Jon Mark Beilue: She's on Any List Worth Having

Sharon Miner overcame racial snubs to a Distinguished Alum

By JON MARK BEILUE

About 11 years ago, Sharon Miner was invited to a dinner party. She had a special role that evening, translating the speech of one who was in the last months of a fatal disease. Because of that, she was seated right next to the host and his friend, the guest of honor.

The host was former Texas state senator Teel Bivins. The guest of honor was former president George W. Bush.

“It was a surreal moment,” Miner said.

Just like a function in the late 1970s, Miner’s name was not on a list. It didn’t need to be. She was a former district director for Bivins for much of the time he was in office from 1989 to 2004. Later, when stricken by progressive supranuclear palsy, Bivins asked her to be his personal assistant.

“My time with Sen. Bivins afforded me to see leadership of all types and all kinds,” Miner said. “Sen. Bivins was one of the most incredible leaders I’ve ever met in my life. Honestly, there was never a day with him that he ever treated me less than his equal. Now think about that.”

Yes, do think about that. It was not always that way for Miner, who as Sharon Taylor, enrolled at West Texas State in 1977.  February is Black History Month, and it’s almost impossible not to discuss blacks and history without stories of racism and prejudice.

Miner got her own bitter taste of ostracism before classes even began in August 1977. That she would go on to later received a Distinguished Alumni honor says much about both her and WT.

Miner was the only daughter of four children of Master Sgt. Ron Taylor and Shirley Taylor.  He was stationed at Cannon Air Force Base for an unheard of 17 years during which Miner graduated from Clovis (N.M.) High School.

She selected WT because it was far enough from, yet close enough, to home. Her plan, as it had been since seventh grade, was to earn a degree in political science, go to law school and enter the political world.

Living at Cannon had shielded her from any racial incidents. The Taylors lived in a multi-racial neighborhood among those from across the United States.

“My mom and dad taught us that nobody was better than us, and we weren’t better than anyone else,” she said. “The color of my skin had never mattered.”

Miner, outgoing and involved in extra-curricular activities at Clovis High School, wanted to join one of five sororities at WT. So, she and another freshman from Clovis arrived a couple of days early to campus for rush.

‘If not on the list, you must leave the room’

She had barely got her clothes and other items into her dorm room when there was a knock on her door.

“This lady did not say hello or ‘Welcome to WT,’ but all she said was, ‘Are you Sharon Taylor?’” Miner said. “I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ She said that I just need to let you know we do not let blacks into our sororities, but if you want to go through rush to see if anyone picks you up, go ahead.”

Miner’s head was spinning. This was America. My parents pay taxes. I’m just like anyone else. She was taken back, but decided to still attend rush.

There were about 400 women at the Activities Center. All there were to have a name on a prepared list. Names had to be checked off the list to go inside.  Miner’s name was not there, but was told to go in any way.

A woman took the microphone. Miner, nearly 43 years later, can recall her clothes, makeup, jewelry. It has burned in her mind.

“The first thing out of her mouth was, ‘If your name is not on the list, you must leave the room,’” Miner said. “I got up and I saw another black girl get up. We were the only two. We walked out together.”

Her name was Angela, and she was a calming spirit for Miner as they took a walk of shame across campus. Miner was crying, but this mysterious Angela kept her somewhat grounded. No one recalled an Angela in the following years, and Miner came to think of her as a guardian angel.

“I was not sure what exactly happened,” she said of that night, “but I knew what had happened was not right.”

Two days later, Miner’s roommate arrived. They had talked on the phone that summer, even decided what kind of matching comforters to buy. Her roommate got one look at Miner’s skin, and not only moved out of the room, but out of the dorm.

Miner went to classes that semester, but she knew she was not long for WT. There was something else that she couldn’t remove from her mind.

“I would see these women in class, women I knew that were in rush, and I couldn’t understand why no one thought what happened to Angela and I was wrong,” she said. “Even my best friend who came with me from Clovis and joined a sorority, no one thought it was wrong. It was the strangest thing.”

Miner left WT after that semester, and put away thoughts of college. In 1983, her best friend dated the best friend of Chip Staniswalis, who was a young state representative from Amarillo. When they were all together one evening, Miner made an off-handed comment that she needed to go home and put together a resume and begin a job search.

Staniswalis asked if she could type. She nodded. There was a job for her in his office.

“That began my career in politics,” she said.

‘They took something that was rightly mine’

Eventually, Miner got an internship with Congressman Mac Thornberry. While with Thornberry, Bivins’ office posted an opening for a social services representative, an entry level position.

Miner got the job. She quickly showed the personal and political skills that impressed Bivins. That led to promotions to legislative assistant and district director.

But there was a hole not just in Miner’s resume, but in her heart as well. She had not returned to college since those incidents in her first days at WT. She needed to return. She had to return.

“They took something from me that was rightly mine,” she said. “I let them take it, first of all. People don’t realize what racism feels like. It’s one thing if I say something about you based on something you can control, but if it’s about the way God made you, I can’t do anything about my blackness and don’t want to.”

In the 1990s, Miner returned to WT, the path she believed God had her on to begin with. She never got bitter, only better. She tried to rise above it all. She found a different WT 20 years later, which she knew she would.

But the way political science professors took a vested interest in her took her back. They challenged her, would accept not less than her best.  Miner graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science in 1998.

When Bivins, who died in 2009, was preparing to leave for the ambassadorship of Sweden in 2003, Miner knew she could not follow. She had to forge a new path.

 She quickly did, as executive director for Leadership Amarillo & Canyon. The woman not deemed worthy to be among 400 others 25 years earlier now had her career literally defined by leadership for the next nine years.

Eight years ago, she went to work with speaker and author Sam Silverstein on leadership development in companies. Miner also does spiritual coaching for women who are in substance abuse recovery.

Miner was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus for the College of Business and Social Sciences a few years ago.

“I always knew in my heart I had done nothing wrong, and God was my vindicator,” she said. “Twenty years after I left WT really in tears, I could proudly hold up my finger and thumb and say, ‘Go Buffs’ without any bitterness, but only love for that university. Only God can do that.”

Times can change. People can change. As much as that hurtful night burned in Miner’s memory from the late 1970s, so too does another one much later. It was a speech she made while working for Bivins to a group in Amarillo.

“I was telling the story about my experience at WT, and the craziest thing happened,” she said. “After the speech, a woman came up to me, tears in her eyes. She said, “I was in that room. I’m sorry that happened to you.’ We hugged like long-lost cousins. I can’t tell you how incredibly freeing that was. It was powerful.”

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu.

—WTAMU—