Many in Lubbock are mourning the loss of the hard-working community advocate, Billie Caviel, who died Monday at age 90.
Born in the community of Camden, Texas, in 1935, Billie Caviel grew up in Lufkin amid the struggles of segregation in Texas and the United States. Caviel and her husband, Alfred, both graduated from Texas Southern University’s pharmacy school in 1957 before moving to Lubbock.
The Caviels worked in a drug store in downtown Lubbock before they decided to open their own store, and they opened Lubbock’s first Black-owned pharmacy near 19th Street and Avenue A in 1960. The Caviels were the first African-American couple in the United States to jointly own and manage their own pharmacy.
Cosby Morton, a teacher of economics and history with Lubbock ISD and a board member with the Lubbock Roots Historical Arts Council, can still remember the impact that the Caviels had on him and the others in their community from the beginning.
“As far as in the neighborhood [of] East Lubbock, where most of the Blacks at that time lived at, that was just a treasure, because there was not a lot of pharmacists in town,” Morton said.
Morton came to Lubbock as a child in 1953. For many in the area at that time, segregation and lack of transportation made access to health care difficult, but Morton said the Caviel’s pharmacy served as more than just a place to buy medicine.
“I remember back when I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of radio stations here that played African-American music, or what you call soul music,” Morton recalled. “They had a record store there; they also had a doctor there, his name was Dr. F. L. [Franklin Leroye] Lovings, he moved into that area right there.”
For a time, Dr. Lovings and Dr. Joseph Alvin Chatman were the only Black doctors in Lubbock, and they both came to the Caviels for their prescriptions. Morton said like many of Lubbock’s historic civic leaders, the Caviel’s pride and investment in the Lubbock community broke through the racial boundaries, particularly when it comes to Lubbock’s children.
“I think they looked at this and said, ‘Hey, we live here, we need to take care of this,’” Morton said. “We need to have pride in this particular deal, and we need to raise and grow the next adults, the future of our community depends on these people.”
Billie Caviel was continually active in the education of young people in Lubbock. Morton said Caviel was “very instrumental” in the fight to keep open Lubbock’s first integrated senior high school, Dunbar, which became Dunbar Middle School in 1993. Caviel also served on the Lubbock ISD school board for a few years in the early 90s. Morton recalled when he started substituting around 2015, you could still catch Caviel volunteering for school events.
Billie Caviel’s pride in Lubbock extended to the arts as well.
Alfred Caviel died in 2015 at 85 years old, shortly after the couple donated the land and building of their pharmacy to the Lubbock Roots Historical Arts Council. Making a lasting impact once again, the Caviel Museum at 19th Street and Avenue A became the first African-American history museum in West Texas.
Shirley Green, executive director for the Lubbock Roots Historical Arts Council, said Billie Caviel supported the museum’s role in Lubbock’s First Friday Art Trail until she was no longer able to drive. In 2025, the museum hosted her 90th birthday party, and Green said as many as 100 people were there.
“She had family from all over Texas, all over the United States that attended, family members and friends and every organization that she was ever a part of,” Green said. “It was unbelievable.”
Green called Billie Caviel “a trailblazer” for Lubbock, referring to the mural on the side of the Caviel Museum with images of Lubbock’s Black leaders, where Billie and Alfred Caviel’s pictures occupy the “R” in the word “Roots.” Morton noted that Billie Caviel was part of an iconic group of leaders who chose to make a difference for the people of East Lubbock, and the city as a whole, by inspiring the generations that followed.
“Mr. [T.J.] Patterson and Mr. J. A. Chatman, Mr. E. C. Struggs and Mrs. Mae Simmons, I mean, Mr. George Woods, it goes on and on,” Morton said. “We came up, we had people that were vested in us. We had mentors. They didn't have to have the textbook education, but they were good people, and they knew what to do, and they were invested in the community.”
Morton said Caviel could have sold the building where they operated their pharmacy for nearly 50 years, but throughout her life, she placed a high value on giving young people the opportunity to remember where they came from.
“We owe so much to Mrs. Caviel,” Morton said. “We can never repay what she did for the community and so many individuals.”Memorial services for Caviel have not yet been announced.