In honor of Black History Month, the Ailes Apprentice Program and Fox News teamed up to profile ordinary Americans whose trailblazing spirits have changed the world. Harris Faulkner had the honor of interviewing famed opera singer Barbara Smith Conrad, an African American woman born in the deep woods of east Texas.

The year was 1956 when the Supreme Court opened the doors for African Americans to attend major universities. Conrad pursued her passion for music at the University of Texas at Austin. She recalls the experience as “Strange, they were all Caucasian. I didn’t pay much attention, I had a focus.”

Her focus was music, and the director of the Fine Arts program happened to be opera star Josephine Antoine. When she overheard Conrad practicing, she cast her as the lead in the romantic tragedy Dido and Aeneas.

Word spread quickly that an African American woman was cast as the romantic interest opposite a young white male. The Texas representative at the time threatened to remove funding from the university. Conrad says, “It was taken away … because I’m black, he was white. They didn’t need any more than that.”

American singer Harry Belafonte heard about what happened to Conrad and offered to send her to any school of her choice, but Conrad says she knew if she was going to stand up for change “they were not going to run me out of Austin, Texas.”

After graduation Belafonte flew her to New York City, where she sang for seven of the most famous opera singers in NYC at that time. Soon Conrad’s perseverance would pay off, “You can’t wait around and hope someone is going to help you out. You have to get up and do something … it’s got to be deep. It was as deep as those Pawnee woods that I come from.”

Watch the rest of Conrad’s powerful story: