58 YEARS AND COUNTING

Longtime Dallas broker among Texas’s first Black license holders. Billie Scott is still repaying the favor. In 1964, Scott couldn’t afford the closing costs on his first home; his agent helped pay the costs for him. A few months after moving in, Scott learned his agent had cancer. “I went to see him and I told him, ‘I will keep it going, Doug.’ I wanted to help people get homes just like he helped me.” Scott got his real estate license in June 1965. In those days, there were very few Black licensed real estate agents in Texas. He remembers meeting only one or two other Black agents, and they had started after he did. Scott faced challenges in his new profession. “I had a lot of problems trying to show properties because people didn’t think I should be showing properties to Black clients,” he says. “I told the sellers, ‘Show it or take it off the market.’” Scott’s pastor knew civil rights leader A. Maceo Smith, who worked at the Dallas HUD office, and at times Scott had to call Smith to advocate on his behalf. Scott joined a new Century 21 franchise in Dallas in 1969 and began...