 President Halladay responded to the demands by hiring guidance and counseling professor David Talbot, a native of British Guyana and a Ph.D. from Columbia University, as the university's first African American faculty member.While Talbot was warmly received by most faculty and students, Reynolds notes that one campus security officer persistently addressed him as "boy" and that "for too long Dr. Talbot was the only black faculty member".In 1969, one year after Talbot joined the faculty, J. Mason Brewer was hired as the first African American professor in ETSU's English Department.