in 1969.

"Uncle Charlie has a lot of students that still send him post cards at Christmas," Stanley said.

-- Felicia Haynes' phone message number is 832-7173. Her e-mail address is fhaynes@ljworld.com.