 Hearing about the activities of the radical white Presbyterian minister Claude C. Williams, a Christian Marxist who had become converted to the cause of racial equality and was trying to organize a coal miners' union in Paris, Arkansas, Hays decided to return to Arkansas and join Williams in his work.He enrolled at the College of the Ozarks, a Presbyterian school that allows students to work in lieu of tuition, intending to study for the ministry and devote his life to the poor and dispossessed.There he met a fellow student, Zilphia Johnson (later Zilphia Horton), another acolyte of Williams, who was to become almost as important in Hays' life as Williams himself.