Houston Chronicle, Dec. 9, 2007 After a stint as a fighter pilot, Hermann A. Barnett III returned home to become the first black graduate from a Texas medical school, overcoming Jim Crow laws and hardened racial prejudice. Barnett endured slights and indignities, including a beating by a Galveston County sheriff's deputy, to graduate from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1953. He went on to become the first black president of the Houston school board and the first black member of the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.