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Title
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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
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Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Haydn Welch
Alis Anasal
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Thompson Bradley
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Thompson Bradley
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Thompson Bradley
Haydn Welch
Alis Anasal
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<div class="video-interview">
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Format
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mp4
Date
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11/02/2014
Faculty
-
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Title
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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
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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.
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Title
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Thompson Bradley
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Halcyon
Publisher
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Swarthmore College
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1969
Format
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JPG
Faculty
-
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Title
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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.
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Title
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Kathryn Morgan
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Black at Swarthmore
Date
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1973
Format
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JPG
Faculty
-
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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
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Title
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Steve Piker
Creator
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Swarthmore College Halcyon
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1967
Format
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JPG
Faculty
-
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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
John Gagnon
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Steve Piker
Location
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Steve Piker's House
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1 hour, 45 minutes
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Title
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Steve Piker Interview
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Steve Piker
John Gagnon
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[n.p.]
Date
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06/24/2014
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mp3
Black Studies
Faculty
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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
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Title
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Ava Harris (Stanley)
Creator
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Ava Harris Stanley
John Gagnon
Ali Roseberry-Polier
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[n.p.]
Date
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08/06/2014
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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
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Dublin Core
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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
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Title
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Steve Piker Interview Transcription
Creator
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John Gagnon
Steve Piker
Publisher
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[n.p.]
Date
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08/11/2014
Format
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PDF
Black Studies
Faculty
-
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PDF Text
Text
This is an interview with Dr. Ava Harris Stanley, who was a student at Swarthmore College from 1967 1972. She was a member of SASS and served as the treasurer for SASS as well as participated in the 1969 sitin in the admissions office. The interview was conducted by John Gagnon and Ali RoseberryPolier on Wednesday August 6, 2014 via phone. ARP: OK we just started. This is Ali; I am Dr. Dorsey’s research assistant for the summer. I just graduated. AHS: Congratulations ARP: Thank you. JG: And this is John. I’m a current student that is a research assistant for Dr. Dorsey. AHS: Alright, how can I help you both? ARP: Can we get started with the interview? AHS: Yes. ARP: Thank you. JG: OK. Well to start off with if you just want to give us a little bit of your overview of your experiences at Swarthmore. I think that would be a good place for us to start. AHS: That’s a while back. So my experiences at Swarthmore. The experience was completely new to me. I had as a child, as a teenager, grew up on the south side of Chicago, which has a long history, AfricanAmerican history, no exposure to Quaker traditions or even that demographic. So the experience was new to me. The educational experience was also new to me because I was much more exposed to I suppose you would call it not conceptual, not analytical learning style, so it was drop Ava into the ocean see if she can swim. So the exposure to AfricanAmerican, interestingly enough was also different because the AfricanAmerican history of the midwest, the experience that is to say, particularly Chicago is way different from the east coast New York, New Jersey, and south. And so I was exposed to basic individuals of history but not the text, not the literature of the east coast. There’s a lot more, to me anyway, to literature of biography and autobiography was what I was exposed to as opposed to the literature of Sociology or De Bois or Harold Cruse1 . It was an interesting experience. I was used to the ideas of AfricanAmerican organizations because that was the only way that we functioned was through organizations, so that was ok. That was actually the part that I was most familiar with. The part, the expectations of other nonblack students was also new to me. That was the first time people ever wanted to pat my hair, see what it felt like. I had never really been exposed to suburban living or people who lived in the suburbs; I was strictly urban. I would say that and the
1
Harold Cruse was the author of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual in 1967. He taught African American Studies at the University of Michigan beginning in 1968. Among his ideologies were his stance against integration, rather he supported and implored AfricanAmericans to reclaim their cultural heritage and to establish centers of cultural influence.
�academic atmosphere made it an interesting set of years. I think I was enriched by it, but there was a lot of kicking and screaming in the process. I think there are easier ways to expose young students to each other, but it was a politically charged atmosphere. Now I realize later on that most academic atmospheres are politically charged, so that was nothing that was different. Did I feel like I was mistreated no. Did I feel like I could have had a better time in the process yeah. I think orientation could have been a little bit different; mainly orientation that week was getting to know where all the building were not getting exposed to the class style. I suppose if I had gone to well that was the other thing I did not go to a high velocity prep school where I learned to read the primary literature and analyze it in a way that was useful, so that I had to learn how to do that. And the thing that I most noticed is that even though I wasn’t good at Math and Science and Chemistry, there was much less bias there. I was much more drawn to it after a certain point. It was the perspectives, even the liberal perspectives in History and Sociology had no room for the voice of the studied group or individual so I was...For that reason I think Biology and Chemistry were actually easier. In terms of mentorship which I think is really the most important thing in terms of academic development and focusing on what your path should be there was none until I met Kathryn Morgan. And in terms of medicine there was none until I met people, I think they had a proposal for a postbac program and they brought in people who had graduated but needed another year of exposure to Science so they could move on. And I met these people and then I saw them as successful, and at that point I basically did a u turn or I think maybe it was a right turn. At any rate that mentorship process in the most important part of the process of learning and education. There are certain ways to break paths, that is to develop new ideas, to learn new things, and to communicate them and that part needs a model that part needs a way of thinking about it and going about it and its just not clear to somebody coming from where I came from which is basically south side, went to a private parochial high school, but you learn basic stuff; you didn’t learn academic process there. But once you are able to understand academic process then you can break new paths and move forward. That kind of trust relationship, it should happen more often I don’t know how to make it more often but it should happen more often. Does that explain? JG/ARP: Yeah, that’s good. JG: So I guess we want to go from there, you talked about being familiar with black organizations, were you a member of SASS? AHS: yes JG: And when did you join SASS? AHS: ‘70 no, no, when did I come in? ‘67 JG: In ‘67 AHS: Yeah, in September of ‘67. I think that’s when they we first had,started having meetings then. I think that, I’m not even sure, I think I remember meeting about an argument about what
�we were going to call ourselves. I don’t think anybody took minutes for those meetings, so I can’t tell you which one it was or whether it well and truly happened. JG: So you were in it from the beginning of the program of the group? AHS: I think so. JG: And do you remember why you decided to join? AHS: I’m not even sure I understand the question because; I suppose the question to me was why wouldn’t I join. Did I see myself as AfricanAmerican yes. Did I feel like I had shared values hope so, wasn’t sure but was willing to find out. We actually were very diverse, very heterogenous. It was kinda amazing, I mean suburban, urban, I mean a wide demographic. At the time the admissions office to me the reason we started meeting was because the admissions office had done an analysis of who the black students were in hopes that they could further develop the black student population. But they did it in a very they wrote a paper and said ‘here what do you think?’ As opposed to having small group meetings and saying ‘what works for you, what doesn’t work for you.’ They looked at it as not student development but what works for the college. They wrote a paper there were only about 50 of us so you could figure out who was who and you could also figure out what the SAT score were and other stuff it wasn’t the kind of paper that you share with subjects but they were doing the best they could. But anyway there were all kind of reactions to that; to me it was knowledge, to everybody else it was some people were very offended and you could look at the paper and say ‘this is a very wide demographic’ and I came to realize, and they based in on the basis of schools and SAT scores and then as I got to know them I realized this is a wide demographic in terms of academic background as well as cultural background. Even at that point there were AfricanAmericans who were from the Caribbean, AfricanAmericans from Harlem, New York, New Jersey are totally different from AfricanAmericans from the South Side. AfricanAmericans from Florida and Virginia are totally different from AfricanAmericans from Chicago. Africans from the Caribbean are different from all of that. There were some students who didn’t join, and I was never sure about their motivations. JG: Were there many of those, or were they pretty few in number? AHS: There were a few; there were a few. JG: But they never voiced their reason why they didn’t join? AHS: I don’t think I ever asked them. I don’t think I was at that stage; I was a freshman. But my background had been from organizations with successful social and political lives. My father was in the democratic party in Chicago, particularly the Young Democrats, and this had been an organization present since the 19th Century, I think Chicago had a black congressman either early 1900’s or late 19th Century but there was some type of black organized political life in Chicago. So that was how I understood organizations. SASS was a lot less structured, but I
�thought it would pursue goals and articulate and speak for and also accomplish things that would improve student life and student interest. ARP: So what was your involvement with the 1969 takeover of Parrish Hall? What do you remember about that? AHS: I was there. I didn’t really like it. ARP: What about it did you not like? AHS: I felt as part of an organization it was something I had to do, but I didn’t think that and it was part of the process of other student activities that were going on in the region at the time. They weren’t going on in the South Side of Chicago at the time; we had already had student life at the University of Chicago. My mother actually went to the University of Chicago, MBA 1948. She commuted though. But I felt like it was an important step and we needed to be unified. And the demands seemed reasonable and at that point making them requests didn’t seem appropriate because we were outside the tradition of Swarthmore thinking and maybe even Quaker thought I don’t know I haven’t studied enough philosophy. I know the Quaker meetings I went to, I was the only black person, so I’m thinking we were probably outside that tradition. JG: Do you remember how you felt during the days that you were sittingin in the admissions office? AHS: Me personally, I was just holding on. It wasn’t something that I well and truly wanted to do. I’m not a protest kind of individual; I mean, will be in granted situations. If this was a way of me asserting myself and this was the option I had as opposed to not being a part of that organization and at that point there only seemed to be two choices, either you’re in or you’re out I said well, ok. ARP: So after President Courtney Smith died, SASS ended the sitin and many students left campus; did you leave campus at that point? AHS: yeah where were we; we were at some church in some place. Were we in Chester or Philadelphia? I don’t remember. ARP: What can you remember about the exit from campus? AHS: I think we were in private cars. Then when we got there, I don’t even remember where we slept, probably on the floor because we were sleeping on the floor in the admissions office. I remember trying to communicate and trying to get people to talk to each other because on hand I thought it was really difficult at that point because Sam Shepard was the president of the group2 , and I wasn’t really part of the Seven Sisters, it was more like I was trying to mediate between the two and I felt like I was getting alright I’m trying to get along here; I’m not even sure what the
2
Sam Shepard was the original president of SASS, and graduated in 1968. Clinton Etheridge was the current president of SASS during this time.
�issue was. I think I was trying to make sense of, trying to make something coherent. Why are we here and what should we do next. I don’t think that was clear to me so I just took the next semester off. I came back and I think that was sophomore or junior year and then I came back. When I came back there were other activities going on. JG: And then when you came back, we found that there were some documents where your were listed as the treasurer for SASS. AHS: Treasurer, yes. I was; I just collected membership money and deposited it in an account. JG: How long were you in that position? AHS: Maybe a year. I think I was on the steering committee one year; maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. I did have a lot of things to say. JG: Do you remember other members of SASS that were on other committees with you? AHS: I remember Harold Trammel but I don’t remember whether he was a part of the steering committee. Don Mizell. Holly Robinson. Gillespie, Myra Rose JG: As members of the steering committee? AHS: I’m trying to remember. I know Holly was. Mizell was, I’m not sure about the others. There were a lot of disagreements about how to go about things. ARP: What sort of disagreements? AHS: I’m trying to remember what they were. They mainly stand out as conflict. I’m not even sure the issues were all that significant. Yeah, I remember. At a certain point a lot of people had graduated on and the steering committee had a lot of freshmen on it, and Holly. And I think Mizell was trying to basically bulldoze people, and I wasn’t really sure whether that was for the good of the organization or for the good of Don Mizell. ARP: Yeah. AHS: And I basically said to Holly, well, why do you want to be involved in this process? Because my conversations with Mizell would be more like, we need to be an organization of people as well as of issues, and it’s not so much who the leader is, but what about leadership development. I’m kind of summarizing here, I probably wasn’t as articulate. We had meetings there was somebody else who was good, she was a history major. I’m having a hard time remembering her name. Very toughminded. I just felt like I spent a lot of time trying to assert interests of group process, rather than, you know, individual leadership process. Interestingly enough, a template for organizations in general. Yeah, I was treasurer, and then I think I don’t think I was ever really a part of the steering committee, although I certainly had things to say.
�ARP: Yeah. Did you get the sense that any of those divisions within SASS were along lines of gender, in terms of leadership? AHS: Initially, yes, very much. Marilyn we used to call them the Marilyns, Marilyn Holifield and Marilyn Allman. They both had very clear ideas of what should happen. More Marilyn Allman, I listened to Marilyn Allman more than I did Holifield. Holifield wasn’t around all that much. People listened to what they had to say. They were fairly coherent. And they were also fairly coherent in meetings, which is probably where I heard most of what they had to say. I remember an interaction between Marilyn Allman and a history professor at a meeting where we were trying to develop Black Studies, trying to define it, determine it in terms of focus, in terms of where courses should be. The history professor was saying that many times, specific culturally focused course work or course concentrations didn’t survive or didn’t have academic focus or weren’t well funded. And Marilyn’s specific question was, and how does this relate to Black Studies? JG: And so was that the Black Studies Curriculum Committee? AHS: Yeah. JG: And you were a part of that. AHS: Yeah. I guess, yeah. JG: And from your experiences on that, did you feel like the faculty members or administrative members that you dealt with treated you as a respectable person, or equal that had something good to contribute to the conversation? AHS: That’s a loaded question. We sat on different sides of the table but we had different sets of armamentarium. It was unloaded for us politically in that we didn’t have the budget, we didn’t have the perspective on how to integrate African American history into history, integrate DuBois into sociology. And so, yeah, they were respectful in the context of the academic process of funding, hiring, grant proposals, and academic and faculty politics, yeah. [pause] The other interesting thing, I was involved in a meeting with, I think maybe a provost, about the Black Student House, when they basically said they would call us for meetings, and I’d go, alright, what the fuck’s going on now. I didn’t quite say that, but their project line of how things should work was not communicated to us at any point in time. And knowing how committees work and how management and management style works, I’m also sure that wasn’t intentional, but it certainly was hard to predict. I remember being in a meeting where we were basically offered the building, and I’m thinking, this is what I’m sitting here to say, to say, OK. So I said, OK, that’ll be fine. With funding for it. And I said, OK, yes, thank you. At that point, students weren’t supposed to say thank you, but I nodded my head and was agreeable. Even now, I realize that friendliness and collegiality can be misconstrued, and I think I was appropriate at the time.
�JG: And do you remember other interactions with the faculty regarding getting the Black Cultural Center? AHS: That was the one I remember the most. There was one protest where we went to the house of a later president and somebody read poetry basically saying, we’re not happy with what you’re doing. And I’m thinking, I’m always thinking, whenever I go to a protest, and I’ve been to other protests, this isn’t making any sense. But, OK, we want to do this, you want to do this, you think it’s important, OK. That president was only there for a year, I think. Was his name Friend?3 ARP: Would that have been Robert Cross?4 AHS: Maybe so, Cross, yeah. ARP: And, do you remember, you said you were in the meeting where you agreed to the building for the Black Cultural Center. Do you remember why students chose that building, or why that building was the one that ended up getting decided on? AHS: Why that building was offered, I have no idea. That was one of those things, I wanted to stop and say, wait, where is this coming from? Why are you offering us this? Do we have choices here? ARP: Yeah. AHS: And I said to myself, somebody somewhere knows this and somebody should have told me, but I realized I was at a meeting, and these meetings are always like, alright, we’re going to sit down and talk to you and we’re not going to have any preamble to these discussions. Or the preamble that we have is more of a principled, conceptual one. It doesn’t talk about facts or who’s involved or so I did not ask those key questions, but I also thought, would I get a clear answer if I asked them? ARP: Yeah, certainly. AHS: So, I would have liked to have a contact inside that management process to tell me exactly what was going on, and I did not have one. ARP: Yeah. And did you feel that the faculty and administration was sort of opaque with all members of SASS? AHS: Yeah, I think so. ARP: And did they, did you feel that they at any point deferred to the male members more than the women in SASS?
3 4
Theodore Friend was the Swarthmore College President from 1973 1982. Robert Cross was the Swarthmore College President from 1969 1971.
�AHS: Only when they wrote the history. The history of that period that was written, I’m not sure who commissioned it, but there were no women involved in that history. I mean, there were no women mentioned in that history. ARP: Yeah. And that wasn’t your experience from being involved? AHS: Not at all. JG: Going back briefly to you saying you were excluded from a lot of details on the Black Cultural Center. Did you ever hear anything about the Michener Fund? AHS: That came through, but I didn’t know how it was connected to the James Michener left a lot of money, but they decided how to spend it. ARP: The administration did? AHS: Yeah. ARP: And so did you have any idea how the fund was to be divided, or what role it was to play? AHS: No. I never saw that paperwork. ARP: Yeah. JG: I guess just in general, how do you perceive that your work in SASS shaped your experiences as a student? AHS: I guess the question for me would be, were my work in SASS and my work as a student connected? I’m not sure if they were connected. JG: I guess additionally, did you feel that your association with SASS influenced how you were perceived in the greater college community by other students? AHS: That I don’t know. JG: Yeah. AHS: The backgrounds of the other students that I met I met people who came from the suburbs, people who were it was just a really big demographic in terms of people who were learned, rich, wellconnected, long traditions of success, familial success. I accepted them for who they were, but they certainly weren’t me. I had long traditions of survival, but my mother was the first person in our family to graduate, my grandparents had completed high school, so at a certain point I didn’t pay too much attention to my relationships or how other people perceived me, I was just more interested in maybe helping somebody else and then trying to get out.
�ARP: Yeah. And to back up a little bit, you were talking earlier about the role that faculty played, especially when Kathryn Morgan came, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your relationships with black faculty or administrators. AHS: I think there were people in the admissions office, I think the admissions office tried to hire people specifically to recruit black students. During my sojourn there was the first time they tried to hire black faculty and administrators so I tried to have relationships with them. JG: But Kathryn Morgan was the one you had the most interaction with, or that meant the most to you? AHS: Yes. It was more of, it gave me to understand how research was supposed to work. That you started with primary research and worked your way forward into analysis. And that, without the true primary research I mean, you can do history from documents and that’s certainly valid and gives you a good perspective and perception, but talking to people and listening to their stories for me has always been the central way of getting perspective and perception, not just on events but also on how people perceive events. And from that you can develop models of thinking about it. There were, I think there was one political science professor there, and I dropped out of his course on day one because he talked in four line sentences. And I thought um, no, analysis is important, but analysis without background OK, it’s wonderful, it’s impressive, but this is not how I learn. ARP: And that’s something you were able to get more in Kathryn Morgan’s classes? AHS: It was more, yeah. I was successful there because it gave me to understand how models are built. It gave me a feeling of, OK, I understand how this works. And that was really, I think, my first exposure to a real way of looking at methodology more than just having to memorize models, that was building methods. So yeah, I would say yeah. In terms of other people basically, I think I graduated in sociology but I don’t think I was ever really a sociologist. Even when I graduated I honestly have to say I was not wellread in sociology. I got a degree. ARP: Did you work at all with Asmarom Legesse in that department? AHS: Say again? ARP: Did you work or take any classes with Asmarom Legesse when you were studying sociology? AHS: I don't think, were they there when I was there? I don't think so. JG: I’m not sure how long he stayed. He was there for a period. He was also in anthropology, rather than sociology. AHS: Yeah, anthropology, yeah. I think I did take a course with him. JG: But that was the extent of your relationship with him?
�AHS: Yeah, right. ARP: You mentioned a couple minutes ago students getting more involved in recruiting more black students. Is that something that you were involved with at all? AHS: Recruiting, yeah, I did go on a recruitment trip with one of the administrators there. He told me I wasn’t good at it because I didn’t smile enough. ARP: Do you remember which administrator that was? Would it have been William Cline by any chance? AHS: I think it was a guy that was only there for a year. But I don’t think it was William Cline. Was that CLINE? ARP: Yeah. AHS: I’m blanking at names. ARP: That’s alright. JG: That’s fine. AHS: I’d do better if I had a picture of him. I don’t think he was in the admissions office. Wasn’t he an assistant dean? Or was he in admissions? ARP: He was in admissions, not for very long though. AHS: OK, then it must have been him, alright. JG: Another thing that comes to mind with the recruitment is the Black at Swarthmore booklet. Do you have any memories or experiences with that? AHS: Blacks at Swarthmore? JG: The booklet, the recruitment booklet. AHS: No. I don’t think so. I think I may have seen it, but I don’t think I was a part of writing it. JG: And you don’t remember other people working on it? AHS: No, I don’t remember that. ARP: Thank you. Were you involved in other black organizations, such as the Gospel Choir or the Black Dance Troupe? Do you remember what sort of impact they had on college life when they started? AHS: I think the gospel choir was just starting as I left, and I wasn’t involved in that. I graduated in ‘72. The last year I was there I don’t think I was that involved in student life.
�ARP: Yeah. JG: And the same goes for the dance troupe, do you remember that at all? AHS: I’m pretty sure that happened after I left. I think it did. Maybe it didn’t, but I wasn’t involved in it. ARP: OK, yeah, thank you. JG: And were there any other groups similar to those that your remember that we’re forgetting? AHS: SASS was enough, I guarantee. In terms of student groups, right? JG: Yes. AHS: SASS was enough. ARP: Is there anything else that you’d want to add about your time at Swarthmore, and particularly your involvement with SASS? Anything we’re leaving out? AHS: I think you brought out a lot more than I thought I remembered. So I think I’m done. ARP: Thank you. JG: It’s been really nice, thank you. AHS: Best of good luck to both of you. ARP and JG: Thank you so much.
�
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Interviews
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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.
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Black Liberation 1969 Research Team
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Ava Harris Stanley Interview Transcription
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John Gagnon
Ali Roseberry-Polier
Ava Harris Stanley
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08/06/2014
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1969 sit-in
1970 sit-in
Ava Harris (Stanley)
Black admissions
Black Cultural Center
Black Studies
Faculty
Marilyn Allman (Maye)
Marilyn Holifield
Sam Shepard
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Text
�
�
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The Swarthmorean
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Articles that originally appeared in the Swarthmore Borough newspaper, <em>The Swarthmorean</em>, during the events of 1969.
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McCabe Library Microfilm Archives
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College names 14 to faculty
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The Swarthmorean
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04/24/1970
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Black Studies
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SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
SWARTHMORE. PENNSYLVANIA 19081
"
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
(215) KI 4·7900
M 3, 1971 ay To: Members of the Pr~sident ' s Conunittee~ Surveilla.Ylce and Privacy at Swa rthmore: Mr . Cross, Mr. Pryor, Mr . Smith, Mr ~ Cook. Miss Robir.30n, and ~lIr. Breibart « \ From: Jerome H. VIood, Jr.
~~
Re: the holding of investigative heari.ngs It is my j udgement that investi~ative hearings involving the matter of F.B.I. surveillance, personal privacy, and the role of College personnel in these connections definitely should be held . Such hearings \';ill be useful (1) for the purpose of clari:f¥in.e; issues ar.d for obtaining what additional information may be forthcorrung, ind (2) for the purpose of exonerating or -- as the case may be -- ascri bing culpability to t hose members of staff wbo are alledged to have coooperated improperly with the F . B.1., or to have jnvaded the rights of personal privacy of members of the SWarthmore cOl1lIT'unity . Such hec.ring s would, moreover , demonstr&te to the community t hat. action is ol"! ing taken with r(~gard to this highly importcmt business . The pe r sons conduct ing the hearings should be the J.i~mbers of the presently constituted Presidential cornr;-;ittee , w5.th the exce pt ion of the President himself, who is excluded from participat.ion in that be may have to take appropriate administrative action at t he conlusion of the hearings . It s110uld be clear to all persons involved. in the hea rings -- and to the College community at large that at the conclusion . of the hear.ing s, the committee will submit a report to the President a s well iXS recommeiidatior~s for eithe r l'lUblic exoneration of the persons 811edged to have Hcted improperly or disciplinary action di,-'~cted at these sam~ pprsons. The committee, i n the course of conducting the hearings, should receive testimony from all three members of the Coll~ge staff alledge d to have cooperated improperly with, or furnisved information :1m concerning students and faculty members to, the F.B.I.: i.e., Mr. Peirsol, the chief of caf1pus se curity fo rce s, Mrs. Feiy, the chief College operator, and Miss W , senior s!"~reta ry in the Registrar 's ebb off ice. These indivjrl.uals may be told the general areas of ('u8stioning i1". acvance, ano sbould be advi.sed t hat they m - if tr. ~y s o desire -- have cOlmsel .ay pr~sent with them a t the hearings, inh tch ar e to h"'J con:iucted separately for each person. The Committee shoulrl also have College c ounsel present , f or i t s part. In addi.tion, the committee SllOUld invi te testimony fro-1. , tuoen:'s , or memh~rs of the College staff, who wish to testify concerning such damage to themselves as may have been done by the disclosure of information about them to the F.B.I~, or who have reason to believe that their rights of privacy have been violated by any or all of the College personnel to be interrogated. The committe e should have a nurr,ocr of questions prepared in advance, but not as a specification of "charges." At the initial stage of each hearing, the idea id that the persons under interrogation will have an opportunity to corn.ment on the F~B.I. documents, and to state their views as to what they would re gard as
�Wood: To the Committee on Surveillance and Privacy - 2
t '
permissible and impermissible disclosure to, or cooperation with, the F .B . L or other agencies of Government by them in their capacities as College employees. (a) Mr. Pelrsol should discuss especially how he views his relationship with outside law enforcement agencies in his capacity as a College employee. (b) Mrs. Feiy should be asked about the circumstances under which she is alledged to have provided information concerning Professor Dan Bennett to the F .~'.I. She should also be confronted with such per~ons as May wish to testify concerning violatiovs of their rights to personal privacy by Mrs Ii Feiy . (c) It is m;y- opinion that Miss Webb's case is the most serious of the three, and that ste should be questioned very closely, especially concerning the circumstances under which she released information concerning Black students at Swart!"unore -- and she has admitted releasing such information -- during the so-called SASS "crisis" of 1969. I JI.yseli have a seri~s of quest.ions to vlhich I would like her response. It is my feeling, finally, t.hat the work of the committee in setting policy guidelines for the future should continue And be brour::ht to the speediest possible conclusion. At the sar .,,; t ime, however, I believe that any individual deemed by the committee (as a result of t he hearings) to have been guilty of imptJo~r actions be recommended for ce n sure, tr'3nsfer!''3l to c:.notherCollege post, or dismissal by the President.
�
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
SWARTHMORE. PENNSYLVANIA 19081
"
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
(215) KI 4·7900
M 3, 1971 ay To: Members of the Pr~sident ' s Conunittee~ Surveilla.Ylce and Privacy at Swa rthmore: Mr . Cross, Mr. Pryor, Mr . Smith, Mr ~ Cook. Miss Robir.30n, and ~lIr. Breibart « \ From: Jerome H. VIood, Jr.
~~
Re: the holding of investigative heari.ngs It is my j udgement that investi~ative hearings involving the matter of F.B.I. surveillance, personal privacy, and the role of College personnel in these connections definitely should be held . Such hearings \';ill be useful (1) for the purpose of clari:f¥in.e; issues ar.d for obtaining what additional information may be forthcorrung, ind (2) for the purpose of exonerating or -- as the case may be -- ascri bing culpability to t hose members of staff wbo are alledged to have coooperated improperly with the F . B.1., or to have jnvaded the rights of personal privacy of members of the SWarthmore cOl1lIT'unity . Such hec.ring s would, moreover , demonstr&te to the community t hat. action is ol"! ing taken with r(~gard to this highly importcmt business . The pe r sons conduct ing the hearings should be the J.i~mbers of the presently constituted Presidential cornr;-;ittee , w5.th the exce pt ion of the President himself, who is excluded from participat.ion in that be may have to take appropriate administrative action at t he conlusion of the hearings . It s110uld be clear to all persons involved. in the hea rings -- and to the College community at large that at the conclusion . of the hear.ing s, the committee will submit a report to the President a s well iXS recommeiidatior~s for eithe r l'lUblic exoneration of the persons 811edged to have Hcted improperly or disciplinary action di,-'~cted at these sam~ pprsons. The committee, i n the course of conducting the hearings, should receive testimony from all three members of the Coll~ge staff alledge d to have cooperated improperly with, or furnisved information :1m concerning students and faculty members to, the F.B.I.: i.e., Mr. Peirsol, the chief of caf1pus se curity fo rce s, Mrs. Feiy, the chief College operator, and Miss W , senior s!"~reta ry in the Registrar 's ebb off ice. These indivjrl.uals may be told the general areas of ('u8stioning i1". acvance, ano sbould be advi.sed t hat they m - if tr. ~y s o desire -- have cOlmsel .ay pr~sent with them a t the hearings, inh tch ar e to h"'J con:iucted separately for each person. The Committee shoulrl also have College c ounsel present , f or i t s part. In addi.tion, the committee SllOUld invi te testimony fro-1. , tuoen:'s , or memh~rs of the College staff, who wish to testify concerning such damage to themselves as may have been done by the disclosure of information about them to the F.B.I~, or who have reason to believe that their rights of privacy have been violated by any or all of the College personnel to be interrogated. The committe e should have a nurr,ocr of questions prepared in advance, but not as a specification of "charges." At the initial stage of each hearing, the idea id that the persons under interrogation will have an opportunity to corn.ment on the F~B.I. documents, and to state their views as to what they would re gard as
�Wood: To the Committee on Surveillance and Privacy - 2
t '
permissible and impermissible disclosure to, or cooperation with, the F .B . L or other agencies of Government by them in their capacities as College employees. (a) Mr. Pelrsol should discuss especially how he views his relationship with outside law enforcement agencies in his capacity as a College employee. (b) Mrs. Feiy should be asked about the circumstances under which she is alledged to have provided information concerning Professor Dan Bennett to the F .~'.I. She should also be confronted with such per~ons as May wish to testify concerning violatiovs of their rights to personal privacy by Mrs Ii Feiy . (c) It is m;y- opinion that Miss Webb's case is the most serious of the three, and that ste should be questioned very closely, especially concerning the circumstances under which she released information concerning Black students at Swart!"unore -- and she has admitted releasing such information -- during the so-called SASS "crisis" of 1969. I JI.yseli have a seri~s of quest.ions to vlhich I would like her response. It is my feeling, finally, t.hat the work of the committee in setting policy guidelines for the future should continue And be brour::ht to the speediest possible conclusion. At the sar .,,; t ime, however, I believe that any individual deemed by the committee (as a result of t he hearings) to have been guilty of imptJo~r actions be recommended for ce n sure, tr'3nsfer!''3l to c:.notherCollege post, or dismissal by the President.
�
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Robert Cross Papers
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Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Robert Cross' time there.
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[Memorandum from Jerome Wood regarding the holding of investigative hearings, 05/03/1971]
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Box 03, Federal Bureau of Investigation
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Jerome Wood
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05/03/1971
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PDF
Faculty
FBI
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Robert Cross Papers
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An account of the resource
Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Robert Cross' time there.
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Friends Historical Library
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[Letter from Frederic Pryor to Robert Cross 04/08/1971]
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Box 03, Federal Bureau of Investigation
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Frederic Pryor
Date
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04/08/1971
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JPG
Faculty
FBI
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PDF Text
Text
t -
-7264>
FROM
P.
SUBJECT:
GILRO
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~\
11/11/70
....
£1'0111
!ie£erenced CO!lllllWlication s t forth information Boston intormont ho i'urninhed - information to th e:r1"ect
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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 Cross Papers
Description
An account of the resource
Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Robert Cross' time there.
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
[FBI Memo 11/11/1970]
Description
An account of the resource
Box 03, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Federal Bureau of Investigations]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
11/11/1970
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Faculty
FBI
-
http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/e25b15f072330e523d0de9408a4edfe7.pdf
9e8bc93e8fc325841b9b67d65d57cb44
PDF Text
Text
-/
To:
Ning Robinson, Hark Breihart, Dave Smith, Lew Cook, and Robert Cross
From: Fr ed Pryor and Jerry Wood
Enclosed, you ''lill find a draft of the statements on pr ivacy. He
''lOuld
appreciate your comments, not only on formulations but also on completeness •
-
.
�PRIVACY OF MEMBERS OF THE COLLEDE COMMUNITY
Members of the college community, primarily faculty and staff members, are frequently 'a'sk;d for information about other members of the college community. On the one hand such requests may concern recommendations of students for graduate school or employment or information for a daily newspaper regarding awards granted to outstanding faculty members or students; on the other hand such requests may concern political opinions of community members or information concerning criminal activities. It is often difficult to determine which information is private or confidential and should not b~ released ' in order to protect the privacy of members of the college community and which may be publicly r eleased. The principles presented in this statement deal with general issues and those presented in the following statement concern specific problems of the confid entiality of academic, financial, and other records.
I.
Verification of reguest
In all cases the credentials of the person reques ting information should be closely checked. All police officials, F.B.I. agents, and newspapermen have identification cards with photographs; if there is any doubt as to the authenticity , of such identification cards, the home office of the person requesting information should be called to see if such requests were authorized. Authenticity of requests for information by mail are more difficult to check, but if they regard particular members of the college community, these members should be called to verify the legitimacy of the request. F.B.Io agents or members of other investigation agencies checking the loyalty of applicants for f ederal jobs should be asked to show the release signed by the person under investigation giving' permission for such an enquiry. II. Privileged information
In the course of fulfilling college duties both faculty members and staff learn much about other members of the college community which must be cons id ered privileged information; this information is not to be released to those r equesti ng such information from either inside or outside the college community. 1. Such privileged information especially concerns ideas expressed by students in writing and class participation. One of the aims of a college education is to question and shake opinions and beliefs pre';'iously arrived at and to form opinions that have been tested by the individual himself. The student is exposed to new ideas put forth by faculty members, by other students, or in r eading . During his college years he is asked to look with an open mind at different theories and philosophies and is also encouraged to tryout ideas in experience. Many students go through a series of divergent yet passionately held philosophical convictions while at college. They may defend each strongly, this being one way of t esting them. The espousal by some students in discussion or papers of ideas considered subversive outside the campus, must therefore be recognized as a normal activity in a college . It follows from this that there must exist a special relationship of trust among students and faculty in th eir acad emic association. Members of the college community should f eel confid ent that expression of their ideas will be
A.
.'
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2.
regarded as strictly an academic matter, to be considered privileged and not to be reported tp those outside the college community. This relationship of trust is indispensable·' to. a college community if it is to serve its proper function in society. 2. The communications system of the college, including the telephone system and the mail system, must remain completely private and messages of college community members are neither to be intercepted, overheard, or in any way monitored without explicit court order; ~urther, i~formation about senders or receivers of messages is considered as privileged information and not to be released. Any information accidentally gained by staff members operating these communications systems is to be considered privileged and not to be reported to others, except in instances where disruptive or criminal activity may be involved; in these cases a report should be made only to one of the deans, vice presidents, or president of the College.
3. Information gained in the cleaning of faculty offices, student rooms, or other college facilities is to be considered privileged, insofar as the faculty member or student is not violating governmental or college regulations.
4. If there are questions regarding whether particular information is privileged, the matter should be discussed with the deans or higher administrative authorj,ties.
B. Privileged information and political, social, and criminal matters
1. Privileged information regarding political and social ideas, concerns, and actions of members of the col·lege community is not to be reported to others, either within or without the college community, under penalty of the sanctions discussed below.
20 Privileged information regarding criminal acts or violation of college regulations raise particular dilemmas, since competing demands of duty to the government or college are placed in opposition to the rights of privacy outlined in this document. With regard to reporting criminal action to outside authorities, the college deans should be consulted before action is taken.
III. Areas of Privacy
Three areas in which privacy is involved require special attention: issues concerning recommendations; concerning special requests for information by news media, police, and other outside sources; and concerning "privacy of person."
/
A.
Recommendations and 1I1 oyalty checks"
Two serious problems arise with regard to the giving of recommendations or information for "loyalty checks." 1. First, such recommendations may be us ed in situations other than those for which the recommendation is asked. For instance, a recommendation · sent to the Civil Service Commission may form part of an F.B.I. dossier of the person that may follow him for years. 2. Second, although recommendations do not require the divulging of privileged information, they often require an evaluation of the person that is based
�3.
on privileged information, e.g. the observation of a student's behavior in the classroom. Although the "specific political and social ideas of the student are certainly privLleged information and not to be divulged, the problems of what to reveal with regard to inferences based on this information are more difficult to resolve. If, on the basis of such inf€rences, the faculty member feels that a particular student , is not suited for the position for which he applied and needs a recommendation, it is best to give a negative recommendation without stating the !reasons.
3. "Loyalty checks" provide more difficulties. The basic assumption of the federal security program is that the Government has the right to, and indeed must, protest itself 'from disloyalty and subversion. "However, ascertaining the loyalty of any individual or the possibility of future acts of subversion by him, is fraught with danger. The relationship between opinion expressed by community members and their deeds is tenuous for two reasons. First, the spoken or written word or the studying of certain materials is far removed from actions. To act requires more than intellectual assent. Often we may not know what we believe until we are challenged to act upon our beliefs. Second, few "people reveal to others their deepest thoughts and feelings; and even when they do, opinions which are voiced are easily misinterpreted.
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If there is doubt expressed about the loyaLty of one member of the college comnlunity by another, or about his safety as a security risk because of his thoughts, opinions, or beliefs, as distinct from his character or stability of personality, a full statement of the charge should be given in writing to the investigating authorities, a copy of which should also be given to the person being investigated. B. Other requests for
info~lation
by outside agencies
Members of the college community are requested often for information, especially from news media and police, but also from research agencies a~d other interested parties. 1. Police and F.B.I. officials have, on occasion, requested general information about college community members that concern no specific acts of the person involved but which are concerned with building up a dossier for unknown purposes. On no account is privileged information nor inferences from privileged information or second or third hand information to be divulged . If such sources are persistent, they should be referred to one of the college deans. 2. News media have often requested information regarding famous or infamous members of the college community. Again, privileg ed information or inferences from privileged information should not be divulged. In order to respect the rights of privacy of the individual under examination most thoroughly, it is advised to check with the person in question before supplying information. If information is solicited concerning particular groups or organizations on campus, the same principles hold. In cases of doubt, one of the college deans should be consulted.
/
3 • . Various outside organizations and research groups constantly apply to particular college community members for particular j..nf<;>rmation. In many cases
�4.
this involves somernatter of public knowledge about the college and no difficulty is involved. Again, neither privileged information nor inferences from privileged information should be divulged. Difficult questions should be referred to one of the college·:deatls.,
I
I
C.
Privacy of person
College community members have a right to conduct their normal college business as well as their social life without fear that their privacy is being invaded. Several areas of especial concern, including privacy of faculty offices and student rooms, are briefly discussed below. 1. Faculty members perform a larger role in relation to their students than that of academic mentors. They are frequently called upon to advise students on matters of a personal nature, including "family problems, II social interrelationships with their peers, as well as the development of a philosophy for the conduct of life. Such private discussions between faculty and students are to be regarded as falling within the realm of strictest confidentiality (insofar as the substance of such discussions are concerned), though there may conceivably be occasions on which faculty members--in evaluating with their colleagues the academic performance of a student--may find it constructive to indicate the presence (though not the sUbstance) of. personal difficulties faced by that student. 2. As a general rule, the rooms of students are to be regarded as the private domain of their occupants and, thus, protected by the normal canons of privacy. It is to be understood, however, that the College reserves the right to make inspections of student premises when there is reasonable grounds for suspecting violations therein of governmental or College regulations. [-
3. It is expected, of course, that individuals will conduct their private affairs in a private manner, and with all due respect for the privacy of others. 4. It is expected that from time to time persons or organizations from within or without the College may wish to conduct surveys or to distribute questionnaires for academic research purposes, ' or for political, commercial, or other objectives. In these instances, the following principles should apply.
a. Any outside person or organization wishing to circulate a questionnaire or survey among students or faculty members must obtain prior permission from the Dean of Men or the Dean of Women. b. Questionnaires or surveys regarding student or faculty oplnlons or tastes--whether circulated by persons from within or without the College--should clearly indicate the purpose for which such a canVaS is being made. If the survey or qUestionnaire originates from within the College, the person or organization circulating it should be alert to ethical considerations involving the privacy and integrity of respondents; in cases of doubt, Department Chairman or the Research Ethics Committee should be consulted.
Co Only bona fide students may .collect information for commercial purposes. When approached for such information, the person being canvassed may request p~oof of identification from the individual making the enquiry.
d. It is to be understood, of course, that anyone sol,icited for information by surveyor questionnaire reserves the right not to respond.
�5.
-/ '
IV.
SanctiQns
.'
I The College reserves the right to remove from its midst those individuals violating the rights of privacy contained in this document and, if the occasion warrants, to sue for damages.
!
�CONFIDENTIALITY OF RECORDS
The following principles are applicable to handling any requests for informatiop . about students or former students, faculty members, or members of ~h; college staff and administration by any member of the college community. These principles are intended to protect the individual's right to privacy and the confidentiality of his records throughout the institution. All College personnel in charge of such records must sign a written document indicating their understanding' of these principles.
)~
I.
Student Records
The following major types of student records are officially maintained by the College: academic records and certain personal r e cords by the Registrar's Office; financial records by the Office of Financial Aid; records on disciplinary and other actions by the Office of the ,Deans; medical records by the Colle g e physician; certain high school records and recommendations by the Admissions Office; reco mmenda tions by the Job Placement Office; and particular information about academic performance of former students and their current addresses and activities in the Alumni Office. These records contain privileged informa tion and the contents are to be disclosed only in the situations described below. Further, release of lists of students in raci a l, reli g ious, or social ' ? categories based on student records is forbidden. ~ A. Disclosure to Students
1. A student is entitled to an official trans cript of his own academic record, subj ec t only·to the conditions listed below under ~lithholding Informa tion (s e ction G). It i s Coll ege policy th a t other materials in student files are confide n tial. No student is permitted to see the transcri p t or academic re60td of an ot he r student without written permission by the person whose transcript is involved. A student has the right to inspect his academic record (from which transcripts ar~ made) and is entitled to an expl a nat ion of any information recorded on it. When the ori ginal is shown, examination is p e rmitted only under conditions which will prevent its~teration or mutilation. Students who wish to request copie s of their transcript must do so in writing. Telephoned requests fro m gradu a ted students will be honored only at the discretion of the Registrar.
,I
20 Documents submitted by or for the student in support of his application for admission to Swarthmore are not returned to the student, nor sent elsewhere at his reque s t. In exce p tional c ase s, however, where another transcript is unobt a inab le, or can b e secured only with th e greatest difficulty, copies may be prepare d and released upon the written request of the stude n t.
�-~-
30 The fin ancial records held by the Advisor of Finan cial Aid, the r e cords 9n d, sciplin a ry a nd other actions held by the Offic e of the i Deans; and th e medical records held by the Colle ge phys~cian are to be disclosed neither to the student himself nor any other student.
40 Iitformation in alumni files concerning current address or dealin g with matters submitted by the alumni for publication in the Alumni Bulletin i5 _ public information and c a n be obt a ined by students. ' I Other information in is completely confidentialo
Bo Disclosure to Faculty and Administrative 10 Faculty and administrative officers of the College who have a legitimate interest in the materials of fil~6 on students and who demonstrate a need to know are permitted to look over the acade mic record of any student. The contents of the official academic r e cord of a stud en t are not sent outside the Office of the Registrar e x cept in circumst ances specifically authorized by the Registrar. Normally a permanent record never leaves the Office of the Registrar since copies can readily be made. 2. Non-academic records of students are not disclosed to faculty members except under extraordinary circums tanc e s in which the need for such records in order academically to aid the student can be clearly demonstrated.
3. Non-academic records of students are not disclo sed to administra tive officers excep t as they pursue their assigned duti~s.
C. Di s clo s ure to Parents, Education al Institutions, and Other Agencies
1. Grade reports are routinely released to parents or guardians without prior approval from the st udent unle ss the student is over 21 or , married and requests that his reports be withhe ld. Requests from other ins t itutions of learning for transcripts or other academic information must be accompanied by a written release from the studento 2. The Office of Financial Aid routinely reports the a cade mic prog ress of students su pp orted by public of private agencies providing schol a rship assistance to students unless specifically requested not to do so by the student.
3. The materials in a student!s placement file (should one exist) is releas ed to prospective employers for the purpose of placement only when the student requests such release or when it is clear that the prospective employer's request is the result of an application for employme nt by the student.
�
-/
To:
Ning Robinson, Hark Breihart, Dave Smith, Lew Cook, and Robert Cross
From: Fr ed Pryor and Jerry Wood
Enclosed, you ''lill find a draft of the statements on pr ivacy. He
''lOuld
appreciate your comments, not only on formulations but also on completeness •
-
.
�PRIVACY OF MEMBERS OF THE COLLEDE COMMUNITY
Members of the college community, primarily faculty and staff members, are frequently 'a'sk;d for information about other members of the college community. On the one hand such requests may concern recommendations of students for graduate school or employment or information for a daily newspaper regarding awards granted to outstanding faculty members or students; on the other hand such requests may concern political opinions of community members or information concerning criminal activities. It is often difficult to determine which information is private or confidential and should not b~ released ' in order to protect the privacy of members of the college community and which may be publicly r eleased. The principles presented in this statement deal with general issues and those presented in the following statement concern specific problems of the confid entiality of academic, financial, and other records.
I.
Verification of reguest
In all cases the credentials of the person reques ting information should be closely checked. All police officials, F.B.I. agents, and newspapermen have identification cards with photographs; if there is any doubt as to the authenticity , of such identification cards, the home office of the person requesting information should be called to see if such requests were authorized. Authenticity of requests for information by mail are more difficult to check, but if they regard particular members of the college community, these members should be called to verify the legitimacy of the request. F.B.Io agents or members of other investigation agencies checking the loyalty of applicants for f ederal jobs should be asked to show the release signed by the person under investigation giving' permission for such an enquiry. II. Privileged information
In the course of fulfilling college duties both faculty members and staff learn much about other members of the college community which must be cons id ered privileged information; this information is not to be released to those r equesti ng such information from either inside or outside the college community. 1. Such privileged information especially concerns ideas expressed by students in writing and class participation. One of the aims of a college education is to question and shake opinions and beliefs pre';'iously arrived at and to form opinions that have been tested by the individual himself. The student is exposed to new ideas put forth by faculty members, by other students, or in r eading . During his college years he is asked to look with an open mind at different theories and philosophies and is also encouraged to tryout ideas in experience. Many students go through a series of divergent yet passionately held philosophical convictions while at college. They may defend each strongly, this being one way of t esting them. The espousal by some students in discussion or papers of ideas considered subversive outside the campus, must therefore be recognized as a normal activity in a college . It follows from this that there must exist a special relationship of trust among students and faculty in th eir acad emic association. Members of the college community should f eel confid ent that expression of their ideas will be
A.
.'
�..
2.
regarded as strictly an academic matter, to be considered privileged and not to be reported tp those outside the college community. This relationship of trust is indispensable·' to. a college community if it is to serve its proper function in society. 2. The communications system of the college, including the telephone system and the mail system, must remain completely private and messages of college community members are neither to be intercepted, overheard, or in any way monitored without explicit court order; ~urther, i~formation about senders or receivers of messages is considered as privileged information and not to be released. Any information accidentally gained by staff members operating these communications systems is to be considered privileged and not to be reported to others, except in instances where disruptive or criminal activity may be involved; in these cases a report should be made only to one of the deans, vice presidents, or president of the College.
3. Information gained in the cleaning of faculty offices, student rooms, or other college facilities is to be considered privileged, insofar as the faculty member or student is not violating governmental or college regulations.
4. If there are questions regarding whether particular information is privileged, the matter should be discussed with the deans or higher administrative authorj,ties.
B. Privileged information and political, social, and criminal matters
1. Privileged information regarding political and social ideas, concerns, and actions of members of the col·lege community is not to be reported to others, either within or without the college community, under penalty of the sanctions discussed below.
20 Privileged information regarding criminal acts or violation of college regulations raise particular dilemmas, since competing demands of duty to the government or college are placed in opposition to the rights of privacy outlined in this document. With regard to reporting criminal action to outside authorities, the college deans should be consulted before action is taken.
III. Areas of Privacy
Three areas in which privacy is involved require special attention: issues concerning recommendations; concerning special requests for information by news media, police, and other outside sources; and concerning "privacy of person."
/
A.
Recommendations and 1I1 oyalty checks"
Two serious problems arise with regard to the giving of recommendations or information for "loyalty checks." 1. First, such recommendations may be us ed in situations other than those for which the recommendation is asked. For instance, a recommendation · sent to the Civil Service Commission may form part of an F.B.I. dossier of the person that may follow him for years. 2. Second, although recommendations do not require the divulging of privileged information, they often require an evaluation of the person that is based
�3.
on privileged information, e.g. the observation of a student's behavior in the classroom. Although the "specific political and social ideas of the student are certainly privLleged information and not to be divulged, the problems of what to reveal with regard to inferences based on this information are more difficult to resolve. If, on the basis of such inf€rences, the faculty member feels that a particular student , is not suited for the position for which he applied and needs a recommendation, it is best to give a negative recommendation without stating the !reasons.
3. "Loyalty checks" provide more difficulties. The basic assumption of the federal security program is that the Government has the right to, and indeed must, protest itself 'from disloyalty and subversion. "However, ascertaining the loyalty of any individual or the possibility of future acts of subversion by him, is fraught with danger. The relationship between opinion expressed by community members and their deeds is tenuous for two reasons. First, the spoken or written word or the studying of certain materials is far removed from actions. To act requires more than intellectual assent. Often we may not know what we believe until we are challenged to act upon our beliefs. Second, few "people reveal to others their deepest thoughts and feelings; and even when they do, opinions which are voiced are easily misinterpreted.
~,
"
I
i
If there is doubt expressed about the loyaLty of one member of the college comnlunity by another, or about his safety as a security risk because of his thoughts, opinions, or beliefs, as distinct from his character or stability of personality, a full statement of the charge should be given in writing to the investigating authorities, a copy of which should also be given to the person being investigated. B. Other requests for
info~lation
by outside agencies
Members of the college community are requested often for information, especially from news media and police, but also from research agencies a~d other interested parties. 1. Police and F.B.I. officials have, on occasion, requested general information about college community members that concern no specific acts of the person involved but which are concerned with building up a dossier for unknown purposes. On no account is privileged information nor inferences from privileged information or second or third hand information to be divulged . If such sources are persistent, they should be referred to one of the college deans. 2. News media have often requested information regarding famous or infamous members of the college community. Again, privileg ed information or inferences from privileged information should not be divulged. In order to respect the rights of privacy of the individual under examination most thoroughly, it is advised to check with the person in question before supplying information. If information is solicited concerning particular groups or organizations on campus, the same principles hold. In cases of doubt, one of the college deans should be consulted.
/
3 • . Various outside organizations and research groups constantly apply to particular college community members for particular j..nf<;>rmation. In many cases
�4.
this involves somernatter of public knowledge about the college and no difficulty is involved. Again, neither privileged information nor inferences from privileged information should be divulged. Difficult questions should be referred to one of the college·:deatls.,
I
I
C.
Privacy of person
College community members have a right to conduct their normal college business as well as their social life without fear that their privacy is being invaded. Several areas of especial concern, including privacy of faculty offices and student rooms, are briefly discussed below. 1. Faculty members perform a larger role in relation to their students than that of academic mentors. They are frequently called upon to advise students on matters of a personal nature, including "family problems, II social interrelationships with their peers, as well as the development of a philosophy for the conduct of life. Such private discussions between faculty and students are to be regarded as falling within the realm of strictest confidentiality (insofar as the substance of such discussions are concerned), though there may conceivably be occasions on which faculty members--in evaluating with their colleagues the academic performance of a student--may find it constructive to indicate the presence (though not the sUbstance) of. personal difficulties faced by that student. 2. As a general rule, the rooms of students are to be regarded as the private domain of their occupants and, thus, protected by the normal canons of privacy. It is to be understood, however, that the College reserves the right to make inspections of student premises when there is reasonable grounds for suspecting violations therein of governmental or College regulations. [-
3. It is expected, of course, that individuals will conduct their private affairs in a private manner, and with all due respect for the privacy of others. 4. It is expected that from time to time persons or organizations from within or without the College may wish to conduct surveys or to distribute questionnaires for academic research purposes, ' or for political, commercial, or other objectives. In these instances, the following principles should apply.
a. Any outside person or organization wishing to circulate a questionnaire or survey among students or faculty members must obtain prior permission from the Dean of Men or the Dean of Women. b. Questionnaires or surveys regarding student or faculty oplnlons or tastes--whether circulated by persons from within or without the College--should clearly indicate the purpose for which such a canVaS is being made. If the survey or qUestionnaire originates from within the College, the person or organization circulating it should be alert to ethical considerations involving the privacy and integrity of respondents; in cases of doubt, Department Chairman or the Research Ethics Committee should be consulted.
Co Only bona fide students may .collect information for commercial purposes. When approached for such information, the person being canvassed may request p~oof of identification from the individual making the enquiry.
d. It is to be understood, of course, that anyone sol,icited for information by surveyor questionnaire reserves the right not to respond.
�5.
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IV.
SanctiQns
.'
I The College reserves the right to remove from its midst those individuals violating the rights of privacy contained in this document and, if the occasion warrants, to sue for damages.
!
�CONFIDENTIALITY OF RECORDS
The following principles are applicable to handling any requests for informatiop . about students or former students, faculty members, or members of ~h; college staff and administration by any member of the college community. These principles are intended to protect the individual's right to privacy and the confidentiality of his records throughout the institution. All College personnel in charge of such records must sign a written document indicating their understanding' of these principles.
)~
I.
Student Records
The following major types of student records are officially maintained by the College: academic records and certain personal r e cords by the Registrar's Office; financial records by the Office of Financial Aid; records on disciplinary and other actions by the Office of the ,Deans; medical records by the Colle g e physician; certain high school records and recommendations by the Admissions Office; reco mmenda tions by the Job Placement Office; and particular information about academic performance of former students and their current addresses and activities in the Alumni Office. These records contain privileged informa tion and the contents are to be disclosed only in the situations described below. Further, release of lists of students in raci a l, reli g ious, or social ' ? categories based on student records is forbidden. ~ A. Disclosure to Students
1. A student is entitled to an official trans cript of his own academic record, subj ec t only·to the conditions listed below under ~lithholding Informa tion (s e ction G). It i s Coll ege policy th a t other materials in student files are confide n tial. No student is permitted to see the transcri p t or academic re60td of an ot he r student without written permission by the person whose transcript is involved. A student has the right to inspect his academic record (from which transcripts ar~ made) and is entitled to an expl a nat ion of any information recorded on it. When the ori ginal is shown, examination is p e rmitted only under conditions which will prevent its~teration or mutilation. Students who wish to request copie s of their transcript must do so in writing. Telephoned requests fro m gradu a ted students will be honored only at the discretion of the Registrar.
,I
20 Documents submitted by or for the student in support of his application for admission to Swarthmore are not returned to the student, nor sent elsewhere at his reque s t. In exce p tional c ase s, however, where another transcript is unobt a inab le, or can b e secured only with th e greatest difficulty, copies may be prepare d and released upon the written request of the stude n t.
�-~-
30 The fin ancial records held by the Advisor of Finan cial Aid, the r e cords 9n d, sciplin a ry a nd other actions held by the Offic e of the i Deans; and th e medical records held by the Colle ge phys~cian are to be disclosed neither to the student himself nor any other student.
40 Iitformation in alumni files concerning current address or dealin g with matters submitted by the alumni for publication in the Alumni Bulletin i5 _ public information and c a n be obt a ined by students. ' I Other information in is completely confidentialo
Bo Disclosure to Faculty and Administrative 10 Faculty and administrative officers of the College who have a legitimate interest in the materials of fil~6 on students and who demonstrate a need to know are permitted to look over the acade mic record of any student. The contents of the official academic r e cord of a stud en t are not sent outside the Office of the Registrar e x cept in circumst ances specifically authorized by the Registrar. Normally a permanent record never leaves the Office of the Registrar since copies can readily be made. 2. Non-academic records of students are not disclosed to faculty members except under extraordinary circums tanc e s in which the need for such records in order academically to aid the student can be clearly demonstrated.
3. Non-academic records of students are not disclo sed to administra tive officers excep t as they pursue their assigned duti~s.
C. Di s clo s ure to Parents, Education al Institutions, and Other Agencies
1. Grade reports are routinely released to parents or guardians without prior approval from the st udent unle ss the student is over 21 or , married and requests that his reports be withhe ld. Requests from other ins t itutions of learning for transcripts or other academic information must be accompanied by a written release from the studento 2. The Office of Financial Aid routinely reports the a cade mic prog ress of students su pp orted by public of private agencies providing schol a rship assistance to students unless specifically requested not to do so by the student.
3. The materials in a student!s placement file (should one exist) is releas ed to prospective employers for the purpose of placement only when the student requests such release or when it is clear that the prospective employer's request is the result of an application for employme nt by the student.
�
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 Cross Papers
Description
An account of the resource
Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Robert Cross' time there.
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
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Privacy of Members of the College Community [draft]
Description
An account of the resource
Box 03, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Frederic Pryor
Jerome Wood
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1971]
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Faculty
FBI
-
http://s3.amazonaws.com/sc-lib-ds-bl1969/original/a45a187ba2fc34032d1a793d09452c32.pdf
a132793aa287bb7a796c628f55d4222b
PDF Text
Text
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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
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Title
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[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/210c01ce34c2a6dbc9a0ea85952dc52c.pdf
49b87049f2d67dc4242f47fe4cd76cd0
Dublin Core
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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
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Title
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Swarthmore College: An Informal History
Creator
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Richard Walton
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1986
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
1969 sit-in
Black admissions
Black Cultural Center
Courtney Smith's death
Faculty
FBI
Frederick Hargadon
President's Office
SASS
-
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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�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-
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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
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�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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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�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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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�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.
�
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Narratives of Black Student Protest at Swarthmore College
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A set of accounts detailing the events of 1969.
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The Crucible of Character
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Clinton Etheridge
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The Swarthmore College Bulletin
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03/2005
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1969 sit-in
Black admissions
Clinton Etheridge
Courtney Smith's death
Don Mizell
Faculty
Frederick Hargadon
Michael Fields
President's Office
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Minutes of CEP Neeting, November 18, 1968
The CEP meeting convened at 4:00 P .11. Present ivere Arbuthnot, Bekavac, Cobbs, Hauptman, Heald, North, Pennock, Pierson and Thompson. President Smith presided. After asking for corrections of the l\linutes of the last meeting, President Smith asked Vnss Cobbs to explain the arrangement we have with Haverford and Bryn l1awr for alloiving students to take courses at one of the other institutions, and allovring their students to take courses here. (Students may take courses not offered by their home colleges, and at the end of the year a token payment is made by whichever co11ege has fam,ed out more students than it has taken in. We have a similar arrangement \dth Penn, except that in this case no money changes hands, because Penn does not ·hd.sh to be bother,ed ,·lith the complicated book-keeping.) We are considering "mat arrangement could be made with Lincoln University, where five Swarthmore students are nOi1 taking a course in black 1iterature. It 1--JaS decided that it would be appropriate to enter into the same agreement as the one "re . have with Haverford and Bryn Hawr, requiring some token payment for surplus students. It was a1so agreed that we should ask that the dean and faculty adviser at Linco1n screen p~ospective app1icants for admission to Swarthmore courses, just as our students vmo vrish to take courses e1se"mere are screened by the corresponding people here: The President reported that the representatives from the }liddle States Association who are to visit the campus for the periodical review of accreditation will arrive Sunday evening. He described their proposed schedule and listed the groups and indi vidua1s v"hom they plan · to intervie\'f. The CoUtici1 continued its discussion of the program for accrediting high school teachers. Hiss Cobbs reported on the results of talks she has had ivi th members of our ovm faculty and persons at Bryn Na,'fr on various aspects of 'the foreign language programs. There was some discussion of the necessary qua1ifications of the person in charge of our program, should we present one, the appropriate organization of such a program, and the problem of finding a home for it, if the Department of Psych010gy decides that it is unsuitable for it to be described as a Department of Psychology and Education. It seemed best that the work in educatibn be listed in the catalogue as a program of teacher education and that it be made responsible to the Provost (or the Dean). It was decided that Hiss Cobbs and the Teacher Education COlTunittee should meet >ofith chairmen of departments to determ ine which if any are interested in participating in the program, should the faculty agree to go ahead and app1y for approval. The secretary was asked to prepare a report on the CEP discussion, to be presented at tbe faculty meeting on N ovember 21. Hiss Cobbs read portions of a tentative and summary report from Francis Tafoya on the possibility of offering a two-year progrilln in the Cninese 1anguage. Nr. Tafoya recol11inended that \ve engage in such a program and suggested a "modified intensive program" such as is now offered in Russian 1anguage, to be given in spoken Chinese, beginning with texts in the Roman alphabet. After the second year, further ~1irk could be done at Penn. Hr. Tafoya thought that at first there would not be?rgr a full-time person teaching Chinese. He left open the question whether. the same person should do the "master-teaching!! and be responsib1e for drill as "VIrell. He Has opposed to offering Italian or Portuguese, maintaining that tapes are available · in the language laboratory for self-instruction in these and other modern Western languages."
�CEP Report, page 2 The remainder of the meeting was spent in a discussion of summer programs and SUlI'Jner use of the campus. Before taki.ng up specific proposals, the President invited comments en the principles that sheuld guide any decisien Ire might make , asking the Ceuncil to consider whether we should adopt a STh~~er program because it would strengthen the college, .or because it vrould result in some particular advantage to seciety, .or whether financial considerations should be deminant. Ne cenclusion ~~s reached at this meeting en matters of principle, but a nWllher of specific programs came up for discussien. These included pregrams like Upward Beund and ABC, adult educatien pregrams including alwnni seminars ,pre-freshman sessions fer entering students, a program fer 'very bright students frem very poor schoels, NSF Institutes, PeaceCerps programs, a summer language institute (pessibly in conjunctien with Haverford and Bryn Hawr), and an arts or surrmer theatre pregram, teachers institutes, and something cemparable to the Williamsto,ffi Cenference. The discussien teuched upon various advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of the campus in the summer. The President pointed .out that a college as intense as Swarthmore extends students, faculty"and administration te the limit during the schoel year, and t.hat we should be sure (a) tha'~ a summer pregram~~ll not push us beyond the lilllits .of .our strength, 'and (b) that perse~~el will actually be available to man a program. He cited the record .of Upl'lard Beund pregram, ~Ihich, while supported in theory by many on the faculty, has in fact been hard put to find staff. Furthermere, he reminded the Ceuncil that the demands of productive scholarship vull .often conflict with the needs of summer programs, and that it may not always be preper to encourage faculty members to spend their surrrruers on anything but scholarly research. The discussion of the benefits to be derived from summer pregrams brought to light the desire of some members of the Ceuncil te make S\~rthmore a livelier place during the long vacation and the hope of others that the peace and serenity of the campus, so cenducive to schelarly contemplation, may somehow be preserved. The climate .of Shart~~ore during the suwmer months , and the lack of recreatien facilit ies, "Jere recognized as grave disadvantages. The desirability of having students act as research assistants to member of the faculty whe are lvorking at the college during the summer makes more urgent the need,to find funds to support the SQmIDer research program for jQ~ers, which has already proved so valuable. The President proposed that persons intere~ted in specific types .of SUlllffier pregrarn be asked te present memoranda for the next meeting. These are to inclUde the NSF institutes, the pre-freshman sessions and programs for very bright studentsjalwm1i seminars and other types .of adult education, and art festivals. The meeting adjourned at 6 P.M. Helen North
�
/
Minutes of CEP Neeting, November 18, 1968
The CEP meeting convened at 4:00 P .11. Present ivere Arbuthnot, Bekavac, Cobbs, Hauptman, Heald, North, Pennock, Pierson and Thompson. President Smith presided. After asking for corrections of the l\linutes of the last meeting, President Smith asked Vnss Cobbs to explain the arrangement we have with Haverford and Bryn l1awr for alloiving students to take courses at one of the other institutions, and allovring their students to take courses here. (Students may take courses not offered by their home colleges, and at the end of the year a token payment is made by whichever co11ege has fam,ed out more students than it has taken in. We have a similar arrangement \dth Penn, except that in this case no money changes hands, because Penn does not ·hd.sh to be bother,ed ,·lith the complicated book-keeping.) We are considering "mat arrangement could be made with Lincoln University, where five Swarthmore students are nOi1 taking a course in black 1iterature. It 1--JaS decided that it would be appropriate to enter into the same agreement as the one "re . have with Haverford and Bryn Hawr, requiring some token payment for surplus students. It was a1so agreed that we should ask that the dean and faculty adviser at Linco1n screen p~ospective app1icants for admission to Swarthmore courses, just as our students vmo vrish to take courses e1se"mere are screened by the corresponding people here: The President reported that the representatives from the }liddle States Association who are to visit the campus for the periodical review of accreditation will arrive Sunday evening. He described their proposed schedule and listed the groups and indi vidua1s v"hom they plan · to intervie\'f. The CoUtici1 continued its discussion of the program for accrediting high school teachers. Hiss Cobbs reported on the results of talks she has had ivi th members of our ovm faculty and persons at Bryn Na,'fr on various aspects of 'the foreign language programs. There was some discussion of the necessary qua1ifications of the person in charge of our program, should we present one, the appropriate organization of such a program, and the problem of finding a home for it, if the Department of Psych010gy decides that it is unsuitable for it to be described as a Department of Psychology and Education. It seemed best that the work in educatibn be listed in the catalogue as a program of teacher education and that it be made responsible to the Provost (or the Dean). It was decided that Hiss Cobbs and the Teacher Education COlTunittee should meet >ofith chairmen of departments to determ ine which if any are interested in participating in the program, should the faculty agree to go ahead and app1y for approval. The secretary was asked to prepare a report on the CEP discussion, to be presented at tbe faculty meeting on N ovember 21. Hiss Cobbs read portions of a tentative and summary report from Francis Tafoya on the possibility of offering a two-year progrilln in the Cninese 1anguage. Nr. Tafoya recol11inended that \ve engage in such a program and suggested a "modified intensive program" such as is now offered in Russian 1anguage, to be given in spoken Chinese, beginning with texts in the Roman alphabet. After the second year, further ~1irk could be done at Penn. Hr. Tafoya thought that at first there would not be?rgr a full-time person teaching Chinese. He left open the question whether. the same person should do the "master-teaching!! and be responsib1e for drill as "VIrell. He Has opposed to offering Italian or Portuguese, maintaining that tapes are available · in the language laboratory for self-instruction in these and other modern Western languages."
�CEP Report, page 2 The remainder of the meeting was spent in a discussion of summer programs and SUlI'Jner use of the campus. Before taki.ng up specific proposals, the President invited comments en the principles that sheuld guide any decisien Ire might make , asking the Ceuncil to consider whether we should adopt a STh~~er program because it would strengthen the college, .or because it vrould result in some particular advantage to seciety, .or whether financial considerations should be deminant. Ne cenclusion ~~s reached at this meeting en matters of principle, but a nWllher of specific programs came up for discussien. These included pregrams like Upward Beund and ABC, adult educatien pregrams including alwnni seminars ,pre-freshman sessions fer entering students, a program fer 'very bright students frem very poor schoels, NSF Institutes, PeaceCerps programs, a summer language institute (pessibly in conjunctien with Haverford and Bryn Hawr), and an arts or surrmer theatre pregram, teachers institutes, and something cemparable to the Williamsto,ffi Cenference. The discussien teuched upon various advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of the campus in the summer. The President pointed .out that a college as intense as Swarthmore extends students, faculty"and administration te the limit during the schoel year, and t.hat we should be sure (a) tha'~ a summer pregram~~ll not push us beyond the lilllits .of .our strength, 'and (b) that perse~~el will actually be available to man a program. He cited the record .of Upl'lard Beund pregram, ~Ihich, while supported in theory by many on the faculty, has in fact been hard put to find staff. Furthermere, he reminded the Ceuncil that the demands of productive scholarship vull .often conflict with the needs of summer programs, and that it may not always be preper to encourage faculty members to spend their surrrruers on anything but scholarly research. The discussion of the benefits to be derived from summer pregrams brought to light the desire of some members of the Ceuncil te make S\~rthmore a livelier place during the long vacation and the hope of others that the peace and serenity of the campus, so cenducive to schelarly contemplation, may somehow be preserved. The climate .of Shart~~ore during the suwmer months , and the lack of recreatien facilit ies, "Jere recognized as grave disadvantages. The desirability of having students act as research assistants to member of the faculty whe are lvorking at the college during the summer makes more urgent the need,to find funds to support the SQmIDer research program for jQ~ers, which has already proved so valuable. The President proposed that persons intere~ted in specific types .of SUlllffier pregrarn be asked te present memoranda for the next meeting. These are to inclUde the NSF institutes, the pre-freshman sessions and programs for very bright studentsjalwm1i seminars and other types .of adult education, and art festivals. The meeting adjourned at 6 P.M. Helen North
�
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Courtney Smith Papers
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Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Courtney Smith's time there.
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[Minutes of the Commission on Educational Policy, 11/18/1968]
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Box 28, Commission on Educational Policy
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Helen North
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11/18/1968
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President's Office
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Courtney Smith Papers
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Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Courtney Smith's time there.
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[Minutes of the Commission for Educational Policy, 01/06/1969]
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Box 28, Commission on Educational Policy
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Helen North
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01/06/1969
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1969 sit-in
Black admissions
Black Studies
Faculty
President's Office
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���
���
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Courtney Smith Papers
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Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Courtney Smith's time there.
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[Minutes of the Commission on Educational Policy, 01/20/1969]
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Box 28, Commission on Educational Policy
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Helen North
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01/20/1969
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1969 sit-in
Faculty
President's Office
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Courtney Smith Papers
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An account of the resource
Correspondence, reports, recommendations, statements, and news clippings from students, administrators, board members, and alums. All of these documents passed through the Swarthmore President's Office during Courtney Smith's time there.
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Effort to Open Swarthmore Classes Fails
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Box 67, SASS 1968-1969
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Francis Geary
Publisher
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Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
Date
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[01/13/1969]
Format
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JPG
1969 sit-in
Faculty
Student Body