Upending the Ivory Tower. Stefan M. Bradley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ staff, and administration adored Jerome “Brude” Holland, who was the first black varsity football player there. Born in upstate New York, he played offense and defense, with his presence affecting much of the game. Off the field he was a member of black Greek organization Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., and the Booker T. Washington Club, which students started on campus to debate the utility of Washington’s philosophy. Holland also mentored black youth at a newly established community center in Ithaca founded by the Francis Harper Society. Although he was black, because he was a beloved football player he enjoyed a Cornell experience that was not available to students who were not standout athletes. For instance, Holland was selected to a very exclusive honor society, Aleph Samach. White people at Cornell were generous in granting Holland the distinction of the honor society, but at the very same time black women, who did not play football, faced rejection for the housing that was supposed to be compulsory for women. Ater graduating, Holland earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and eventually became the president of two HBCUs and an ambassador to Sweden during President Richard M. Nixon’s administration.61 He also accepted an appointment as trustee of Cornell University.

      Black students also excelled in other sports in the Ivy League. At Columbia, George Gregory received national commendations for his play on the basketball court from 1929 to 1931. He was the first black player at Columbia and he remained in New York City after graduating, taking posts in civil service leadership roles.62 On the lacrosse field, Lucien Alexis of Harvard gained acclaim in 1941. That year, he and his white teammates played against the University of Maryland in College Park, making that the first integrated athletic competition of the twentieth century in the state. Harvard coaches were egalitarian enough to field a black player, but they were not above accommodating other teams’ racist culture. That was the case when, in 1941, Harvard was set to play the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. The academy maintained a rule that its teams would not host black players. Rather than cause controversy, the Harvard coaches benched Alexis and played the game. Black athletes at Ivy institutions may have been revered on their campuses, but when they traveled, the sportsmen met with traumatic circumstances.

      The concession of Harvard in 1941 was especially hurtful because, in 1916, the university had righteously canceled a track meet with the naval academy because it would not allow a black long jumper to participate. The wavering on principles that Harvard displayed was the source of a great deal of embarrassment, disillusionment, and frustration for Alexis and black onlookers. The rights of black people to participate fully in society or to be fully human largely depended on the unpredictable integrity of even the most well-intending white people. Fortunately, fair-minded students pressured Harvard to establish a policy of competition regarding race, and the university responded with a statement indicating that it would not reenact the Alexis scenario.63

      The spirit of a “unified” nation and the observation of black men sacrificing themselves in defense of the country influenced some Ivy officials to put black athletes in play. The estranged relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States that led to the Cold War helped to called into question ideas of race and American democracy within institutions. Additionally, the re-desegregation of the National Football League in 1946 and of Major League Baseball in 1947 may have provided some outside societal pressure for the elite colleges to allow black students to play as well. At Yale, a black basketball player, Jay Swift, graced the court, helping the team to win. Soon after, Levi Jackson became the first black football player at Yale; the team selected Jackson to be the captain, making history again.64 In addition to being chosen to lead the team on the field, he was selected to join the secretive Skull and Bones society. The military and the Ivy League’s athletic teams found utility in black men, as long as they could help the institutions win.

      World War II and the Cold War made it possible for an evolution in race relations to take place at Ivy League institutions. The V-12 Navy College Training Program that called on universities to provide education to sailors so that the navy could increase its pool of officers did not restrict itself to white servicemen.65 That made it possible for black men to attend an institution like Princeton, which had traditionally rejected black applicants. There, Arthur Wilson, one of the first black students to attend the university, played basketball for three years and even became captain of the team. At the Yale School of Nursing, a question arose regarding the admission of black women because they would necessarily have to make skin contact with white patients. When a prominent white Yale alumnus wrote to point out the irony of “opposing Nazi ideas of race” while still rejecting American students because of their race, Yale’s president responded that from that point forward the nursing school would admit or reject candidates based solely on their student qualifications.66 Here, again, the school’s leadership had to be steered toward morality and justice.

      At midcentury, there were still few black students at Brown, but the university did, at least, have a course that covered the black experience. J. Saunders Redding, who by then had established himself as a scholar, returned to his alma mater as a visiting professor and taught a literature course on the Negro in American literature in the fall of 1949, making him one of the first (if not the first) black professors in the Ivy League. Inasmuch, his course was one of the first of its kind offered at Brown and its peer institutions. Interestingly, a fellow Brown alumnus, Morehouse president John Hope, gave Redding his first opportunity in the professoriate at the historically black college in Atlanta. After a brief unsettling stay at the institution, Redding resigned his position to seek other opportunities. That led him back north to Brown. As a student and as a professor, Redding was one of very few black people on campus.67 In spite of his and his brother’s presence at Brown, Harvard, and Columbia, the early generation of black Ivy Leaguers faced extreme isolation. Redding was able to help other black students ease their transition to elite college life when he took an endowed chairmanship at Cornell University in 1970. He was the first black professor to do so at Cornell.

      A great scholar-athlete, who could not attend the Ivy League university of his choice as an undergraduate, found redemption in the fact that his son could attend the school he selected. Paul Robeson was an All-American star football player at Rutgers University where he earned varsity letters in four sports. He pledged Alpha Phi Alpha and graduated valedictorian of his class at Rutgers; however, he originally wanted to attend Princeton University, which is in Robeson’s hometown. When his brother, William Drew Robeson Jr., was denied acceptance, Paul Robeson made the decision to stay in New Jersey but to attend Rutgers. Robeson graduated at the head of his class and then took a law degree at Columbia University while acting on Broadway. Rather than even consider Princeton (which had very few black students enrolled just after World War II), Robeson sent his son, Paul Robeson Jr. to Cornell, where he graduated in 1949.

      From the nineteenth to the twentieth century, black students in the Ivy League pushed through difficult circumstances to achieve. When given the opportunity, they excelled in all categories. Not surprisingly there was a high number of black students who received Phi Beta Kappa honors and many of the student athletes achieved national and university recognition for their work on the fields and courts. Many of these students were “firsts.” With the exception of few, black firsts, in nearly every category, have always known they had to carry themselves in a manner that exuded confidence but not arrogance in the face of white competition. Working within the system, black Ivy students during the desegregation period strove to shine scholastically and athletically through diligence and excellence. That would not change in the period after World War II, but black learners, following the lead of black agitators off campus, began to critique the system and move away from the idea of assimilation as a survival mechanism. The small number of black students attending the Ivies before World War II, however, did whatever they could to maintain their dignity while striving for excellence.

      2

      Unsettling Ol’ Nassau

      Princeton University from Jim Crow Admissions to Anti-Apartheid Protests

      We knew we were intruders in the white country club.

      —Shearwood McClelland, СКАЧАТЬ