1 20 48 http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/184bb3a64c589285e97d37014da05c59.jpg f118ff4ed983867a93c15f523ec7a785 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Swarthmore College Halcyon Description An account of the resource This is a collection of photos of black students at Swarthmore from 1968 - 1972. The photos have been gathered from the Swarthmore College Halcyon, the College's yearbook. See also, the Black at Swarthmore photo collection and the Exhibit on Black Student Life. Note: A few documents in this collection are not photographs: the academic calendar for the 1969 school year and some narrative text from the 1969 Halcyon. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Swarthmore College Halcyon Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966-1970 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Clinton Etheridge and Don Mizell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Halcyon Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Swarthmore College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG Clinton Etheridge Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/1b9cff87c7aea2fe1b0168cde453ca25.jpg 591169dbcbc49b56dae2f38f32e5831f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Swarthmore College Halcyon Description An account of the resource This is a collection of photos of black students at Swarthmore from 1968 - 1972. The photos have been gathered from the Swarthmore College Halcyon, the College's yearbook. See also, the Black at Swarthmore photo collection and the Exhibit on Black Student Life. Note: A few documents in this collection are not photographs: the academic calendar for the 1969 school year and some narrative text from the 1969 Halcyon. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Swarthmore College Halcyon Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966-1970 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Don Mizell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Halcyon Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Swarthmore College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/6d5ae4ae37ea27882f5b8de1dad94529.pdf 0cbf5b88e6e16b7ed031c35b658c1ca1 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black at Swarthmore [1970] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Swarthmore College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 03/1970 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Arthur Phillpotts Clinton Etheridge Delmar Thompson Don Mizell James White Jean Marie Prestwidge Wilbert Greenhouse http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/a5b2915b82eade9271954149eb0d3775.jpg db08b06ca6b06ea7a5ab6fa465f80a7d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photos from Black at Swarthmore Description An account of the resource Photos from Black at Swarthmore, a series of pamphlets produced by the College and the Swarthmore African-American Student Society. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Clinton Etheridge and Don Mizell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Black at Swarthmore Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG Clinton Etheridge Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/f62b5c48f6e872590f31fbff14508d65.jpg f20900beee0b846a790b10d97f4eae56 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photos from Black at Swarthmore Description An account of the resource Photos from Black at Swarthmore, a series of pamphlets produced by the College and the Swarthmore African-American Student Society. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Don Mizell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Black at Swarthmore Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/be0029871d9a47582829642ac4e14375.jpg 6d001585ac1e5ed60135a4daa83c9424 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Swarthmore College Halcyon Description An account of the resource This is a collection of photos of black students at Swarthmore from 1968 - 1972. The photos have been gathered from the Swarthmore College Halcyon, the College's yearbook. See also, the Black at Swarthmore photo collection and the Exhibit on Black Student Life. Note: A few documents in this collection are not photographs: the academic calendar for the 1969 school year and some narrative text from the 1969 Halcyon. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Swarthmore College Halcyon Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966-1970 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Don Mizell and Clinton Etheridge Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Halcyon Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Swarthmore College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG Clinton Etheridge Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/e2ab6e8482309ca7bfb1885d3b23620c.jpg 2cfff9d6507e745b5eeb1cb25d726af5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Swarthmore College Halcyon Description An account of the resource This is a collection of photos of black students at Swarthmore from 1968 - 1972. The photos have been gathered from the Swarthmore College Halcyon, the College's yearbook. See also, the Black at Swarthmore photo collection and the Exhibit on Black Student Life. Note: A few documents in this collection are not photographs: the academic calendar for the 1969 school year and some narrative text from the 1969 Halcyon. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Swarthmore College Halcyon Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966-1970 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Don Mizell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Halcyon Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Swarthmore College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/26bd98e1e92d277b6aaef4aed6c905e1.jpg 9c5d47b932f83adcebb36b7433b2efaa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Swarthmore College Halcyon Description An account of the resource This is a collection of photos of black students at Swarthmore from 1968 - 1972. The photos have been gathered from the Swarthmore College Halcyon, the College's yearbook. See also, the Black at Swarthmore photo collection and the Exhibit on Black Student Life. Note: A few documents in this collection are not photographs: the academic calendar for the 1969 school year and some narrative text from the 1969 Halcyon. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Swarthmore College Halcyon Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966-1970 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Don Mizell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Swarthmore College Halcyon Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/23af5f23b400169eb360fb46b7604449.jpg d4ccdc3e78f0564d00274bc0f4592a28 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1969 Sit-In Photographs Description An account of the resource Black and white photographs of SASS during the sit-in at the Admissions Office in Parrish Hall, which began on January 9 and ended on January 16, 1969. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harold Buchanan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Harold Buchanan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 01/09/1969-01/16/1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .jpg Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Don Mizell, Clinton Etheridge, George Harrison, Aundrea White Kelley, and Michael Smith with Dean Barr Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Harold Buchanan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 01/09/1969-01/16/1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .jpg 1969 sit-in Aundrea White (Kelley) Clinton Etheridge Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/1a02d617b0abbae5d3b9ec0b093de1ac.jpg a18eed2327729687d9e358d801ebb4f6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1969 Sit-In Photographs Description An account of the resource Black and white photographs of SASS during the sit-in at the Admissions Office in Parrish Hall, which began on January 9 and ended on January 16, 1969. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harold Buchanan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Harold Buchanan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 01/09/1969-01/16/1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .jpg Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael Graves, Don Mizell, and Michael Smith speaking with Deans Robert Barr and Frederick Hargadon during the 1969 sit-in Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Harold Buchanan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 01/09/1969-01/16/1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .jpg 1969 sit-in Don Mizell Frederick Hargadon Michael Graves http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/b6e2dc63e2f009933d07defb074e73fc.jpg 5cffbce6d684332b25826afbe99c67d5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Swarthmore College Cygnet Description An account of the resource Photographs where available of many of the students who played a role in events. The photographs are largely from the Cygnet, a face book for incoming freshmen. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Triptych Tri-College Digital Library, Swarthmore Halcyons collection; Friends Historical Library Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Don Mizell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cygnet Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Swarthmore College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [n.d.] Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpg Don Mizell http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/4979bb1f440d23b82b176b3e3f30da8f.pdf 53755c11b064c3383ef3b4543dc15e9d PDF Text Text   Robert  Woodson  Interview  1   Black Liberation 1969: Black Studies in History, Theory and Praxis An interview with Robert Woodson (RW) conducted by Maria Mejia (MM) and Alison Roseberry-Polier (ARP) in Washington, D.C. on June 24, 2014. This transcription was written by Maria Mejia, and has been edited for clarity. Mr. Woodson served as the Executive Director of the Media Fellowship House in Media, PA from 1967 to 1969. Through this position and his work as a community activist in the area, Mr. Woodson met members of the Swarthmore Afro-American Student Society (SASS). He reports helping SASS members plan the sit-in at the Swarthmore College Admissions Office in Parrish Hall. Mr. Woodson and his colleagues supported SASS throughout the sit-in, which started on January 9, 1969, and invited the group to stay at the Media Fellowship House when they called a moratorium on January 16 following the death of President Courtney Smith. Mr. Woodson remained involved with the protest until SASS returned to campus after President Smith’s memorial service, held on January 20, 1969. MM: This summer we’re collecting materials, collecting research, interviewing people such as yourself that were involved – RW: This is your summer employment? MM: Yes. RW: And yours? ARP: Yes. RW: Okay. Where are you from? MM: I’m from New York City. ARP: I’m also from New York City. RW: Okay. ARP: I just graduated, so I’m working as Dr. Dorsey’s research assistant this summer. RW: Okay. MM: This summer we’re going to create an archive of primary source materials, interviews, and first-hand accounts [about the activism of Black Swarthmore College students from 1968 to 1972]. In the fall there’s going to be a class, taught by Dr. Dorsey, that’s going to focus on this event [the 1969 sit-in]. Students are going to go through the materials that we put together, and create their own historical narratives of what happened based on these primary source documents. �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  2   RW: Okay. Where do you want to start? MM: Well, do you have any more questions about the class or about – RW: Is the purpose to just reconstruct [the protest of 1969]? I think it [this history] lay dormant for a long time. It was probably the only university activity that wasn’t written up. It was covered extensively in Life magazine1 and there were some other newspaper [inaudible], but there’s been nothing on the part of Swarthmore, I don't think. MM: Exactly. RW: Even acknowledging that it happened. MM: Exactly. Our college is celebrating 150 years and Dr. Dorsey, along with some of her colleagues, thought that this was a really important part of Swarthmore’s history that needed to resurface or needed to be taught to current students of the College. RW: It was a shock at the time that this was happening at Swarthmore, that’s why there was an air of disbelief on the part of a lot of people and supporters of Swarthmore. They thought they were above the fray. ARP: Yeah. RW: That’s why it was amazing to see the response to it. MM: Our first question is: through your work in Chester and as the Director of the Media Fellowship House, you connected with the students who formed the Swarthmore Afro-American Student Society, also known as SASS. Just to start off, how do you remember your relationships with the Black Swarthmore students during that time period? RW: Well, I was very active in helping [with] the civil rights demonstrations and activities in … West Chester, Pennsylvania, Media and Chester. But Chester was the real center of activity and the SASS students were very much involved in helping out in the Chester low-income community. They were mentoring kids, bringing some of them on campus, and they really got themselves deeply involved in the life of the community. So they had established some real, strong bonds. But they were also very active with the service personnel on campus: the janitors and the people who worked in the kitchen, and embraced them almost as a part of it [the protest]. They had a real solid relationship with the students, and I met them through these relationships because I had been serving low-income leaders. Part of my work in civil rights wasn’t just to confront racism but [to] confront challenges within low-income communities, which I thought was a shortcoming of the Civil Rights Movement. Because it concentrated almost exclusively on                                                                                                                 1  A  reference  to  the  Life  magazine  piece  “Requiem  for  Courtney  Smith”  written  by  Paul   Good  and  published  on  May  9,  1969.     �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  3   race at the expense, sometimes, of overlooking non-racial problems that existed in the community. I was involved in that and that’s how I met the SASS students. MM: At some point the SASS students approached you about what they were planning to do. Can you tell us about those early planning meetings? How did you guide them through those early stages? RW: Well, when they first came to me and told me what their plans were, I said to them that they’re welcome to use my office as a staging area and a place to meet and organize it. I just gave them some guidance. I said that “if you’re going to do this, it’s important to do it with dignity and non-violently, so that the issue stays focused and not on your abhorrent behavior” [laughing]. And I told them at the time that “once this becomes public, there will be people who will be drawn to you,” would try to use them [SASS] for their own purposes in the name of helping them [SASS] and that it was very important for them [SASS] to remain separate from them [outsiders] and keep them away from it [the protest]. And I would help with that. That was my advice to the students. The whole takeover was coordinated out of my office because I remember we actually had a board in there where – [it said] when the takeover was supposed to occur, what was to happen, who was supposed to do it, and then, what was the occupation strategy. How were the students going to be fed? We arranged for grassroots people in Chester to cook and provide meals that were brought in everyday and passed through the window. Also, I set up a command center at my office so that the parents of the students had a place to call and stay abreast of activities so that they would know that their children were safe and that they [students] were being responsible. My staff and I at the office, we played that role at the time. During the negotiations, we just played a back-room role with them [SASS], but they [students] were the ones who – and we helped them shape their demands. But, essentially, all we did was provide the framework; the content of what the demands were and all of that strictly [came from] the students. We just served [in] a servant role, and as to protect them. When the announcement was made, we also helped with the coordination of the press releases to make sure that every aspect of it reflected these principles: of not attacking people, but attacking issues, and also of being respectful during negotiations. Also, to incorporate the needs of non-students in this as well - the kitchen personnel and whatnot. The students had also developed relationships [with the staff] because they used to do the income tax returns for some of the service personnel on campus. That’s kind of the background about how we – the flow between us, and the parents. I talked to a lot of parents, had everyone’s phone number. The parents had the phone number at the Media Fellowship House. We were like the command center. MM: You said that SASS members were the ones [who] wrote the demands, but that you helped them [SASS] shape them [the demands]. Can you tell us more about what was your opinion of the goals that motivated SASS? RW: They were all noble. Asmarom Lagesse was the only Black faculty member. He was Ethiopian. An anthropologist, I believe. And they wanted more Black faculty. They wanted Black administrators. Just to desegregate Swarthmore [laughing]. Which was what everybody was demanding at the time, to desegregate the campus. They wanted more done to attract more �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  4   minority students. They were not asking for a lowering of standards, they were just asking [for Swarthmore College] to be more inclusive. I think they were asking for scholarships for students. I’m not clear about the details, it’s been a long time, but I think that was the general gist of it. I mean they were not unreasonable demands. ARP: [whispering to MM] Do you want to go ahead with the next question? MM: Okay. You were talking about your office being the command center. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that worked logistically, about your office helping [to] coordinate the communication between students and their parents. Because they [students] were in there [Parrish Hall] for some time, and there were things happening outside. We heard that one young woman had a relative die in a standoff2 – RW: Killed. Yeah. I had spent some time in California, and I knew some of the people involved in that incident. I spent three summers before, I spent a whole summer with activists groups in Pasadena, California. I knew all of the activists out in Los Angeles, so I knew a lot of people out there. And there were some real severe differences between the Us Organization, run by Ron Karenga [Ronald McKinley Everett, also known as Maulana Karenga] and Huey Newton’s group, the Black Panther Party. There were severe differences, so it got – I talked to Clinton Etheridge not too long ago, and he reminded me of the name of the young lady [Ruth Wilson], he knows her. Her cousin was a student at UCLA [University  of  California,  Los  Angeles], and he was the one who was shot to death on campus. The mother called me, as soon as it happened, and asked me if I would get over to the campus to have the daughter – her first-cousin – call the mother before she [Ruth Wilson] saw it on the news. And as I rushed over to campus, it was just being reported on the news. She lost it. She saw pictures of her cousin being carried out, shot. I just comforted her, and then we arranged for her mom to come down and pick her up. We arranged for her to get to the airport, so that she would get home to be with her family. So that was one unfortunate situation, but that was the role we played. The mother had no other way of calling, so the mother and father called us and we rushed over there and told them what happened. But that was the role we were playing: to comfort in that situation. MM: When President Courtney Smith suffered a fatal heart attack, SASS ended the occupation, they left campus, and they stayed at the Media Fellowship House. This is correct? RW: Yes. But even before that, I think there’s something else you should know. There were two groups that tried to almost use SASS to turn that demonstration into something else, and that was the Weather Underground [the Weather Underground Organization]– they were on campus, a White radical leftist group – and also the Black Panthers tried to come and coopt it. But I brought a friend of mine, Jim Woodruff [Reverend James Woodruff] – he was an Episcopal priest, a very well known Black Episcopal priest and a very forceful leader in the Black Power movement in                                                                                                                 2  The  standoff  referenced  was  a  confrontation  between  the  Us  Organization  and  the  Black   Panther  Party  that  took  place  on  January  17,  1969  at  the  University  of  California,  Los   Angeles.  During  the  gunfight,  two  people  were  killed:  John  Huggins  and  Alprentice   “Bunchy”  Carter.  The  young  woman  was  a  Swarthmore  student  and  SASS  member,   identified  as  Ruth  Wilson,  who  was  related  to  one  of  the  victims.   �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  5   Philadelphia who was a good friend of mine. To kind of blunt that [outside influence], I brought him on campus and he met the students early on. He was just well known and well respected by everybody, so Jim and I agreed that we had to protect the students from both the Panthers and the Weather Underground. The students listened to us and told them [the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party] that they [SASS] did not want their [the outsiders] help. The students just told them they didn’t want their help because they [outsiders] really wanted to turn it [the protest] into something violent. That’s what they wanted, but the students listened to us and just kept it that way [non-violent]. Then, when Courtney Smith died – I think he was 46 years old and he had the heart attack – the students called and said, “what should we do?” Well, first of all, we said that we’re going to call a moratorium. It’s not ending, but there was to be a moratorium. We wrote a press release that said, “we mourn for the death of Courtney Smith, the way we mourn for the deaths of kids in the inner city.” I think there were some members of the football team, and others, who really wanted to take violent action against the students. To neutralize that, I called a lot of the fellows in the community to come up and protect the students. We said to them, “it’s important for you to leave the facility and come to my office,” that way [we could] just keep tensions low. Rather than having the fellows from Chester come, and perhaps get into a violent confrontation with the [White] students, it would be better for the [SASS] students to leave. So, I arranged for ten cars to come up – caravan on campus. Two of the cars collected the luggage and the other eight - the students filled those. But these men also made certain that there were no confrontations between the student athletes and the young people [of SASS]. They made sure they were protected. So we caravan out. We also said to them, “it is important to leave the office the way you found it;” and the students cleaned it, put everything back in place, and left. Of course, the photographers rushed in and the Philadelphia Daily News reported that the students had trashed the office. So it was first reported that they trashed it, which was a lie. But then other television stations and others came out and corrected it. They showed pictures of everything in order. We went into a retreat for about two days, where we had some sessions talking about where do we go from here, and the state of the movement, etc. I remember saying to Clint [Clinton Etheridge] and others – the question is do they go to the memorial service – and I said, “it is absolutely necessary for you to show your respect and go to the memorial service.” So I picked up Clint and - Don Mizell? Yeah? MM: That’s his name, yeah [laughing]. RW: Yes, Don Mizell. I think he was a cousin to my first wife. MM: Oh, really? [laughing]. RW: Yes, Don Mizell is my first wife’s cousin. I said, “I will come and take you to [the memorial service]” – because Don [Mizell] was really one of the leaders and Clint was the public spokesperson. Don [Mizell] had more of an organization personality. I remember taking them to the memorial service and sitting in the front row. We said we would not comment to the press, but that we would just have a presence there. And just having their presence there really won over a lot of students. A lot of the bitterness and rancor that was attending a wrath of the word of his [President Courtney Smith] death was just really neutralized by Don Mizell and Clint coming �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  6   to the memorial service, and that sort of set the tone. A lot of students were coming up, praising them for coming to the memorial service, and showing the respect for Courtney Smith. Talking about how they mourned him and wished only the best for his family, and whatnot. After that, my role just kind of ended with the students. I don’t think they took up the occupation again, but I think negotiations continued between the students and the faculty, and some changes were made. I sort of ended my participation right after that, when Courtney Smith died. But my participation was very active from the beginning, during the prelude, and at the end. MM: Just to backtrack a little bit, so that I can understand what happened right after Courtney Smith’s death: how many students left campus with the cars that you organized? RW: All of them. MM: All of them? RW: All of the students. MM: All of the SASS students or all of the Black students? RW: All of SASS. That’s a good question. I was only involved with the SASS students. Most of the Black students were in SASS. There were like four or five who refused, but then the White students distanced themselves from those students and that kind of radicalized them. I remember four [Black] students were in the lunchroom – I was told – and White students asked them why they weren’t with SASS. And they [Black students] said, oh they don’t agree with SASS, so they [White students] just got up and left them because they said, “oh, we can’t respect you if you can’t even respect your own folks.” So that caused some of those four students to join SASS at that point. I mean, there weren’t that many Black students on campus at the time, so I think all of them were part of the demonstration. There may have been one or two who weren’t, but I don't recall. I think that 99% of the Black students were a part of SASS. MM: So – RW: If they were not involved, they were supporters. MM: Sorry to interrupt. So, all of the SASS students leave campus, and only Don Mizell and Clinton Etheridge attend the memorial service? RW: Yes. They were there to represent SASS. Just the two of them came to it [the memorial service]. We didn’t want to create a spectacle of all the students coming on down. We just felt that the leadership needed to be represented, so they [Don Mizell and Clinton Etheridge] were representing all the students. MM: And did you stay with them throughout that event? RW: Yeah, I drove them there and stayed with them – stayed in the background. I never made any public statements. That wasn’t my role. They were the ones who engineered it. They were �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  7   the ones who shaped it, [and] provided the content. I just supplied logistical support and tactical suggestions, and that’s all - just kind of coaching them on the tone. Acting to protect them, because they had no way of knowing about the Weathermen [colloquial name for the Weather Underground Organization]. But having Jim Woodruff there served to reduce any possibility of confrontation between us and those two groups [the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party]. We had a real strong following in the community - I did - and Jim Woodruff was a very influential social force in Philadelphia at the time. A lot of people listened to him. ARP: Just to back up quickly, were the SASS members who didn’t go to the [memorial] service still at the Media Fellowship House or were they back on campus? RW: Yes, they were at the Media Fellowship House. All of them - all of their belongings, their clothes and personal effects. The Media Fellowship House at the time had a large recreation room where there were showers and, because it was Quaker-oriented, it was really built to house. It was an old mansion that was modified, so it had a huge dining hall with bathrooms and showers to accommodate the weekend work campers who came in from around the country. So the facility was just perfectly suited for them. ARP: Yeah RW: We just put sleeping bags all over the floor, everyone had plans to sleep and it was sanitary. We supplied meals for them. ARP: How long were they there for? RW: I would say four or five days. Until the memorial service was over, and then right after that they began to move back on campus.3 Maybe two or three days. Not very long because I think [SASS returned to campus] as soon as the memorial service was over. There was a level of camaraderie among the SASS students, as they began to filter back to campus, [and] old friendships began to get re-established. But they still were engaged in negotiations with the administration over their demands. They never did drop their demands nor did they pull back from them. I have no idea what happened after that or how many [demands] were met. My role was to get them through that. That’s what they asked me to do, and I limited my role to what they asked me to do and the things I felt I needed to do to protect them. I think it was one of the few takeovers in the country that remained peaceful and dignified. [In] the others, at Columbia [University]4 and other places, students were arrested, [there was] violence, people were gassed,                                                                                                                 3  Based  on  Mr.  Woodson’s  testimony  and  other  evidence  collected  during  this  research   project,  we  know  that  the  students  left  campus  on  January  16,  1969  when  President   Smith’s  death  was  announced  and  did  not  return  to  campus  until  after  the  memorial   service  in  Smith’s  honor  was  held  on  January  20.  If  they  returned  the  day  of  the  memorial   service  or  the  next  day,  then  the  members  of  SASS  were  in  the  Media  Fellowship  House  for   five  or  six  days.   4  Columbia  University  students  protested  the  school’s  connection  to  the  military  and  racist   policies,  specifically  the  University’s  involvement  in  the  Institute  for  Defense  Analyses   �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  8   and cops came on campus. There were some people killed [in those student protests]. Swarthmore’s [protest] was, I think, one of the few that proceeded the way that it did. MM: Don Mizell said something similar at an Alumni Weekend event that happened a couple of weeks ago. He said he was pleasantly surprised that SASS’ protest wasn’t met with more of a violent reaction, and I was wondering if you could talk more about threats of violence or violence that you were worried could happen when SASS decided to occupy Parrish Hall. RW: The concern that I had was not from SASS members, but that on our side that people like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers - because what they do is come in and seize situations in the name of helping you but end up - and a lot of people that they encounter are naive. They’re not sophisticated enough to see through all of the trappings of revolution and all of this kind of stuff. They were not sophisticated [enough] to see through it, we were. So the danger came from outside, but it also came from inside: students, particularly student athletes who felt offended by all of this. And I’m sure there were some [Ku Klux] Klan elements in the larger community that perhaps would have come. I don’t know too much about that, but my experience is that there was a lot of Klan activity in West Chester where we did our demonstrations, so in that whole area of Delaware and Chester Counties we knew that there was always the threat that white supremacists would come and take advantage of the tensions. They were always looking for flashpoints. So we had to be vigilant about the threat from within and the threat from without. We were certain having the proper external leaders, like Jim Woodruff and myself, at the helm of this - and also Diane Palm [also known as Diane R. Palm]5 and Bob Johnson [Robert Johnson]6. These were prominent community leaders in Chester who were well known. The very fact that they had a presence with the students really served to fend off anybody who would attempt to use [the protest] and turn it into something violent. So it was an impromptu, spontaneous wall of protection that we built around the students, that even they weren’t aware of. But at least they trusted me [enough] that anyone that I brought to the table, they felt confident that they would be operating in their interests. MM: Can you talk more about that outside influence that you were worried was going to hurt SASS’ goals? RW: Yeah. In the movements at those times, you had all kinds of radicals - you had the “twopercenters.” These were just anarchists [and] they were more in the West Coast than in the East Coast, but they were people who believed in radical revolution and anarchy. I have been personally involved and I wrote about stopping a riot when they actually tried to firebomb a chemical plant right in the middle of the Black community, even though it was going to destroy a lot of Black families. But they felt it would inflame the passions of Blacks, who would then react and create a race war. There were just some crazy people around. I have personal experience seeing radicals on the left and radicals on the right. You had the Two Percenters, you had the                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (IDA),  its  construction  of  a  gym  in  Morningside  Park  with  limited  access  for  Harlem   residents,  and  the  discrimination  against  Black  students  on  campus.     5  Former Director of the Community Assistance Project (CAP) in Chester.   6  Former  Director  of  the  Friends  Settlement  House  in  Chester.   �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  9   Weather Underground. White radical groups who bombed libraries at Harvard [University], shot at police officers, and did all kinds of things. Symbionese Revolutionary Army [United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army] in San Francisco that killed Marcus Foster, a Black principal because he was requiring students to have identification badges in order to be on campus [and] they felt this was fascist.7 So you had, at that time, a lot of crazy elements operating around the Civil Rights Movement. Any time you had a demonstration where there was a takeover, there was always a danger of it devolving into a violent confrontation. You had to work hard, every day, to make certain that it [the protest] stayed [non-violent] and the secret was having strong leadership. Clint, Don Mizell, and the [SASS] students were clear that that’s what they wanted, that they didn’t want this other stuff. They weren’t, I think, knowledgeable enough to know what help they should receive and what they shouldn’t. But they listened to us and as a result of this relationship, it was fine. ARP and MM: [Speaking simultaneously]. MM: Oh, sorry. Go ahead. ARP: Could you maybe give us some more details of what was the specific advice you gave them [SASS] about how to navigate those outsiders? How were you suggesting that they handle that? RW: Stay away from them! Tell them, when they come and offer help: no, thank you. Don’t start the conversation in the first place. When they say: “well, we want to come and help,” say: “no, thanks, we have our own advisors.” “Can we come to meetings?” No, meetings are closed. “Can we help you with some money or something?” No, we don’t need your help. I just said to them, “you cannot accept any help at all of any kind.” ARP: Yeah. RW: Even to engage in discussion. Just say “no, thank you” and just turn and walk away. And that’s what we did. They will ask, “can I address the group?” No, you cannot address the group. You cannot appear at any meetings. Just total isolation, you’ve got to just not give them any pretense for coming and taking over or participating. Just total isolation. And I said, “if there’s any threats or anything like that, let us take care of that.” But when people see who is standing with you, it serves to neutralize that. So you don’t have confrontation if the composition of the people around you is strong enough, you don’t have confrontation. And they had no way of knowing that, but those of us who had been in the streets knew that, so that’s the expertise we brought to the table. We know how to keep people away from them, but they had to cooperate. They had to agree to do it. what I love about SASS [is that] they were not interested in just getting headlines, because a lot of people get involved and they take themselves a little too                                                                                                                 7  Members  of  the  United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) protested the Oakland, CA public schools’ proposal to require students to carry identification badges by shooting school officials Marcus Foster and Robert Blackburn on November 6, 1973. Blackburn survived, but Foster did not. Foster, a Black man who served as superintendent at the time, previously worked as a school principal and associate superintendent in Philadelphia, PA.   �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  10   seriously. Then, they get caught up in the media hype. But, SASS never did. They were more interested in content and not making headlines. MM: Earlier you contrasted the influence of these outside activists with the influence of community members such as [Reverend James] Woodruff, and I was wondering if there were other ministers or churches, or people in the community who supported SASS or who worked with SASS? RW: I didn’t know any others. All the people that I know helped, who were a part of our movement, were all neighborhood leaders. Diane Palm, who I’m still close to. She lives in Houston, Texas now. She was a teacher and we ran a program called Community Assistance Program. We helped ex-offenders on the streets. So, Diane was very happy - and Bill Sanders. There were about ten people who were very active in Chester at the time, but they were supportive of SASS. That was sort of our group. And these were the people who know people, so that I can in ten minutes, when Courtney Smith died - within half an hour - I had ten people identified with cars ready to come up on campus. ARP: Yeah. RW: [laughing] Yeah. I think that people like the Panthers knew we had that kind of influence also, so they didn’t challenge us. But, we couldn’t have done it if SASS wasn’t cooperative, if they were not coachable. And they were always very, very coachable. An intelligent person knows their limits, and a secure person knows their limits. They were all, I think, very intelligent, and very secure in who they were. Not a single one of them, I think, ever just wanted to make headlines. That why I found it easy to deal with SASS. MM: Earlier you mentioned that SASS had a good relationship with the Black staff members on campus, and we actually found a document titled "Open Letter to the Parents of Black Students of Swarthmore College," which was signed by a few Black staff members. Specifically: William and Eileen Cline, Edwin and DeLois Collins, Harold Hoffman, Robert and Lee Williams, and Rachel Williams. I’m just wondering if you remember any of these people? RW: No, I don’t. MM: Do you remember the kind of relationship that SASS had with the Black staff on campus? RW: I really didn’t even know any of the Black staff, but I heard [of their relationships with SASS] because some of them lived in Chester. The word I got on the street was: the reason that the community supported them [SASS] was because they supported some of the Black staff and never acted as if they were better than them [the staff] because they went to Swarthmore. They never took themselves too seriously because they were students of Swarthmore, and that helped a great deal. They obviously didn’t get in a class divide and that’s the reason there was so much affection between the low-income neighborhood leaders - Chester, remember, is one of the poorest communities in the state. For SASS to have a good, solid relationship with the people like that was pretty amazing at the time. �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  11   MM: Do you think it was risky for these staff members to openly express their support for SASS? RW: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it was risky for them and that’s why I think SASS wanted to make sure that they were protected by including them in it, so that anything that happened to the staff members happened to SASS. I haven’t seen that happen before. A lot of these movements are just self-centered and were not expansive to include others, you know. That’s, again, what was unique about the SASS movement. They were very, very inclusive in terms of class. Very, very inclusive. ARP: [whispering to MM] Can I move on to question six? MM: Yeah, do you want to - ? ARP: Sure. So we were reading that on January 10th, the day after the sit-in started, SASS representatives Clinton Etheridge and Don Mizell met with President Smith’s assistant Gilmore Stott at the Media Fellowship House. According to the campus paper [the Phoenix], it said that the press conference was open to any press person but that you had asked that they not come into the meeting between the SASS representatives and Mr. Stott. Is that an accurate portrayal? RW: Yeah. When you’re negotiating, you want people to negotiate on issues ARP: Yeah. RW: And not get sidetracked by trying to pitch to press. It’s very bad to have press in when you’re negotiating because you’re going to be changing your mind, you’re going to be shifting around, and you don’t want people to play to the press. ARP: Yeah. RW: Then you can make a statement afterwards. But I thought the worst thing in the world was to have the press in when you’re negotiating. ARP: Yeah. Had you been in contact with Swarthmore administrators before that? Were they familiar with you? Had you worked with them at all? RW: [laughing] Not directly, but our reputation was pretty good in the area. The Media Fellowship House was started by Quakers, as was Swarthmore, and many of the members of the board are Swarthmore - some of them are Swarthmore trustees, some of them either attended Swarthmore or had kids in Swarthmore - so there was a symbiotic relationship between Media Fellowship House and Swarthmore. No formal relationship, but just an informal one because people went back and forth. The Biddle family, from Bailey Banks & Biddle, they were one of the founders of Media Fellowship House and, I think, a large supporter of Swarthmore, for example. Then, a lot of the work camps - I was a member of the American Friends Service Committee and did a lot of work with the Friends Service Committee, so I knew Swarthmore people and they knew me through the American Friends Service Committee. There’s a retreat, I �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  12   forgot the name of it, but there’s a Quaker retreat right in the area8 and I met Swarthmore faculty at these presentations at retreats and things like that. But that was about all. But, I know everyone was in shock when this happened at Swarthmore. It was the biggest shock because of Swarthmore’s liberal reputation. They just didn’t expect it to happen. Interesting time. MM: So you were talking about organizing this luncheon, and organizing the communication between SASS students and their parents. How else was your office, as the “command center,” supportive of SASS during the actual RW: Just raise money to provide resources that they need for press releases and food. We had a budget for that [laughing] People made donations to help them, from Chester and from my organization. That was about all. It was pretty much limited to making our facility available to them. We did nothing else during that period but support SASS. I mean, all of our time and energy was spent helping them. We suspended everything else, and just helped them. MM: And besides the Media Fellowship House, you were affiliated with CHIP [Chester Home Improvement Project]9 during that time? RW: The what? MM: With CHIP. What was the other organization you mentioned? RW: Yeah. I forgot CHIP. I forgot. Yeah, there were a couple other organizations. CHIP - I forgot what the acronym was, but I know that was in Chester. There was CHIP, and there were quite a few organizations. Everybody had an acronym. RW and MM: [Laughing]. MM: So these organizations were in Media, Chester, and RW: Chester mostly. MM: Mostly Chester? RW: Yeah. Media is kind of a sleepy, little middle- and upper-income enclave. I think South Media had a little, small - but all the families go back centuries, almost. You see a name of a Black family Darlington and a White Darlington, then you see Darlington Road [laughing].                                                                                                                 8  In  1930,  Pendle  Hill  was  established  to  uphold  the  educational  and  spiritual  values  of  the   Religious  Society  of  Friends.  This  Quaker  retreat  center  is  located  in  Wallingford,  PA,  less   than  two  miles  from  Swarthmore  College.     9  Lowell  Livezey,  Swarthmore  College  class  of  1966,  founded  the  Chester  Home   Improvement  Project  (CHIP)  in  1965  with  the  sponsorship  of  the  Robert  Wade   Neighborhood  House.  CHIP’s  mission  was  to  improve  the  housing  conditions  of  working-­‐ class  people  in  Chester,  PA.  SASS  members  involved  in  the  1969  sit-­‐in  volunteered  with   CHIP.  The  organization’s  records  are  located  at  the  Temple  University  Urban  Archives.   �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  13   Quakers, as you know, let their slaves go. Released them and then gave them land, so you have like Concord and all these little Black enclaves that go back 200 years all over that area. Interesting history. Some of the old mansions, you can just see the Underground Railroad tunnels that lead from a person’s house out to the field. [Emergency service vehicle sirens in the background]. MM: Wow. RW: You can still some of those in Wallingford and Chichester, and all like that. Some of the old mansions maintained that antebellum kind of history there. MM: So, I think we’re getting ready to wrap this up, but I wanted to ask about the end of the protest. You said that once President Courtney Smith passed away, that was the end of your RW: Involvement. MM: Involvement. But, can you tell us if Black Swarthmore students continued to work in Chester, and if you continued to be involved with them through that space, like their mentoring or tutoring in Chester? RW: No, I don’t recall. I don’t recall. I just know that we moved on to other things, other issues since our goal was just - [sirens get louder] an ambulance service. [laughing] So, once the service was delivered MM: Yeah. RW and MM: [Laughing]. MM: Once you made it out alive [laughing]. RW: After everybody got out alive, and everybody was talking and whatnot, we just kind of went to other things. I saw some of them - I left and went to work in Boston for two years, and I think Don was in Harvard Law School, so I ran into Clint Etheridge and those who went to Harvard Law School. I saw them in Boston, occasionally, socially. I remember they came up. Most of them went to law school, I think. Marilyn Holifield. MM: Yeah. RW: And Don Mizell I know went to Harvard because I used to see him at my office. I don’t know where Clint went. Someplace. But I know Don and Marilyn Holifield came to Boston. That was it. Again, mine was an ambulance service [laughing]. MM: Do you have any other questions Ali? ARP: I don’t. �   Robert  Woodson  Interview  14   MM: Is there anything else you want to make sure we make a note of? Anything we didn’t ask you about? RW: I wasn’t clear what role Asmarom Legesse - I know he was a very nice guy, I don’t know if he’s still around or no, but he was an interesting guy. He was the only Black faculty, he was very supportive. No, that’s about it. We just about covered everything: how we [SASS and I] met, and then what our role was, what their role was, the incident involving the death of Courtney Smith. I think what’s important for me, that I remember most, is just how sophisticated and self-confident the students were to be so young and not get caught up in the hype of the movement. Because a lot of people in movements get impressed with themselves when they’re on television or in the newspapers, and that becomes an attraction and a distraction. So they get defined by the distraction [laughing] and not the content of what they were about. But SASS never wavered from that, and I think that’s why their movement was the subject of a Life magazine profile. Because of the dignified way they handled it. Columbia, you don’t see anything about Columbia. That was a mess. Some students got barred forever from going back to school. I knew some young people who went through that, they never went back to college. That was it. ARP: Yeah. MM: Well, thank you for your time. ARP: Thank you. MM: This has been really informative and it’s really wonderful to hear from someone who was there, and who had a little more experience or a little bit more wisdom to see what was going on during that time. Because I’m sure it was an emotional, trying time for people involved in that protest. But, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. RW: Yeah, because a lot of people who try to help people, they use them for their own purposes. ARP: Yeah. RW: They had to be careful. I had to be an example of what I was telling them to avoid [laughing]. So, I tried to be faithful to that. Not getting involved in determining what their demands were, just being on tap but not on top. That’s very hard sometimes for people who try to help. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interviews Description An account of the resource Audio files, transcriptions and photographs documenting the interviews of Swarthmore College alumni, former faculty, and community activists who played an active role in the Black activism at Swarthmore College from 1968 to 1972. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Black Liberation 1969 Research Team Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Woodson Interview Transcription Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Woodson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06/24/2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf 1969 sit-in Clinton Etheridge Courtney Smith's death Don Mizell Marilyn Holifield Media Fellowship House Robert Woodson Ruth Wilson http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/3b487a32ed33fc34f702a5a9bcd42af7.JPG 0ace66d644c74a18273902b56584f0cf http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/4c2b2b79b947ac8a245ae45cc5517ab4.mp3 e9ff6fbf8bf3a5c0087731b7d63f9a39 http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/4e7615bbbe054c792c38d9e75c5554c7.pdf d9a4effe6707592b42ae347a164351b6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interviews Description An account of the resource Audio files, transcriptions and photographs documenting the interviews of Swarthmore College alumni, former faculty, and community activists who played an active role in the Black activism at Swarthmore College from 1968 to 1972. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Black Liberation 1969 Research Team Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Maria Mejia Alison Roseberry-Polier Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Robert Woodson Location The location of the interview Washington, D.C. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 48 minutes, 27 seconds Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Woodson Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Woodson Maria Mejia Alison Roseberry-Polier Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06/24/2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .mp3 1969 sit-in Clinton Etheridge Courtney Smith's death Don Mizell Marilyn Holifield Media Fellowship House Robert Woodson Ruth Wilson http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/b589a000590cbe87da373c98aa885abd.jpg 9ca9c254b6ec3faf121d30b094d485ac http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/dff7788d7e728b6d82a3d639da71c8e2.mp3 f8f4392467f8013c57a6b359cc10c70f http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/9463e9e60821efdadbb1891c6a8d4426.pdf da913a2425d2db45cf078bc12795a1c1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interviews Description An account of the resource Audio files, transcriptions and photographs documenting the interviews of Swarthmore College alumni, former faculty, and community activists who played an active role in the Black activism at Swarthmore College from 1968 to 1972. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Black Liberation 1969 Research Team Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Ali Roseberry-Polier John Gagnon Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ava Harris Stanley Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ava Harris (Stanley) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ava Harris Stanley John Gagnon Ali Roseberry-Polier Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [n.p.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 08/06/2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 1969 sit-in 1970 sit-in Ava Harris (Stanley) Black admissions Black Cultural Center Don Mizell Faculty Marilyn Allman (Maye) Marilyn Holifield Sam Shepard http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/a45a187ba2fc34032d1a793d09452c32.pdf a132793aa287bb7a796c628f55d4222b PDF Text Text ��������� ��������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Friends Historical Library General Reference Files Description An account of the resource This collection contains a series of folders in the Friends Historical Library that are not part of any particular collection. Most of the documents pertain to SASS, the BCC, and Black Studies. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Friends Historical Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Memo From Ad Hoc Black Admissions Committee to Faculty and Students] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ad Hoc Black Admissions Committee William Cline Uwe Henke Franciena King Asmarom Legesse Don Mizell Jean Perkins Alan Robin Gilmore Stott Delmar Thompson Aundrea White Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [n.p.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 01/05/1970 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Aundrea White (Kelley) Black admissions Delmar Thompson Don Mizell Faculty post-enrollment support President's Office http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/03c7e5cef9f2230083e17b403110f335.pdf e61942df1a4eec0d8c675c357845f339 PDF Text Text �1-9-6 The C r u c i b l e of Character A P E R S O N A L A C C O U N T O F S WA R T H M O R E ’ S C R I S I S O F 1 9 6 9 By C l i n t o n E t h e ri d g e ’ 6 9 T hirty-six years ago, at around noon on Jan. 9, 1969, I led a group of black students into the Swarthmore College Admissions Office in Parrish Hall as part of a nonviolent direct action. I was chairman of the Swarthmore Afro-American Students Society (SASS). We were seeking to redress what we felt were legitimate grievances concerning black admissions at Swarthmore. Our action precipitated what came to be known in the history of Swarthmore College as “the crisis.” The Phoenix of January 10, 1969, captured the moment: As Deans Hargadon, Thompson, and Barr headed for lunch at Sharples, members of SASS appeared at the front door of the Admissions Office and motioned to Mrs. Mary W. Dye, Assistant in Admissions, who had just locked the front door, to open it. She informed them that the office was closed for lunch hour and proceeded to the back doors to lock them also. Clinton Etheridge, SASS chairman, walked around to the back doors where he met Dean Hargadon. Dean Hargadon asked him to please let the one remaining candidate for admission out. As Dean Hargadon opened the door for the candidate, Etheridge entered and walked towards the front door and let the remaining members of SASS in. S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Once we were inside, there was no violence or destruction of property. The deans left on request, and the doors were padlocked. One of the most significant weeks in Swarthmore history was about to begin. When SASS left a week later, all the litter from our occupation and nonviolent direct action was removed. The admissions office was left undamaged and the files untouched. SASS had engaged in a disciplined, dignified, and nonviolent direct action. However, like most of the outside press, the Delaware County Daily Times in their Jan. 10, 1969, edition gave a simplistic, stereotyped view of our action with the screaming headline: “Twenty Militants Seize Offices at Swarthmore.” Little did that newspaper know that one of those “militants” would become chairman of the Maryland Public Utilities Commission (Russell Frisby ’72, who attended Yale Law School). Or that another “militant” would become one of the nation’s top black lawyers (according to Black Enterprise) and a senior partner with the multinational law firm of Holland & Knight (Marilyn Holifield ’69, who attended Harvard “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” —Martin Luther King 22 �23 MARCH 2005 Law School and also served on the College’s Board of Managers). Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that stereotypes are a substitute for critical thinking about new or challenging aspects of human beings. Stereotypes conceal the complexity of the human condition. Although we may not expect critical thinking and the absence of stereotyping from the outside world and its press, we certainly should expect it from the Swarthmore community. In this connection, the student-run Phoenix performed an invaluable service during the crisis with its balanced, nuanced daily coverage of a complex story, capturing for posterity the most detailed factual record of the events of that momentous week at Swarthmore. On the surface, the crisis was about black admissions at Swarthmore. However, at a deeper level, it was really about the relationship of Swarthmore College to black America and to the American dream. In the 36 years since, I have thought long and hard about our nonviolent direct action—and what it meant for me, SASS, and Swarthmore. It was a watershed event and defining moment for us all. Crisis is the crucible in which character is tested. In our own small way, members of SASS were trying to do at Swarthmore what Martin Luther King was doing at the national level. Dr. King was striving to make the American dream as relevant and meaningful to black Americans as to white Americans; ROMARE BEARDEN, THE DOVE (1964); CUT-AND-PASTED PHOTOREPRODUCTIONS AND PAPERS, GOUACHE, PENCIL AND COLORED PENCIL ON CARDBOARD, 13 3/8 X 18 3/4 INCHES; BLANCHETTE ROCKEFELLER FUND (377.1971); THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, N.Y., U.S.A.; DIGITAL IMAGE © THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART; LICENSED BY SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. �1-9-6 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N SASS was trying to make Swarthmore as relevant and meaningful to black students as to white. Samuel DuBois Cook, the first black professor at Duke University and a Morehouse College classmate of Martin Luther King, said the following about his former classmate: “The social and political philosophy of Dr. King was built on the solid rock of the existential character of the American liberal, humanistic, idealistic, and democratic tradition, with its capacity for growth, renewal, and extension to the world of higher possibilities and more inclusive realities. He believed the resources and potential of that tradition were mighty. He had profound and abiding faith in the creative and redemptive possibilities of the land he loved.” During the 1960s, with the civil rights movement burgeoning and the divisive Vietnam War raging, conservatives such as John Wayne used the injunction: “America—love it or leave it!” More recently, the black conservative talk-show host Ken Hamblin wrote a book called Pick a Better Country. Unlike Wayne and Hamblin, Martin Luther King wanted to make America the best possible version of itself. Professor Cook said, “Dr. King believed that racism was defiling American democracy and keeping it from achieving the ultimate ideal as the grandest form of government ever conceived by the mind of man. Dr. King saw this as the black man’s redemptive mission in America.” At the time of Swarthmore’s crisis, there were conservatives— both white and black—who said that SASS should be grateful for the relatively few black students who had been admitted to the elite inner sanctum of Swarthmore. At some level, these voices were saying: “Pick a better college” or “Swarthmore—love it or leave it!” Instead, like Martin Luther King at the national level, SASS had high expectations of the College, with its strong Quaker heritage of social justice. And in many ways, the efforts of a few have yielded benefits for many. Compared with 1969, today we can see a better version of Swarthmore with, as Cook wrote, its “growth, renewal, and extension to the world of higher possibilities and more inclusive realities.” SASS helped create a climate on campus that embraces greater diversity in the student body, in the faculty, and in academic offerings—including a concentration in black studies. This is the “existential character of the American liberal, humanistic, idealistic, and democratic tradition” in action at Swarthmore. Moreover, the Black Cultural Center, the Gospel Choir, the Sophisticated Gents male a cappella group, and the Sistahs female a cappella group flourish as part of the legacy of SASS. None of these Swarthmore institutions, which enrich contemporary College life, existed before the crisis of January 1969. Swarthmore has come a long way since 1905—a century ago—when it denied admission to a light-skinned black student whom it had unknowingly accepted. According to the memoirs of Charles Darlington ’15, he learned of the incident from former Dean of Men William “Alee” Alexander. As Darlington recounts: “When he arrived, it was found that he was a Negro boy. His picture was shaded in such a way that this fact had not been obvious. The college was in an embarrassing quandary. No Negroes had ever been admitted. As Alee said, ‘It just wasn’t done.’ After much heart searching by the College administration and probably some members of the Board, the boy and his parents were told that an error had been made. The College was very sorry, but he could not be permitted to enter.” In his Revolt of the College Intellectual, another former dean, Everett Lee Hunt, gives us a peek at Depression-era Swarthmore black admissions: In 1932 a Negro from a Philadelphia high school decided to apply to Swarthmore. He was a prominent athlete; had a good background in classics, his major interest; was president of the student government and popular with his fellows; and except for his color, was a logical candidate for an open scholarship. The admission of colored students had never been approved by the Board of Managers, and so the Admissions Committee referred the application to the Board. After a long discussion it decided by a large majority that Negro students could not yet be admitted to a coeducational college like Swarthmore. Their admission would raise too many problems and create too many difficulties. These 1905 and 1932 admissions incidents are offensive to the sensibilities of most living Swarthmoreans. In 2005, it is difficult to fathom how liberal, well-educated Swarthmore people of good will could make those racist admissions decisions. Sadly, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation produced a racism that contaminated most whites with a belief, conscious or unconscious, that blacks are inferior or substandard. Subconscious beliefs and attitudes can have a strong hidden influence on behavior. As Malcolm X said toward the end of his life, “The white man is not inherently evil, but America’s racist society influences him to act evilly.” It also offends sensibilities to learn that, as late as 1965, Swarthmore asked prospective white roommates of incoming black freshmen whether they were comfortable rooming with a “Negro.” This policy suggests that, even at the height of the civil rights movement, Swarthmore was more solicitous of the opinions of its white students than its black students— an example of the tacit second-class status of black students back then. (This 1965 skeleton in the College’s racial closet was revealed by Marilyn Allman Maye ’69, in an interview in the May 1994 Bulletin.) On the surface, the crisis was about black admissions. At a deeper level, it was about the relationship of Swarthmore to black America and the American dream. 24 �Thus, when I arrived at Swarthmore in fall 1965, the College was a social organism ripe for reform on black admissions. As Richard Walton put it in Swarthmore College: An Informal History: “It is puzzling that a college founded by Quakers, among the most fervent of the abolitionists and devoted to equality, should have been so slow to admit blacks at all and so slow to admit blacks in significant numbers…. It is generally agreed that Swarthmore had not conducted a vigorous campaign to obtain more black applicants, had not done enough to raise scholarship funds for them.” Part of the puzzle can be explained by the observation that, pre-crisis, black students were “invisible” at Swarthmore, to use Ralph Ellison’s metaphor. As the nameless narrator declares in the prologue of Ellison’s Invisible Man: “I am an invisible man. I am invisible … because people refuse to see me…. When they approach me, they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination— indeed, everything and anything except me.” By the mid-1960s, blacks were “invisible” at Swarthmore because there were so few of us and because it was assumed that we were “just” Swarthmoreans—albeit swarthy Swarthmoreans. The only times black students were not “invisible” were when we sat together in Sharples Dining Hall or when our allblack intramural touch-football team—the Black Grand-Army-ofthe-Crum—went undefeated for the season, even beating the Delta Upsilon team that had some real football players on it. With the perspective of time and the long view of history, the case can be made that the nonviolent direct action SASS took in 1969 pushed Swarthmore to do what was in its enlightened selfinterest in terms of affirmative action and diversity. But this notion was controversial 36 years ago. Was the SASS nonviolent direct action necessary? Yes. At the time, I believed that the SASS nonviolent direct action was necessary, and, 36 years later, I still believe that. As Martin Luther King wrote in Letter From Birmingham Jail: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored…. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tensions. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.” Swarthmore’s crisis brought the hidden tension about black admissions out into the open so the Swarthmore community could see it and deal with it. What was the hidden tension on black admissions that the crisis brought to the surface? In a nutshell, racial insensitivity. Dr. King was striving to make the American dream as relevant and meaningful to black Americans as to white; SASS was trying to make Swarthmore as relevant and meaningful to black students as to white. 25 MARCH 2005 The genesis of the crisis was a report on black admissions that Dean of Admissions Fred Hargadon prepared for the faculty Admissions Policy Committee (APC) during summer 1968. President Courtney Smith asked Hargadon for the report when it became known that only eight black freshmen would be entering the College in fall 1968 as part of the Class of 1972. (I was one of 19 black freshmen who enrolled in fall 1965 as part of the Class of 1969.) Given Swarthmore’s checkered past and tenuous track record on black admissions, eight black freshmen in 1968 seemed a retreat to tokenism. To SASS, it appeared that blacks were to be further marginalized at Swarthmore, even before we could enter the mainstream. SASS felt it had to sound the alarm. To that end, Don Mizell ’71 and I, as SASS vice chairman and SASS chairman, respectively, wrote a letter to Dean Hargadon, which was published in the Oct. 1, 1968, Phoenix, questioning the College’s commitment to black admissions in light of the small number of black students in the freshman class. On Oct. 10, the APC released Dean Hargadon’s report and also placed it on general reserve in McCabe Library. Dean Hargadon invited all black students to a meeting on Oct. 14 in Bond Hall to discuss the report. We quickly discovered that the report included personal data on individual black students, including SAT scores and grades as well as data from financial aid applications showing family income and parents’ occupations. Although specific black students were not named, nevertheless SASS thought that the publication of personal data on black students—and its placement in McCabe Library—represented an invasion of privacy. Our concern about invasion of privacy was legitimate. Because of the small number of black students on campus—just 47 at that time—SASS believed that individual black students could be identified and potentially embarrassed by the report. Therefore, as SASS chairman, I telephoned Dean Hargadon on the evening of Oct. 10 to request removal of the report from McCabe Library and its reissuance without the personal data. After consulting with the APC, he declined the SASS request. SASS considered this an act of racial insensitivity. It appeared that black students had no right to privacy concerning personal data that a Swarthmore administrator needed to respect. If the College was going to marginalize black students and invade their privacy concerning personal data, we were not going to acquiesce in the process. Therefore, SASS decided to stage a protest and walk out at the Oct. 14 APC meeting on Dean Hargadon’s report. At that Oct. 14 meeting in Bond, I read a SASS statement protesting what we thought was the report’s invasion of privacy and declaring our refusal to cooperate with the APC “until the report is reworked, revised, and rewritten.” Then, 35 of the 45 black �1-9-6 students present walked out. Subsequently, the APC members and the 10 black students who remained concluded that Dean Hargadon’s report should be removed from McCabe Library because of the personal data it contained. This was done. with respect to its own demands. It appeared there were no effective channels of communication through which SASS could address its concerns about black admissions and black student privacy. With the perspective of time, I see that there were additional complicating factors beyond the failure of communications between SASS and Dean Hargadon. First, before our nonviolent direct action in January 1969, the College had difficulty sorting out the message from the messenger on black admissions. Unlike today, there were no black administrators at Swarthmore and only one black faculty member, the African anthropologist Asmarom Legesse. It is one thing for an adult to receive a message from a kid— particularly one perceived as obstreperous—and another for an adult to receive the same message from another adult who is a respected peer or colleague. Unlike other Swarthmore student groups, SASS had no built-in constituency in the faculty or administration that provided a channel of communication. The problematic Dean Hargadon was the closest person SASS had to an official administration liaison. No one will ever know how the history of the crisis might have been different had black administrators or black professors also been the messengers—or at least the interpreters or translators— of the message SASS was trying to deliver on black admissions. Second—not unlike today—Swarthmore in 1968 to 1969 was basically governed through a Quaker-style process of decision making by consensus. Yet reaching consensus rests on certain key assumptions—primary of which is discussion among and between equals, peers, or colleagues. This process could not work for the black admissions question because consensus would need to have been reached between those in a superior position (Swarthmore administrators) and those in a subordinate position (black students). And asymmetric power relationships, between a superior and a subordinate, tend to be more coercive than consensual. The dearth of black faculty and black administrators at Swarthmore was one factor. The inability to reach a consensus among equals was another factor. But, unfortunately and tragically, the failure of communication between SASS and Dean Hargadon was probably the most important factor in the crisis. When Dean Hargadon wrote his report during summer 1968, he not only included personal data on black students—which were at least factual and objective—he also wrote obiter dictum comments about alleged SASS “militant separatist” inclinations, which were stereotypically inaccurate. Dean Hargadon’s “militant separatist” allegations, which questioned our legitimacy at Swarthmore, did not endear him to some members of SASS. As for the “militant” part of Dean Hargadon’s allegation, I say again that stereotypes conceal the complexity of the human condition; they substitute for critical thinking about Following this failure of communications between SASS and Dean Hargadon, the College’s designated interlocutor, we were even more concerned about the prospects for black admissions in particular and the status of black students at Swarthmore in general. We just couldn’t stand by and see the situation go from bad to worse. Therefore, SASS formulated four demands, which were sent to the APC on Oct. 16 and published in The Phoenix the same day. The demands were the following: • Dean Hargadon’s report not be returned to McCabe Library, and SASS and APC rewrite the report for publication • The Swarthmore faculty and administration form a Black Interest Committee to work with SASS • The College recruit a high-level black administrator • The SASS Recruitment Committee work with Dean Hargadon and the APC to enhance black recruitment and admissions In the mid-1960s, blacks were “invisible” at Swarthmore because there were so few of us. It was assumed that we were “just” Swarthmoreans—albeit swarthy Swarthmoreans. 26 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Although SASS believed its demands were reasonable, we also thought we were not getting an appropriate response from Dean Hargadon and the APC. Therefore, SASS decided to try to make progress on another front. On Nov. 8, a SASS delegation visited the Student Council meeting to present our case for the council voting to endorse the SASS demands. Student Council voted 10 to 1 with two abstentions to endorse the four demands, an action that prompted an angry letter from Dean Hargadon criticizing the council’s haste and lack of consultation with the APC. After the Nov. 8 Student Council endorsement of the SASS demands, there were several desultory meetings and discussions on black admissions. But no substantive progress was being made. However, probably sensing a deteriorating situation, President Smith began to get involved indirectly and asked for clarification of the SASS demands. Ironically, he did not ask the SASS leadership for this clarification; he went to the Student Council president and to Michael Fields ’69, an “independent” black student —not a member of SASS—who had written an open letter to the College community on Nov. 13 endorsing the SASS demands. This was a tragic situation with almost theater-of-the-absurd overtones. Everybody was clarifying the SASS demands except SASS itself. SASS was ready, willing, and able to discuss its own demands, but no one in power seemed to want to hear what we had to say. The sad irony is that SASS was “invisible” at Swarthmore �new or challenging aspects of human beings. Instead of grappling with the new and challenging aspects of SASS, as The Phoenix did, Dean Hargadon seemed to act as if we were still in the pre-SASS days at Swarthmore, when blacks were unorganized and “invisible.” Although The Phoenix was able to pierce the veil of the “militant” stereotype and recognize the essence of SASS concealed beneath, Dean Hargadon was not. Given our commitment to nonviolent direct action, the question could have been posed to Dean Hargadon: How “militant” were we in SASS compared with Martin Luther King? As for the “separatist” part of Dean Hargadon’s allegation, I had white roommates at Swarthmore my freshman, sophomore, and junior years. (I roomed alone my senior year in Palmer.) I was a member of Kappa Sigma Pi fraternity during my sophomore year. Moreover, contrary to the stereotype of many SASS members, I was neither “angry” nor “alienated” nor “lonely” at Swarthmore. I enjoyed a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, both black and white. This group included my white roommates and fraternity brothers and my fellow engineering students. At the same time, I was also “comfortable in my own skin” as a black student on a white campus; I took my leadership roles in SASS seriously. I considered myself pro-black and not anti-white, pro-SASS and not anti-Swarthmore. I simply believed circumstances needed to be reformed for the better; I believed Swarthmore needed to live up to the ideals of its Quaker heritage of social justice. I knew Dean Hargadon personally and liked him. He and I would greet each other in Parrish Hall during my freshman and sophomore years and talk about subjects like the novels of James Baldwin. He told me how he grew up in an integrated workingclass suburb of Philadelphia and how he went to Haverford on the GI Bill after serving in the Army as a military policeman. Given those halcyon days, no one could predict that Dean Hargadon and I would be linked as antagonists through the crisis—that he and I would be face-to-face at the admissions office door at high noon on Jan. 9, 1969. Dean Hargadon had a good reputation as an admissions officer and went on to distinguished careers in undergraduate admissions at Stanford and Princeton. After leaving his Swarthmore admissions post, he subsequently served on the College’s Board of Managers for several years. Also between admissions stints at Stanford and Princeton, he served as a senior executive with the College Board in New York for a brief period. However, in the pre-crisis days at Swarthmore, Dean Hargadon apparently was not prepared to accept constructive criticism and input from SASS on black admissions policy. After I graduated in June 1969, I was told that he became more receptive to SASS input. By Christmas 1968, the College had ignored the Oct. 16 SASS demands—and SASS itself. Without con- sulting us, Dean Hargadon and the APC finished a second report on black admissions on Dec. 18. Apparently, in the view of Dean Hargadon and the APC, SASS had forfeited any consultative role in formulating black admissions policy. Why? Was it because SASS had refused to acquiesce in the invasion of black student privacy through the publication of personal data in the first Hargadon report? Out of this maelstrom came a new set of SASS demands on Dec. 23, 1968. SASS thought that the dean of admissions, in questioning the organization’s legitimacy, was denigrating black students and the black perspective SASS tried to represent at Swarthmore. While Martin Luther King had been striving to make the American dream as relevant and meaningful to black and white, many in SASS viewed black admissions at Swarthmore as a “dream deferred,” using the metaphor of the Langston Hughes poem: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?* I viewed our new demands as a desperate cry in the wilderness for recognition and respect by an “invisible man.” Thus, in a last-ditch effort to get the attention of the College, I sent the following cover letter, along with a set of “clarified” demands, to President Smith on Dec. 23, 1968: Merry Christmas! Enclosed are the “clarified” SASS demands you requested some time ago. If you fail to issue a clear, unequivocal public acceptance of these non-negotiable demands by noon, Tuesday, January 7, 1969, the black students and SASS will be forced to do whatever is necessary to obtain acceptance of same. Here is what the new set of demands asked for: • The acceptance and enrollment of 10 to 20 “risk” black students for the next year and the provision of support services for them • A College commitment to enroll 100 black students within three years and 150 black students within six years Please turn to page 84 *From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Vintage Books, New York, © 1995. Reprinted with permission. Unlike other Swarthmore student groups, SASS had no built-in constituency in the faculty or administration that provided a channel of communication. 27 MARCH 2005 �1-9-6 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N The C r u c i b l e of Character Continued from page 27 • The appointment of a black assistant dean of admissions and a black counselor, subject to SASS review • That Dean Hargadon be replaced by Sept. 1, 1969, “unless present admissions policies change or unless the actions of the current Dean of Admissions change” If I knew then what I know now, I would have written the cover letter differently. Many times during the last 36 years, I have studied this letter carefully. This was very strong language with which to communicate the essential message of SASS. In “Requiem for Courtney Smith,” Paul Good’s article on the crisis (May 9, 1969, Life), J. Roland Pennock, chairman of the Political Science Department, conveyed the reaction of President Smith: “He was confronted with non-negotiable demands and rhetoric that did great offense to him…. This hurt him bitterly. But he never let himself be moved to anger.” (The Life article was reprinted in the March 1999 Bulletin and is available in the magazine’s Web archives at www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.) As incredible as it seems now, I and some other black students expected the College to ignore these demands just as it had ignored our demands of Oct. 16. To me, the production of the second black admissions report on Dec. 18, without reference to the SASS demands of Oct. 16, only dramatized how “invisible” we were at Swarthmore. The College had consistently refused to recognize the reality and legitimacy of SASS. We were left to conclude that the system at Swarthmore was unresponsive—and perhaps even hostile—to the SASS perspective on black admissions and our concern about the invasion of black student privacy. By Christmas 1968, it was clear that SASS had to move forward, even at the risk of failure, because of the moral imperative of our cause. If necessary, “we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the community,” as Martin Luther King suggested in Letter From Birmingham Jail. I learned of the impact of the cover letter and demands when I returned to Swarthmore from my home in New York City on Dec. 31. That was the day I first met Courtney Smith face-to-face. I went by Parrish Hall to check my mailbox. To my surprise, I found a reproduced copy of the Dec. 23 SASS cover letter and I was about to be ushered into a private audience with Courtney Smith. As I stepped into his office, I realized there is nothing to be afraid of if you believe the cause for which you stand is right and just. demands in my mailbox—and learned that it had been placed in the mailbox of every student. President Smith had distributed the SASS cover letter and demands to the whole College community, along with his own response. When I had typed our demands on my mechanical typewriter, I kept only a poor-quality carbon copy. With today’s ubiquitous personal computers, scanners, faxes, and e-mail, it is easy to forget (or not know) how primitive 1969 office technology was by comparison. In those days, students typed papers and letters by typewriter—usually not electrical—with no memory capability. Papers to be reproduced were typically typed on a mimeograph stencil and copies made on an inky mimeograph machine. In 1969, photocopying machines were rare and expensive. Therefore, because the College had multiple clean copies of the Dec. 23 SASS cover letter and demands—and I did not—why not ask the College for extra copies? It was not so simple. When I went to the reproduction office on the first floor of Parrish and asked for extra copies of the SASS package, a tight-jawed, scowling lady told me that she could only release extra copies with the permission of the President’s Office. The next step was to climb the stairs of Parrish Hall to President Smith’s second-floor office. When I walked into the president’s outer office, his secretary immediately recognized me. I politely asked her for extra copies of the SASS package. She quickly retreated into President Smith’s private office while I patiently waited in the antechamber. The secretary returned shortly and informed me that President Smith wished to see me. Courtney Smith was a living legend at Swarthmore—one of the great presidents in College history and the American secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship. To many Swarthmore students, me included, Courtney Smith seemed aloof and patrician—yet quietly charismatic in his Brooks Brothers suits. Although I merely wanted extra copies of the SASS package, I had climbed Mount Olympus and was about to be ushered into a private audience with Courtney Smith. I was psychologically unprepared and a little bit overwhelmed and intimidated. But as I stepped into his private office, I realized there is nothing to be afraid of if you believe the cause for which you stand is right and just. Despite our differences of race, age, and style, President Smith was cordial and gracious to me that day. I reciprocated his cordiality and treated him with the utmost respect and courtesy—even though my Dec. 23 cover letter did not communicate that. In the informal intimacy of his private office, President Smith told me in so many words that he wanted to discuss the SASS demands as two human beings in search of a human solution to a human problem. I very much wanted to do that too. But, at the same time, I was only the chairman of SASS and therefore only a 84 �spokesman for the other black students— the “executive of their will.” Without discussing any of the substantive issues of the SASS demands, he and I agreed to a second meeting with a delegation of SASS members on Jan. 6, 1969—the first day of school after Christmas vacation. After 10 minutes, with no further business to conduct, Courtney Smith and I shook hands like gentlemen and parted company. Some may ask why I did not talk with President Smith about the demands. First, as SASS chairman, I took my spokesman role seriously. It was not lip service. I was consultative and collegial; I viewed myself as “first among equals” with respect to the other SASS members and the “executive of their will.” Second, we in SASS valued group solidarity. We were sensitive to the “divide-and-conquer” tactics that had been used all too often in American history to separate blacks from their leaders. It would have been a mistake for me as SASS chairman to negotiate one-on-one with President Smith on Dec. 31 or at any other time or place. Hence, the meeting with a SASS delegation on Jan. 6 was the appropriate next step. Third, I was skeptical whether President Smith had an open mind about the SASS demands—and subsequent information confirmed my skepticism. In the Life article, author Paul Good quoted from a letter President Smith sent Dean Hargadon around the time in question: “I want to underline my dismay at the inappropriateness and lack of justification in SASS’s remarks that concerned you and your work in admissions, including Negro admissions. I count on your knowing that I regard your work at Swarthmore as one of the great strengths of the college.” President Smith’s letter did not surprise me. Regardless of his personal thoughts on the SASS position, politically Courtney Smith had to stand by his admissions dean. The next and last time I met President Smith was Jan. 6, 1969, along with a delegation of 15 SASS members and a handful of other Swarthmore administrators. Compared with the informal intimacy of my Dec. 31 private meeting, the Jan. 6 meeting, although civil, was more formal and tense. SASS restated its demands of Dec. 23. President Smith restated his position from his cover letter of Dec. 31 to the Swarthmore community, which accompanied the public distribution of the SASS demands. President Smith expressed sympathy for the underlying concerns of the SASS demands, which he asked that we recast as proposals. At the same time, he said he could not act unilaterally on the SASS demands even as proposals, because they involved basic policy issues for the Swarthmore faculty and Board of Managers. With the two sides agreeing to disagree, the meeting ended without any substantive progress or resolution. Two days after the Jan. 7 deadline and with no satisfactory response to the demands of Dec. 23, SASS engaged in nonviolent direct action by occupying the Admissions Office. We had crossed the Rubicon, and Swarthmore would never be the same. Then, time stood still for a week—or so it seemed. As Richard Walton wrote: The SASS sit-in set off a frenzy of meetings by students and faculty. The students, as well as The Phoenix, generally supported SASS’s goals but criticized its tactics. The faculty, often meeting late, night after night, took a similar position. Over a period of several days, the faculty adopted resolutions meeting most of the SASS demands, noting that they were acting not because of duress but because many of the demands were justified. President Smith said it went without saying that he was “prepared to use the full influence and prestige of his office to win Board approval” of the resolutions adopted by the faculty. Despite the inevitable confusion, the situation appeared to be moving toward resolution.” We had crossed the Rubicon, and Swarthmore would never be the same again. Time stood still for a week—or so it seemed. During the crisis, Asmarom Legesse, the African anthropologist, was a faculty liaison to SASS. Years later, The Phoenix quoted him as follows on the crisis: “The Admissions Office was boarded up. On one occasion, I had to climb through a window in order to talk to them. It was incredibly intense to be inside—they had developed a degree of maturity and a sense of purpose. There was the kind of vision about what they were doing that I never saw again.” After Swarthmore got over the consternation of the initial “nonnegotiable” SASS demands, the controversial cover letter, and the dramatic occupation of the Admissions Office, the College found us to be basically reasonable and responsible negotiators. Once the negotiations were joined, we constantly appealed to the sense of morality and decency of the faculty and administrators on the other side of the table—and they seemed to respond. At the time, Professor of Anthropology Steve Piker suggested that SASS had effected “a resocialization of the Swarthmore community.” Despite the SASS pre-crisis rhetoric and political language—which we were forced to use as “invisible” men and women—what we wanted was to make the system work better, not break the system. Then, eight days into the SASS nonviolent direct action, President Courtney Smith died suddenly of a heart attack at age 53. Although I did not know him well, our one, short, private meeting on Dec. 31 gave me some sense of Smith as a man. I, like everybody in the Swarthmore community, was shocked and saddened by the news of his unfortunate death on Jan. 16. That same day, SASS ended its action and issued the following statement: In deference to the untimely death of the President, the Swarthmore Afro-American Students’ Society is vacating the Admissions Office. We sincerely believe the death of any human being, whether he be the good President of a college, or a black person trapped in our country’s ghettoes, is a tragedy. At this time we are calling for a moratorium of dia- 85 MARCH 2005 �1-9-6 logue, in order that this unfortunate event be given the college’s complete attention. However, we remain strong in our conviction that the legitimate grievances we have voiced to the college remain unresolved and we are dedicated to attaining a satisfactory resolution in the future. The Phoenix weighed in with thoughtful editorial comments: “President Smith’s unexpected death has unfortunately tended to obscure the restraint and rationality of the events which preceded it…. However we strongly believe that every effort should be made to dissociate his death from the preceding events of that week. It was an unforeseeable accident that should not be considered the consequence of any action.” Professor Legesse addressed the question of “violence” a week after the death of President Smith: Senior members of this community have suggested that the actions of SASS were acts of “violence.” I can only understand this indictment as a response to grief…. Can we plausibly admit such guilt and interpret a sit-in and a hunger-strike as acts of violence? Are we to believe that these instruments of peaceful protest are legitimate and “nonviolent” only when we use them to direct attention to grievances elsewhere, but cease to be legitimate when they are directed at our own institution? … We should not forget that black students exhibited extraordinary restraint and discipline during the crisis. It was public knowledge that President Smith was in his last year as Swarthmore’s president. In July 1968, he had announced his intention to leave the College in June 1969, to become president of the Markle Foundation. He had been a trustee of the New © CAREN ALPERT AUTHOR’S NOTE I had prostate surgery in July 2003, which appears to have been successful in dealing with early-stage prostate cancer. I never had surgery or a major illness before, but this illness brought me face to face with my own mortality. Coming at age 55, it made me realize that I am closer to the end than the beginning of my life—and to the “unfinished business” I still need to do. Writing this article was one piece of “unfinished business.” Besides prostate surgery, I’ve come to realize that if you don’t write your own history, someone else will write it for you—and they may or may not get it right. Since 1969, there have been several articles and pieces written about the crisis at Swarthmore— but none by black students directly involved. Although I am not an official SASS historian or a current spokesman for SASS or Swarthmore blacks, past or present, I believe my recollections and viewpoint on the crisis can make a contribution to the historical record. I hope my historical memoir is the beginning, not the end, of a serious new assessment of one of the most significant events in the history of Swarthmore College. I urge others to pick up where I leave off. —Clinton Etheridge ’69 York–based foundation since 1953, the same year he became president of Swarthmore. However, at the time of his death, it was not public knowledge that he had a pre-existing heart condition. In their authorized biography of President Smith (Dignity, Discourse, and Destiny: The Life of Courtney C. Smith, Associated University Presses, 2003) based on records, documents, and archives of the College and the Smith family, authors Darwin Stapleton ’69 and Donna Heckman Stapleton disclose: “A postmortem examination conducted the same day [of Courtney Smith’s death] but never made public showed his heart had suffered a hemorrhage of the right coronary artery, and that he had ‘severe atherosclerosis of both coronary arteries … the caliber of both coronary arteries was considerably reduced in diameter so that only a small probe could be put through them.’” The Stapletons conclude, “Unknown to all, and least of all himself, Smith had been living with serious heart disease for some time.” There was an intense backlash against SASS from outside the College after the death of President Smith. I received hate mail for weeks from many parts of the country. Years later, I came across a quote from Horace that captures how I felt in the aftermath of the crisis: “The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong.” I cannot speak for any other member of SASS at the time, but I considered myself psychologically prepared to face the consequences of our nonviolent direct action. I believed in our cause so strongly that I was personally prepared, if necessary, to be expelled from Swarthmore, to be beaten by the police, to be killed. Fortunately, none of that happened to me or any other SASS member. But neither I nor anyone else was prepared for the untimely death 86 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N �of President Smith. Although many Swarthmoreans then and since have disagreed with SASS over the use of nonviolent direct action in January 1969, most have agreed with and embraced the changes in black admissions that SASS was seeking. I see this as evidence of the ambivalence of the white moderate that Martin Luther King discusses in Letter From Birmingham Jail: … the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. 87 MARCH 2005 My decision to become SASS chairman in spring 1968 had been a difficult one. The late Sam Shepherd Jr. ’68 was graduating. Sam was a founding father of SASS and the SASS chairman. I was vice chairman and the logical consensus candidate to take the chairmanship. Yet I was a shy, soft-spoken, ambivalent engineering student. Sam used the Phil Ochs song “When I’m Gone” (from Phil Ochs in Concert) to persuade me to succeed him as SASS chairman. The song, which rhapsodizes on the importance of making your contribution while you are “here,” has two lines that particularly hit home for me: “Won’t be asked to do my share when I’m gone.” “Can’t add my name into the fight when I’m gone.” I agonized over the decision to become SASS chairman, but when I finally made it, I was totally committed—come what may. I came to realize that sometimes you must lead by being led. This was a leadership principle of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. In a 1963 article, Dr. King quoted Gandhi: “There go my people, I must catch them, for I am their leader.” This was particularly the case with “Seven Sisters” of SASS, who were frequently the “power behind the throne.” Marilyn Holifield, Marilyn Allman Maye, Aundrea White Kelley ’72, Janette Domingo ’70, and others kept my feet to the fire of “blackness.” During the crisis, Don Mizell was the SASS vice chairman. Don and I worked well together, and we had complementary styles. Don was charismatic, a good public speaker, and more comfortable with the glare of media publicity. Reserved, understated, and unflappable, I somehow projected as SASS chairman what some people described as “strength of character.” This reaction surprised me. In many respects, I was an unlikely leader, yet I was the man history selected for this role. Although Swarthmore generally nurtured me as a critical The crisis was a defining moment that shaped the rest of my life. Most human beings are given relatively few opportunities to make a difference or a contribution to their world— to leave a legacy. thinker, the crisis was where my real education came during my college years. To quote Herbert Spencer, the 19th-century British social philosopher and biologist: “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” As a reluctant, unlikely leader, I was forced to stretch myself, to grow in ways that I would not otherwise have grown during those years. There were times during the crisis when I had to dig deep down inside myself and pull out qualities I didn’t know I possessed. For example, during my first public presentations during the crisis (to the outside press, Swarthmore faculty, and Swarthmore student body), I had to overcome stage fright. I had no choice; it was a “do-or-die” situation. What propelled me forward, what helped me reinvent myself, was a compelling sense of duty and devotion to the moral imperative of our cause. I could not break faith with the legacy of my forebears and others, like Martin Luther King, who had made so many sacrifices for me, the black race, and America. It was now my turn to stand and deliver—to the best of my ability—at Swarthmore. The crisis was the greatest challenge of my youth and a defining moment that shaped the rest of my life. Most human beings are given relatively few opportunities in their lives to make a significant difference or make a real contribution to their world—to leave a legacy. The crisis was such an opportunity for me. The most important lesson I took from the 1960s and the Swarthmore crisis is that, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, America and its black citizens—and Swarthmore and its black students—are, in the words of Martin Luther King, “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” We must all strive to validate “the existential character of the American liberal, humanistic, idealistic, and democratic tradition, with its capacity for growth, renewal, and extension to the world of higher possibilities and more inclusive realities.” This is the wellspring of the American dream. Despite the inevitable difficulties and frustrations from the lingering pernicious effects of racism, there is no escaping our mutual destiny. For black and white, there is no viable alternative to the American dream. T Clinton Etheridge is a vice president of the California Economic Development Lending Initiative, a multibank community development corporation established in 1995 to provide investment capital to small businesses and community organizations throughout the state. Following Swarthmore, Etheridge served in the Peace Corps in West Africa. He received an M.B.A. from Stanford Business School and later worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, the Security Pacific Bank, and Citicorp. Etheridge lives in Oakland with his wife of 30 years, Deidria; they have three adult children. He is an avid jazz enthusiast. ©2005 by the author. � �1-9-6 The C r u c i b l e of Character A P E R S O N A L A C C O U N T O F S WA R T H M O R E ’ S C R I S I S O F 1 9 6 9 By C l i n t o n E t h e ri d g e ’ 6 9 T hirty-six years ago, at around noon on Jan. 9, 1969, I led a group of black students into the Swarthmore College Admissions Office in Parrish Hall as part of a nonviolent direct action. I was chairman of the Swarthmore Afro-American Students Society (SASS). We were seeking to redress what we felt were legitimate grievances concerning black admissions at Swarthmore. Our action precipitated what came to be known in the history of Swarthmore College as “the crisis.” The Phoenix of January 10, 1969, captured the moment: As Deans Hargadon, Thompson, and Barr headed for lunch at Sharples, members of SASS appeared at the front door of the Admissions Office and motioned to Mrs. Mary W. Dye, Assistant in Admissions, who had just locked the front door, to open it. She informed them that the office was closed for lunch hour and proceeded to the back doors to lock them also. Clinton Etheridge, SASS chairman, walked around to the back doors where he met Dean Hargadon. Dean Hargadon asked him to please let the one remaining candidate for admission out. As Dean Hargadon opened the door for the candidate, Etheridge entered and walked towards the front door and let the remaining members of SASS in. S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Once we were inside, there was no violence or destruction of property. The deans left on request, and the doors were padlocked. One of the most significant weeks in Swarthmore history was about to begin. When SASS left a week later, all the litter from our occupation and nonviolent direct action was removed. The admissions office was left undamaged and the files untouched. SASS had engaged in a disciplined, dignified, and nonviolent direct action. However, like most of the outside press, the Delaware County Daily Times in their Jan. 10, 1969, edition gave a simplistic, stereotyped view of our action with the screaming headline: “Twenty Militants Seize Offices at Swarthmore.” Little did that newspaper know that one of those “militants” would become chairman of the Maryland Public Utilities Commission (Russell Frisby ’72, who attended Yale Law School). Or that another “militant” would become one of the nation’s top black lawyers (according to Black Enterprise) and a senior partner with the multinational law firm of Holland & Knight (Marilyn Holifield ’69, who attended Harvard “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” —Martin Luther King 22 �23 MARCH 2005 Law School and also served on the College’s Board of Managers). Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that stereotypes are a substitute for critical thinking about new or challenging aspects of human beings. Stereotypes conceal the complexity of the human condition. Although we may not expect critical thinking and the absence of stereotyping from the outside world and its press, we certainly should expect it from the Swarthmore community. In this connection, the student-run Phoenix performed an invaluable service during the crisis with its balanced, nuanced daily coverage of a complex story, capturing for posterity the most detailed factual record of the events of that momentous week at Swarthmore. On the surface, the crisis was about black admissions at Swarthmore. However, at a deeper level, it was really about the relationship of Swarthmore College to black America and to the American dream. In the 36 years since, I have thought long and hard about our nonviolent direct action—and what it meant for me, SASS, and Swarthmore. It was a watershed event and defining moment for us all. Crisis is the crucible in which character is tested. In our own small way, members of SASS were trying to do at Swarthmore what Martin Luther King was doing at the national level. Dr. King was striving to make the American dream as relevant and meaningful to black Americans as to white Americans; ROMARE BEARDEN, THE DOVE (1964); CUT-AND-PASTED PHOTOREPRODUCTIONS AND PAPERS, GOUACHE, PENCIL AND COLORED PENCIL ON CARDBOARD, 13 3/8 X 18 3/4 INCHES; BLANCHETTE ROCKEFELLER FUND (377.1971); THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, N.Y., U.S.A.; DIGITAL IMAGE © THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART; LICENSED BY SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. �1-9-6 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N SASS was trying to make Swarthmore as relevant and meaningful to black students as to white. Samuel DuBois Cook, the first black professor at Duke University and a Morehouse College classmate of Martin Luther King, said the following about his former classmate: “The social and political philosophy of Dr. King was built on the solid rock of the existential character of the American liberal, humanistic, idealistic, and democratic tradition, with its capacity for growth, renewal, and extension to the world of higher possibilities and more inclusive realities. He believed the resources and potential of that tradition were mighty. He had profound and abiding faith in the creative and redemptive possibilities of the land he loved.” During the 1960s, with the civil rights movement burgeoning and the divisive Vietnam War raging, conservatives such as John Wayne used the injunction: “America—love it or leave it!” More recently, the black conservative talk-show host Ken Hamblin wrote a book called Pick a Better Country. Unlike Wayne and Hamblin, Martin Luther King wanted to make America the best possible version of itself. Professor Cook said, “Dr. King believed that racism was defiling American democracy and keeping it from achieving the ultimate ideal as the grandest form of government ever conceived by the mind of man. Dr. King saw this as the black man’s redemptive mission in America.” At the time of Swarthmore’s crisis, there were conservatives— both white and black—who said that SASS should be grateful for the relatively few black students who had been admitted to the elite inner sanctum of Swarthmore. At some level, these voices were saying: “Pick a better college” or “Swarthmore—love it or leave it!” Instead, like Martin Luther King at the national level, SASS had high expectations of the College, with its strong Quaker heritage of social justice. And in many ways, the efforts of a few have yielded benefits for many. Compared with 1969, today we can see a better version of Swarthmore with, as Cook wrote, its “growth, renewal, and extension to the world of higher possibilities and more inclusive realities.” SASS helped create a climate on campus that embraces greater diversity in the student body, in the faculty, and in academic offerings—including a concentration in black studies. This is the “existential character of the American liberal, humanistic, idealistic, and democratic tradition” in action at Swarthmore. Moreover, the Black Cultural Center, the Gospel Choir, the Sophisticated Gents male a cappella group, and the Sistahs female a cappella group flourish as part of the legacy of SASS. None of these Swarthmore institutions, which enrich contemporary College life, existed before the crisis of January 1969. Swarthmore has come a long way since 1905—a century ago—when it denied admission to a light-skinned black student whom it had unknowingly accepted. According to the memoirs of Charles Darlington ’15, he learned of the incident from former Dean of Men William “Alee” Alexander. As Darlington recounts: “When he arrived, it was found that he was a Negro boy. His picture was shaded in such a way that this fact had not been obvious. The college was in an embarrassing quandary. No Negroes had ever been admitted. As Alee said, ‘It just wasn’t done.’ After much heart searching by the College administration and probably some members of the Board, the boy and his parents were told that an error had been made. The College was very sorry, but he could not be permitted to enter.” In his Revolt of the College Intellectual, another former dean, Everett Lee Hunt, gives us a peek at Depression-era Swarthmore black admissions: In 1932 a Negro from a Philadelphia high school decided to apply to Swarthmore. He was a prominent athlete; had a good background in classics, his major interest; was president of the student government and popular with his fellows; and except for his color, was a logical candidate for an open scholarship. The admission of colored students had never been approved by the Board of Managers, and so the Admissions Committee referred the application to the Board. After a long discussion it decided by a large majority that Negro students could not yet be admitted to a coeducational college like Swarthmore. Their admission would raise too many problems and create too many difficulties. These 1905 and 1932 admissions incidents are offensive to the sensibilities of most living Swarthmoreans. In 2005, it is difficult to fathom how liberal, well-educated Swarthmore people of good will could make those racist admissions decisions. Sadly, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation produced a racism that contaminated most whites with a belief, conscious or unconscious, that blacks are inferior or substandard. Subconscious beliefs and attitudes can have a strong hidden influence on behavior. As Malcolm X said toward the end of his life, “The white man is not inherently evil, but America’s racist society influences him to act evilly.” It also offends sensibilities to learn that, as late as 1965, Swarthmore asked prospective white roommates of incoming black freshmen whether they were comfortable rooming with a “Negro.” This policy suggests that, even at the height of the civil rights movement, Swarthmore was more solicitous of the opinions of its white students than its black students— an example of the tacit second-class status of black students back then. (This 1965 skeleton in the College’s racial closet was revealed by Marilyn Allman Maye ’69, in an interview in the May 1994 Bulletin.) On the surface, the crisis was about black admissions. At a deeper level, it was about the relationship of Swarthmore to black America and the American dream. 24 �Thus, when I arrived at Swarthmore in fall 1965, the College was a social organism ripe for reform on black admissions. As Richard Walton put it in Swarthmore College: An Informal History: “It is puzzling that a college founded by Quakers, among the most fervent of the abolitionists and devoted to equality, should have been so slow to admit blacks at all and so slow to admit blacks in significant numbers…. It is generally agreed that Swarthmore had not conducted a vigorous campaign to obtain more black applicants, had not done enough to raise scholarship funds for them.” Part of the puzzle can be explained by the observation that, pre-crisis, black students were “invisible” at Swarthmore, to use Ralph Ellison’s metaphor. As the nameless narrator declares in the prologue of Ellison’s Invisible Man: “I am an invisible man. I am invisible … because people refuse to see me…. When they approach me, they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination— indeed, everything and anything except me.” By the mid-1960s, blacks were “invisible” at Swarthmore because there were so few of us and because it was assumed that we were “just” Swarthmoreans—albeit swarthy Swarthmoreans. The only times black students were not “invisible” were when we sat together in Sharples Dining Hall or when our allblack intramural touch-football team—the Black Grand-Army-ofthe-Crum—went undefeated for the season, even beating the Delta Upsilon team that had some real football players on it. With the perspective of time and the long view of history, the case can be made that the nonviolent direct action SASS took in 1969 pushed Swarthmore to do what was in its enlightened selfinterest in terms of affirmative action and diversity. But this notion was controversial 36 years ago. Was the SASS nonviolent direct action necessary? Yes. At the time, I believed that the SASS nonviolent direct action was necessary, and, 36 years later, I still believe that. As Martin Luther King wrote in Letter From Birmingham Jail: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored…. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tensions. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.” Swarthmore’s crisis brought the hidden tension about black admissions out into the open so the Swarthmore community could see it and deal with it. What was the hidden tension on black admissions that the crisis brought to the surface? In a nutshell, racial insensitivity. Dr. King was striving to make the American dream as relevant and meaningful to black Americans as to white; SASS was trying to make Swarthmore as relevant and meaningful to black students as to white. 25 MARCH 2005 The genesis of the crisis was a report on black admissions that Dean of Admissions Fred Hargadon prepared for the faculty Admissions Policy Committee (APC) during summer 1968. President Courtney Smith asked Hargadon for the report when it became known that only eight black freshmen would be entering the College in fall 1968 as part of the Class of 1972. (I was one of 19 black freshmen who enrolled in fall 1965 as part of the Class of 1969.) Given Swarthmore’s checkered past and tenuous track record on black admissions, eight black freshmen in 1968 seemed a retreat to tokenism. To SASS, it appeared that blacks were to be further marginalized at Swarthmore, even before we could enter the mainstream. SASS felt it had to sound the alarm. To that end, Don Mizell ’71 and I, as SASS vice chairman and SASS chairman, respectively, wrote a letter to Dean Hargadon, which was published in the Oct. 1, 1968, Phoenix, questioning the College’s commitment to black admissions in light of the small number of black students in the freshman class. On Oct. 10, the APC released Dean Hargadon’s report and also placed it on general reserve in McCabe Library. Dean Hargadon invited all black students to a meeting on Oct. 14 in Bond Hall to discuss the report. We quickly discovered that the report included personal data on individual black students, including SAT scores and grades as well as data from financial aid applications showing family income and parents’ occupations. Although specific black students were not named, nevertheless SASS thought that the publication of personal data on black students—and its placement in McCabe Library—represented an invasion of privacy. Our concern about invasion of privacy was legitimate. Because of the small number of black students on campus—just 47 at that time—SASS believed that individual black students could be identified and potentially embarrassed by the report. Therefore, as SASS chairman, I telephoned Dean Hargadon on the evening of Oct. 10 to request removal of the report from McCabe Library and its reissuance without the personal data. After consulting with the APC, he declined the SASS request. SASS considered this an act of racial insensitivity. It appeared that black students had no right to privacy concerning personal data that a Swarthmore administrator needed to respect. If the College was going to marginalize black students and invade their privacy concerning personal data, we were not going to acquiesce in the process. Therefore, SASS decided to stage a protest and walk out at the Oct. 14 APC meeting on Dean Hargadon’s report. At that Oct. 14 meeting in Bond, I read a SASS statement protesting what we thought was the report’s invasion of privacy and declaring our refusal to cooperate with the APC “until the report is reworked, revised, and rewritten.” Then, 35 of the 45 black �1-9-6 students present walked out. Subsequently, the APC members and the 10 black students who remained concluded that Dean Hargadon’s report should be removed from McCabe Library because of the personal data it contained. This was done. with respect to its own demands. It appeared there were no effective channels of communication through which SASS could address its concerns about black admissions and black student privacy. With the perspective of time, I see that there were additional complicating factors beyond the failure of communications between SASS and Dean Hargadon. First, before our nonviolent direct action in January 1969, the College had difficulty sorting out the message from the messenger on black admissions. Unlike today, there were no black administrators at Swarthmore and only one black faculty member, the African anthropologist Asmarom Legesse. It is one thing for an adult to receive a message from a kid— particularly one perceived as obstreperous—and another for an adult to receive the same message from another adult who is a respected peer or colleague. Unlike other Swarthmore student groups, SASS had no built-in constituency in the faculty or administration that provided a channel of communication. The problematic Dean Hargadon was the closest person SASS had to an official administration liaison. No one will ever know how the history of the crisis might have been different had black administrators or black professors also been the messengers—or at least the interpreters or translators— of the message SASS was trying to deliver on black admissions. Second—not unlike today—Swarthmore in 1968 to 1969 was basically governed through a Quaker-style process of decision making by consensus. Yet reaching consensus rests on certain key assumptions—primary of which is discussion among and between equals, peers, or colleagues. This process could not work for the black admissions question because consensus would need to have been reached between those in a superior position (Swarthmore administrators) and those in a subordinate position (black students). And asymmetric power relationships, between a superior and a subordinate, tend to be more coercive than consensual. The dearth of black faculty and black administrators at Swarthmore was one factor. The inability to reach a consensus among equals was another factor. But, unfortunately and tragically, the failure of communication between SASS and Dean Hargadon was probably the most important factor in the crisis. When Dean Hargadon wrote his report during summer 1968, he not only included personal data on black students—which were at least factual and objective—he also wrote obiter dictum comments about alleged SASS “militant separatist” inclinations, which were stereotypically inaccurate. Dean Hargadon’s “militant separatist” allegations, which questioned our legitimacy at Swarthmore, did not endear him to some members of SASS. As for the “militant” part of Dean Hargadon’s allegation, I say again that stereotypes conceal the complexity of the human condition; they substitute for critical thinking about Following this failure of communications between SASS and Dean Hargadon, the College’s designated interlocutor, we were even more concerned about the prospects for black admissions in particular and the status of black students at Swarthmore in general. We just couldn’t stand by and see the situation go from bad to worse. Therefore, SASS formulated four demands, which were sent to the APC on Oct. 16 and published in The Phoenix the same day. The demands were the following: • Dean Hargadon’s report not be returned to McCabe Library, and SASS and APC rewrite the report for publication • The Swarthmore faculty and administration form a Black Interest Committee to work with SASS • The College recruit a high-level black administrator • The SASS Recruitment Committee work with Dean Hargadon and the APC to enhance black recruitment and admissions In the mid-1960s, blacks were “invisible” at Swarthmore because there were so few of us. It was assumed that we were “just” Swarthmoreans—albeit swarthy Swarthmoreans. 26 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Although SASS believed its demands were reasonable, we also thought we were not getting an appropriate response from Dean Hargadon and the APC. Therefore, SASS decided to try to make progress on another front. On Nov. 8, a SASS delegation visited the Student Council meeting to present our case for the council voting to endorse the SASS demands. Student Council voted 10 to 1 with two abstentions to endorse the four demands, an action that prompted an angry letter from Dean Hargadon criticizing the council’s haste and lack of consultation with the APC. After the Nov. 8 Student Council endorsement of the SASS demands, there were several desultory meetings and discussions on black admissions. But no substantive progress was being made. However, probably sensing a deteriorating situation, President Smith began to get involved indirectly and asked for clarification of the SASS demands. Ironically, he did not ask the SASS leadership for this clarification; he went to the Student Council president and to Michael Fields ’69, an “independent” black student —not a member of SASS—who had written an open letter to the College community on Nov. 13 endorsing the SASS demands. This was a tragic situation with almost theater-of-the-absurd overtones. Everybody was clarifying the SASS demands except SASS itself. SASS was ready, willing, and able to discuss its own demands, but no one in power seemed to want to hear what we had to say. The sad irony is that SASS was “invisible” at Swarthmore �new or challenging aspects of human beings. Instead of grappling with the new and challenging aspects of SASS, as The Phoenix did, Dean Hargadon seemed to act as if we were still in the pre-SASS days at Swarthmore, when blacks were unorganized and “invisible.” Although The Phoenix was able to pierce the veil of the “militant” stereotype and recognize the essence of SASS concealed beneath, Dean Hargadon was not. Given our commitment to nonviolent direct action, the question could have been posed to Dean Hargadon: How “militant” were we in SASS compared with Martin Luther King? As for the “separatist” part of Dean Hargadon’s allegation, I had white roommates at Swarthmore my freshman, sophomore, and junior years. (I roomed alone my senior year in Palmer.) I was a member of Kappa Sigma Pi fraternity during my sophomore year. Moreover, contrary to the stereotype of many SASS members, I was neither “angry” nor “alienated” nor “lonely” at Swarthmore. I enjoyed a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, both black and white. This group included my white roommates and fraternity brothers and my fellow engineering students. At the same time, I was also “comfortable in my own skin” as a black student on a white campus; I took my leadership roles in SASS seriously. I considered myself pro-black and not anti-white, pro-SASS and not anti-Swarthmore. I simply believed circumstances needed to be reformed for the better; I believed Swarthmore needed to live up to the ideals of its Quaker heritage of social justice. I knew Dean Hargadon personally and liked him. He and I would greet each other in Parrish Hall during my freshman and sophomore years and talk about subjects like the novels of James Baldwin. He told me how he grew up in an integrated workingclass suburb of Philadelphia and how he went to Haverford on the GI Bill after serving in the Army as a military policeman. Given those halcyon days, no one could predict that Dean Hargadon and I would be linked as antagonists through the crisis—that he and I would be face-to-face at the admissions office door at high noon on Jan. 9, 1969. Dean Hargadon had a good reputation as an admissions officer and went on to distinguished careers in undergraduate admissions at Stanford and Princeton. After leaving his Swarthmore admissions post, he subsequently served on the College’s Board of Managers for several years. Also between admissions stints at Stanford and Princeton, he served as a senior executive with the College Board in New York for a brief period. However, in the pre-crisis days at Swarthmore, Dean Hargadon apparently was not prepared to accept constructive criticism and input from SASS on black admissions policy. After I graduated in June 1969, I was told that he became more receptive to SASS input. By Christmas 1968, the College had ignored the Oct. 16 SASS demands—and SASS itself. Without con- sulting us, Dean Hargadon and the APC finished a second report on black admissions on Dec. 18. Apparently, in the view of Dean Hargadon and the APC, SASS had forfeited any consultative role in formulating black admissions policy. Why? Was it because SASS had refused to acquiesce in the invasion of black student privacy through the publication of personal data in the first Hargadon report? Out of this maelstrom came a new set of SASS demands on Dec. 23, 1968. SASS thought that the dean of admissions, in questioning the organization’s legitimacy, was denigrating black students and the black perspective SASS tried to represent at Swarthmore. While Martin Luther King had been striving to make the American dream as relevant and meaningful to black and white, many in SASS viewed black admissions at Swarthmore as a “dream deferred,” using the metaphor of the Langston Hughes poem: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?* I viewed our new demands as a desperate cry in the wilderness for recognition and respect by an “invisible man.” Thus, in a last-ditch effort to get the attention of the College, I sent the following cover letter, along with a set of “clarified” demands, to President Smith on Dec. 23, 1968: Merry Christmas! Enclosed are the “clarified” SASS demands you requested some time ago. If you fail to issue a clear, unequivocal public acceptance of these non-negotiable demands by noon, Tuesday, January 7, 1969, the black students and SASS will be forced to do whatever is necessary to obtain acceptance of same. Here is what the new set of demands asked for: • The acceptance and enrollment of 10 to 20 “risk” black students for the next year and the provision of support services for them • A College commitment to enroll 100 black students within three years and 150 black students within six years Please turn to page 84 *From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Vintage Books, New York, © 1995. Reprinted with permission. Unlike other Swarthmore student groups, SASS had no built-in constituency in the faculty or administration that provided a channel of communication. 27 MARCH 2005 �1-9-6 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N The C r u c i b l e of Character Continued from page 27 • The appointment of a black assistant dean of admissions and a black counselor, subject to SASS review • That Dean Hargadon be replaced by Sept. 1, 1969, “unless present admissions policies change or unless the actions of the current Dean of Admissions change” If I knew then what I know now, I would have written the cover letter differently. Many times during the last 36 years, I have studied this letter carefully. This was very strong language with which to communicate the essential message of SASS. In “Requiem for Courtney Smith,” Paul Good’s article on the crisis (May 9, 1969, Life), J. Roland Pennock, chairman of the Political Science Department, conveyed the reaction of President Smith: “He was confronted with non-negotiable demands and rhetoric that did great offense to him…. This hurt him bitterly. But he never let himself be moved to anger.” (The Life article was reprinted in the March 1999 Bulletin and is available in the magazine’s Web archives at www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.) As incredible as it seems now, I and some other black students expected the College to ignore these demands just as it had ignored our demands of Oct. 16. To me, the production of the second black admissions report on Dec. 18, without reference to the SASS demands of Oct. 16, only dramatized how “invisible” we were at Swarthmore. The College had consistently refused to recognize the reality and legitimacy of SASS. We were left to conclude that the system at Swarthmore was unresponsive—and perhaps even hostile—to the SASS perspective on black admissions and our concern about the invasion of black student privacy. By Christmas 1968, it was clear that SASS had to move forward, even at the risk of failure, because of the moral imperative of our cause. If necessary, “we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the community,” as Martin Luther King suggested in Letter From Birmingham Jail. I learned of the impact of the cover letter and demands when I returned to Swarthmore from my home in New York City on Dec. 31. That was the day I first met Courtney Smith face-to-face. I went by Parrish Hall to check my mailbox. To my surprise, I found a reproduced copy of the Dec. 23 SASS cover letter and I was about to be ushered into a private audience with Courtney Smith. As I stepped into his office, I realized there is nothing to be afraid of if you believe the cause for which you stand is right and just. demands in my mailbox—and learned that it had been placed in the mailbox of every student. President Smith had distributed the SASS cover letter and demands to the whole College community, along with his own response. When I had typed our demands on my mechanical typewriter, I kept only a poor-quality carbon copy. With today’s ubiquitous personal computers, scanners, faxes, and e-mail, it is easy to forget (or not know) how primitive 1969 office technology was by comparison. In those days, students typed papers and letters by typewriter—usually not electrical—with no memory capability. Papers to be reproduced were typically typed on a mimeograph stencil and copies made on an inky mimeograph machine. In 1969, photocopying machines were rare and expensive. Therefore, because the College had multiple clean copies of the Dec. 23 SASS cover letter and demands—and I did not—why not ask the College for extra copies? It was not so simple. When I went to the reproduction office on the first floor of Parrish and asked for extra copies of the SASS package, a tight-jawed, scowling lady told me that she could only release extra copies with the permission of the President’s Office. The next step was to climb the stairs of Parrish Hall to President Smith’s second-floor office. When I walked into the president’s outer office, his secretary immediately recognized me. I politely asked her for extra copies of the SASS package. She quickly retreated into President Smith’s private office while I patiently waited in the antechamber. The secretary returned shortly and informed me that President Smith wished to see me. Courtney Smith was a living legend at Swarthmore—one of the great presidents in College history and the American secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship. To many Swarthmore students, me included, Courtney Smith seemed aloof and patrician—yet quietly charismatic in his Brooks Brothers suits. Although I merely wanted extra copies of the SASS package, I had climbed Mount Olympus and was about to be ushered into a private audience with Courtney Smith. I was psychologically unprepared and a little bit overwhelmed and intimidated. But as I stepped into his private office, I realized there is nothing to be afraid of if you believe the cause for which you stand is right and just. Despite our differences of race, age, and style, President Smith was cordial and gracious to me that day. I reciprocated his cordiality and treated him with the utmost respect and courtesy—even though my Dec. 23 cover letter did not communicate that. In the informal intimacy of his private office, President Smith told me in so many words that he wanted to discuss the SASS demands as two human beings in search of a human solution to a human problem. I very much wanted to do that too. But, at the same time, I was only the chairman of SASS and therefore only a 84 �spokesman for the other black students— the “executive of their will.” Without discussing any of the substantive issues of the SASS demands, he and I agreed to a second meeting with a delegation of SASS members on Jan. 6, 1969—the first day of school after Christmas vacation. After 10 minutes, with no further business to conduct, Courtney Smith and I shook hands like gentlemen and parted company. Some may ask why I did not talk with President Smith about the demands. First, as SASS chairman, I took my spokesman role seriously. It was not lip service. I was consultative and collegial; I viewed myself as “first among equals” with respect to the other SASS members and the “executive of their will.” Second, we in SASS valued group solidarity. We were sensitive to the “divide-and-conquer” tactics that had been used all too often in American history to separate blacks from their leaders. It would have been a mistake for me as SASS chairman to negotiate one-on-one with President Smith on Dec. 31 or at any other time or place. Hence, the meeting with a SASS delegation on Jan. 6 was the appropriate next step. Third, I was skeptical whether President Smith had an open mind about the SASS demands—and subsequent information confirmed my skepticism. In the Life article, author Paul Good quoted from a letter President Smith sent Dean Hargadon around the time in question: “I want to underline my dismay at the inappropriateness and lack of justification in SASS’s remarks that concerned you and your work in admissions, including Negro admissions. I count on your knowing that I regard your work at Swarthmore as one of the great strengths of the college.” President Smith’s letter did not surprise me. Regardless of his personal thoughts on the SASS position, politically Courtney Smith had to stand by his admissions dean. The next and last time I met President Smith was Jan. 6, 1969, along with a delegation of 15 SASS members and a handful of other Swarthmore administrators. Compared with the informal intimacy of my Dec. 31 private meeting, the Jan. 6 meeting, although civil, was more formal and tense. SASS restated its demands of Dec. 23. President Smith restated his position from his cover letter of Dec. 31 to the Swarthmore community, which accompanied the public distribution of the SASS demands. President Smith expressed sympathy for the underlying concerns of the SASS demands, which he asked that we recast as proposals. At the same time, he said he could not act unilaterally on the SASS demands even as proposals, because they involved basic policy issues for the Swarthmore faculty and Board of Managers. With the two sides agreeing to disagree, the meeting ended without any substantive progress or resolution. Two days after the Jan. 7 deadline and with no satisfactory response to the demands of Dec. 23, SASS engaged in nonviolent direct action by occupying the Admissions Office. We had crossed the Rubicon, and Swarthmore would never be the same. Then, time stood still for a week—or so it seemed. As Richard Walton wrote: The SASS sit-in set off a frenzy of meetings by students and faculty. The students, as well as The Phoenix, generally supported SASS’s goals but criticized its tactics. The faculty, often meeting late, night after night, took a similar position. Over a period of several days, the faculty adopted resolutions meeting most of the SASS demands, noting that they were acting not because of duress but because many of the demands were justified. President Smith said it went without saying that he was “prepared to use the full influence and prestige of his office to win Board approval” of the resolutions adopted by the faculty. Despite the inevitable confusion, the situation appeared to be moving toward resolution.” We had crossed the Rubicon, and Swarthmore would never be the same again. Time stood still for a week—or so it seemed. During the crisis, Asmarom Legesse, the African anthropologist, was a faculty liaison to SASS. Years later, The Phoenix quoted him as follows on the crisis: “The Admissions Office was boarded up. On one occasion, I had to climb through a window in order to talk to them. It was incredibly intense to be inside—they had developed a degree of maturity and a sense of purpose. There was the kind of vision about what they were doing that I never saw again.” After Swarthmore got over the consternation of the initial “nonnegotiable” SASS demands, the controversial cover letter, and the dramatic occupation of the Admissions Office, the College found us to be basically reasonable and responsible negotiators. Once the negotiations were joined, we constantly appealed to the sense of morality and decency of the faculty and administrators on the other side of the table—and they seemed to respond. At the time, Professor of Anthropology Steve Piker suggested that SASS had effected “a resocialization of the Swarthmore community.” Despite the SASS pre-crisis rhetoric and political language—which we were forced to use as “invisible” men and women—what we wanted was to make the system work better, not break the system. Then, eight days into the SASS nonviolent direct action, President Courtney Smith died suddenly of a heart attack at age 53. Although I did not know him well, our one, short, private meeting on Dec. 31 gave me some sense of Smith as a man. I, like everybody in the Swarthmore community, was shocked and saddened by the news of his unfortunate death on Jan. 16. That same day, SASS ended its action and issued the following statement: In deference to the untimely death of the President, the Swarthmore Afro-American Students’ Society is vacating the Admissions Office. We sincerely believe the death of any human being, whether he be the good President of a college, or a black person trapped in our country’s ghettoes, is a tragedy. At this time we are calling for a moratorium of dia- 85 MARCH 2005 �1-9-6 logue, in order that this unfortunate event be given the college’s complete attention. However, we remain strong in our conviction that the legitimate grievances we have voiced to the college remain unresolved and we are dedicated to attaining a satisfactory resolution in the future. The Phoenix weighed in with thoughtful editorial comments: “President Smith’s unexpected death has unfortunately tended to obscure the restraint and rationality of the events which preceded it…. However we strongly believe that every effort should be made to dissociate his death from the preceding events of that week. It was an unforeseeable accident that should not be considered the consequence of any action.” Professor Legesse addressed the question of “violence” a week after the death of President Smith: Senior members of this community have suggested that the actions of SASS were acts of “violence.” I can only understand this indictment as a response to grief…. Can we plausibly admit such guilt and interpret a sit-in and a hunger-strike as acts of violence? Are we to believe that these instruments of peaceful protest are legitimate and “nonviolent” only when we use them to direct attention to grievances elsewhere, but cease to be legitimate when they are directed at our own institution? … We should not forget that black students exhibited extraordinary restraint and discipline during the crisis. It was public knowledge that President Smith was in his last year as Swarthmore’s president. In July 1968, he had announced his intention to leave the College in June 1969, to become president of the Markle Foundation. He had been a trustee of the New © CAREN ALPERT AUTHOR’S NOTE I had prostate surgery in July 2003, which appears to have been successful in dealing with early-stage prostate cancer. I never had surgery or a major illness before, but this illness brought me face to face with my own mortality. Coming at age 55, it made me realize that I am closer to the end than the beginning of my life—and to the “unfinished business” I still need to do. Writing this article was one piece of “unfinished business.” Besides prostate surgery, I’ve come to realize that if you don’t write your own history, someone else will write it for you—and they may or may not get it right. Since 1969, there have been several articles and pieces written about the crisis at Swarthmore— but none by black students directly involved. Although I am not an official SASS historian or a current spokesman for SASS or Swarthmore blacks, past or present, I believe my recollections and viewpoint on the crisis can make a contribution to the historical record. I hope my historical memoir is the beginning, not the end, of a serious new assessment of one of the most significant events in the history of Swarthmore College. I urge others to pick up where I leave off. —Clinton Etheridge ’69 York–based foundation since 1953, the same year he became president of Swarthmore. However, at the time of his death, it was not public knowledge that he had a pre-existing heart condition. In their authorized biography of President Smith (Dignity, Discourse, and Destiny: The Life of Courtney C. Smith, Associated University Presses, 2003) based on records, documents, and archives of the College and the Smith family, authors Darwin Stapleton ’69 and Donna Heckman Stapleton disclose: “A postmortem examination conducted the same day [of Courtney Smith’s death] but never made public showed his heart had suffered a hemorrhage of the right coronary artery, and that he had ‘severe atherosclerosis of both coronary arteries … the caliber of both coronary arteries was considerably reduced in diameter so that only a small probe could be put through them.’” The Stapletons conclude, “Unknown to all, and least of all himself, Smith had been living with serious heart disease for some time.” There was an intense backlash against SASS from outside the College after the death of President Smith. I received hate mail for weeks from many parts of the country. Years later, I came across a quote from Horace that captures how I felt in the aftermath of the crisis: “The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong.” I cannot speak for any other member of SASS at the time, but I considered myself psychologically prepared to face the consequences of our nonviolent direct action. I believed in our cause so strongly that I was personally prepared, if necessary, to be expelled from Swarthmore, to be beaten by the police, to be killed. Fortunately, none of that happened to me or any other SASS member. But neither I nor anyone else was prepared for the untimely death 86 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N �of President Smith. Although many Swarthmoreans then and since have disagreed with SASS over the use of nonviolent direct action in January 1969, most have agreed with and embraced the changes in black admissions that SASS was seeking. I see this as evidence of the ambivalence of the white moderate that Martin Luther King discusses in Letter From Birmingham Jail: … the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. 87 MARCH 2005 My decision to become SASS chairman in spring 1968 had been a difficult one. The late Sam Shepherd Jr. ’68 was graduating. Sam was a founding father of SASS and the SASS chairman. I was vice chairman and the logical consensus candidate to take the chairmanship. Yet I was a shy, soft-spoken, ambivalent engineering student. Sam used the Phil Ochs song “When I’m Gone” (from Phil Ochs in Concert) to persuade me to succeed him as SASS chairman. The song, which rhapsodizes on the importance of making your contribution while you are “here,” has two lines that particularly hit home for me: “Won’t be asked to do my share when I’m gone.” “Can’t add my name into the fight when I’m gone.” I agonized over the decision to become SASS chairman, but when I finally made it, I was totally committed—come what may. I came to realize that sometimes you must lead by being led. This was a leadership principle of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. In a 1963 article, Dr. King quoted Gandhi: “There go my people, I must catch them, for I am their leader.” This was particularly the case with “Seven Sisters” of SASS, who were frequently the “power behind the throne.” Marilyn Holifield, Marilyn Allman Maye, Aundrea White Kelley ’72, Janette Domingo ’70, and others kept my feet to the fire of “blackness.” During the crisis, Don Mizell was the SASS vice chairman. Don and I worked well together, and we had complementary styles. Don was charismatic, a good public speaker, and more comfortable with the glare of media publicity. Reserved, understated, and unflappable, I somehow projected as SASS chairman what some people described as “strength of character.” This reaction surprised me. In many respects, I was an unlikely leader, yet I was the man history selected for this role. Although Swarthmore generally nurtured me as a critical The crisis was a defining moment that shaped the rest of my life. Most human beings are given relatively few opportunities to make a difference or a contribution to their world— to leave a legacy. thinker, the crisis was where my real education came during my college years. To quote Herbert Spencer, the 19th-century British social philosopher and biologist: “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” As a reluctant, unlikely leader, I was forced to stretch myself, to grow in ways that I would not otherwise have grown during those years. There were times during the crisis when I had to dig deep down inside myself and pull out qualities I didn’t know I possessed. For example, during my first public presentations during the crisis (to the outside press, Swarthmore faculty, and Swarthmore student body), I had to overcome stage fright. I had no choice; it was a “do-or-die” situation. What propelled me forward, what helped me reinvent myself, was a compelling sense of duty and devotion to the moral imperative of our cause. I could not break faith with the legacy of my forebears and others, like Martin Luther King, who had made so many sacrifices for me, the black race, and America. It was now my turn to stand and deliver—to the best of my ability—at Swarthmore. The crisis was the greatest challenge of my youth and a defining moment that shaped the rest of my life. Most human beings are given relatively few opportunities in their lives to make a significant difference or make a real contribution to their world—to leave a legacy. The crisis was such an opportunity for me. The most important lesson I took from the 1960s and the Swarthmore crisis is that, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, America and its black citizens—and Swarthmore and its black students—are, in the words of Martin Luther King, “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” We must all strive to validate “the existential character of the American liberal, humanistic, idealistic, and democratic tradition, with its capacity for growth, renewal, and extension to the world of higher possibilities and more inclusive realities.” This is the wellspring of the American dream. Despite the inevitable difficulties and frustrations from the lingering pernicious effects of racism, there is no escaping our mutual destiny. For black and white, there is no viable alternative to the American dream. T Clinton Etheridge is a vice president of the California Economic Development Lending Initiative, a multibank community development corporation established in 1995 to provide investment capital to small businesses and community organizations throughout the state. Following Swarthmore, Etheridge served in the Peace Corps in West Africa. He received an M.B.A. from Stanford Business School and later worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, the Security Pacific Bank, and Citicorp. Etheridge lives in Oakland with his wife of 30 years, Deidria; they have three adult children. He is an avid jazz enthusiast. ©2005 by the author. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Narratives of Black Student Protest at Swarthmore College Description An account of the resource A set of accounts detailing the events of 1969. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Crucible of Character Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Clinton Etheridge Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Swarthmore College Bulletin Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 03/2005 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF 1969 sit-in Black admissions Clinton Etheridge Courtney Smith's death Don Mizell Faculty Frederick Hargadon Michael Fields President's Office http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/cd39e7011f202c347cf538e1e53b9c6f.pdf a24e51d735a811ed085e4d0f6ca04ec3 PDF Text Text ������ ������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black Cultural Center Records Description An account of the resource Correspondence and official documentation regarding the Black Cultural Center and the Swarthmore Afro-American Students' Society. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Friends Historical Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Minutes of the Black Studies Curriculum Committee 05/28/1968] Description An account of the resource Box 2, Black Curriculum Committee 1968-1969 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Black Studies Curriculum Committee] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 05/28/1968 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Black Studies Clinton Etheridge Don Mizell Faculty Marilyn Allman (Maye) Marilyn Holifield http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/e34b62b7a67fce00a155fc9506484563.pdf 555481b4e824fba4eae08ff1e6a181cc PDF Text Text ���� ���� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black Cultural Center Records Description An account of the resource Correspondence and official documentation regarding the Black Cultural Center and the Swarthmore Afro-American Students' Society. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Friends Historical Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Minutes of the Black Studies Curriculum Committee 11/20/1968] Description An account of the resource Box 2, Black Curriculum Committee 1968-1969 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Black Studies Curriculum Committee] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [11/20/1968] Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Black Studies Don Mizell Faculty Marilyn Allman (Maye) Marilyn Holifield http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/5300a52038a0880b09e0b172634d896c.pdf fb43cf698be6a559a7fbc3765729e57a PDF Text Text ������ ������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black Cultural Center Records Description An account of the resource Correspondence and official documentation regarding the Black Cultural Center and the Swarthmore Afro-American Students' Society. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Friends Historical Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Minutes of the Black Studies Curriculum Committee 05/08/1969] Description An account of the resource Box 2, Black Curriculum Committee 1968-1969 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Black Studies Curriculum Committee] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 05/08/1969 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Black Studies Don Mizell Faculty Marilyn Allman (Maye) Marilyn Holifield http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/61402bf2c1841b7894ff8539db81407d.pdf b04a03f9e808ee3ca6b442d712ccbdac PDF Text Text ������ ������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black Cultural Center Records Description An account of the resource Correspondence and official documentation regarding the Black Cultural Center and the Swarthmore Afro-American Students' Society. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Friends Historical Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Minutes of the Black Studies Curriculum Comittee 05/21/1968] Description An account of the resource Box 2, Black Curriculum Committee 1968-1969 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Black Studies Curriculum Committee] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 05/21/1968 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Black Studies Clinton Etheridge Don Mizell Faculty Marilyn Allman (Maye) Marilyn Holifield