© 2012 Perzavia T. Praylow
RE/MAKING MEN AND WOMEN FOR THE RACE: COEDUCATION, RESPECTABILITY AND BLACK STUDENT LEADERSHIP AT FISK UNIVERSITY, 1924-1970
BY
PERZAVIA T. PRAYLOW
DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012
Urbana, Illinois
Doctoral Committee:
Professor David Roediger, Co-Chair Professor James Anderson, Co-Chair Associate Professor Teresa Barnes Associate Professor Erik McDuffie
ii
ABSTRACT
This dissertation analyzes the relationship between student self-determination, the existence of competing ideologies of respectable race leadership and the transformation of coeducation at Fisk University between the 1924 and 1970. Throughout, a major focus of this dissertation is to trace how ideologies of race leadership were transformed by student dissent at
Fisk. As a result, this research is concerned with analyzing students’ redefinition and negotiation of race leadership at the college. Throughout, the author asserts that Fisk students used self- determination in order to transform models of race leadership at the college.
Specifically, this manuscript provides a critical interrogation of the influence of New
Negro, civil rights and Black Power philosophies on the self-determination of students and their notion of what constituted respectable race leadership between 1924 and 1970. This research is more than just a history of student dissent. “Re/Making Men and Women for the Race:
Coeducation, Respectability and Black Student Leadership at Fisk University, 1924-1970,” in addition, highlights the complicated and contested meaning given to the historic and contemporary role played by Black colleges in preparing students for race leadership in the
African American community.
Student dissent at Fisk posed a major challenge to the organization and governance of academic and student affairs at the college. The Fisk student strike of 1924, the Civil Rights and
Black Power protests of the 1960’s and other examples of student self-determination created an alternative model of race leadership espoused by Fisk men and women. Throughout the history of the institution, students adopted a model of race leadership that stressed autonomy and a belief in Black people’s ability as professionals and as race leaders to advocate social equality on behalf of their community. iii
In memory of my grandmother, Gertrude Ford, and to my mother, Gertrude Praylow
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The final completion of this dissertation manuscript titled, "Re/Making Men and Women for the Race: Coeducation, Respectability and Black Student Leadership at Fisk University,
1924-1970," was nurtured by a supportive and caring community of academic colleagues, my family, members of the Church Of The Living God in Champaign, IL and friends. Without their encouraging words, critical advice (both academic and personal) and unyielding belief in my potential, this manuscript would not have been completed.
My matriculation through the academy from a graduate of the Jersey City Public Schools
System (high school diploma in 1998), undergraduate student at Drew University (BA in 2002), through my graduate career at the University of Illinois (MA in Education Policy in 2005, MA in
History in 2009 and Ph.D. in History 2012) to an Assistant Professor of American History at
Augusta State University (starting Fall 2012) has been guided by a generous group of teachers and historians who inspired me towards completion of this dissertation.
First, I would like to thank my high school math teacher and track and field coach, Mrs.
Mary Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy, thank you for supporting all of my educational endeavors since my time as a student at James J. Ferris High School. I would also like to acknowledge Mr.
Anthony Tillman and Ms. Twannah Ellington for serving as my academic counselors through the
Drew University Educational Opportunity Scholars Program. Thank you both for your work in equipping me with the academic and social tools that I needed to navigate my studies at Drew. I wish to thank my undergraduate mentor and advisor Dr. Lillie Johnson Edwards who began this journey with me thirteen years ago during the Spring semester of 1999 when I in enrolled in her undergraduate survey course -- HST 16 - African American History Since 1877. Dr. Edwards words cannot express my debt of gratitude for your insightful advice on navigating my v educational, research and faculty career. Many thanks as well to your family for their encouragement.
Third, I wish to thank my dissertation committee for their patience and support in getting me through the many hurdles of the Ph.D. process. For helping me to reach the finish line I wish to acknowledge Drs. James D. Anderson, David Roediger, Terri Barnes and Erik McDuffie. I wish to thank Dr. Anderson whose research and career in the field of African American educational history has profoundly impacted my development as a scholar and a researcher.
Thank you for guiding both my master’s thesis research and Ph.D. dissertation. Thanks also for wisely suggesting that I research the history of coeducation at Fisk University as an ideal study.
Also, I would like to thank Dr. Roediger, who in addition to being my co-advisor, hired me as a research assistant in support of his work on whiteness studies through The Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at The University of Illinois. I appreciate your strategic advice in helping me to navigate the administrative logistics of the doctoral program in History at Illinois.
Dr. Barnes, thank you for agreeing to be a reader on my committee and the insightful feedback and conversations you shared on gender and respectability. Finally, to Dr. McDuffie, I am glad to finally say to you that I’m done. Thank you for constantly checking in with me about my writing progress and for always being a sounding board on writing the history of Black women’s activism.
Also, I am one of many Black woman scholars who represent a new generation of intellectuals and researchers who have graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign over the last ten years. I wish to thank Drs. Ra’Quel Shavers, Ceran Donahoo,
Carmen Thompson, Raina Dyer, Ezella McPherson, Zakiah Sober and many others for sharing in this important journey with me. vi
Further, as the newest degreed Ph.D. member of the National Association of Black
Women Historians, I wish to thank a growing network of Black women historians whose work and scholarship in and outside of the academy have sustained me throughout my graduate studies. Specifically, I wish to thank Dr. Darlene Clark-Hine, Dr. Deborah Grey-White, Dr.
Lillie Johnson-Edwards, Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Dr. Stephanie Evans, and many others.
In memory of my grandmother Gertrude Ford, to my mother Gertrude Linda Praylow, to my father Curtis Harris and to my extended family in New Jersey, thank you each for your patience during my long sojourn from the B.A. to the Ph.D. Thank you for loving me enough to give me the space to be the scholar, researcher, educator and minister that God has purposed me to be. I look forward to being home more often now that I have completed this important phase of my journey. I love you all. Especially to my mother Gertrude Linda Praylow thanks for your unyielding sacrifice and for always providing for me. Thank you for supporting my passion for education and learning. Most importantly, thank you for teaching me that I could accomplish whatever goal toward which I set my mind. I love you more than you will ever know.
I wish to acknowledge, as well, my spiritual family at The Church of The Living God in
Champaign, IL where the Bishop Lloyd E. Gwin is pastor. The Church of The Living God has been my home away from home since my arrival in Champaign, IL nine years ago in 2003. I appreciate the entire church for supporting and encouraging me through my graduate career at the University of Illinois. Also, thank you all for your love, support and for helping to me to nurture my many ministerial gifts and “callings” from God. To the ministerial council at The
Church of The Living God, it has been a joy serving in ministry with each of you. And to the volunteers and the fifty dancers of The Youth Total Praise Dance Ministry, you each have vii brought so much joy to my life. Girls as you grow older, graduate from high school and go on to college; I am expecting great things from each of you. The best is yet to come. Keep on praising
God through the art of dance.
Specifically, to Bishop Lloyd and Mother Mary Gwin, I simply don’t have the words to thank you for being my Pastor and first lady and spiritual parents. It’s been a great journey serving under you in the body of Christ at The Church of The Living God. Thank for the countless opportunities to serve in ministry and for being open to the ever changing evolution of my call to ordained ministry in the Christian church. Most importantly, thank you for bestowing upon me the greatest honor by treating me as a member of your family. I’ve been truly blessed by the opportunity to share so many holidays and church conferences with the both of you and your family. (Any who can forget all of the great food, fellowship and fun at Aunti Leah’s house.) I will never forget the first assembly that I helped to coordinate which met in New
Jersey. I will also never forget our church assembly in Florida and our visit to Disney World.
Thank you for helping to nurture my faith in God and for helping me to stand on the realization that no “eye has seen nor ear has head” what God has planned for me. Mother Gwin, thank you for being so patient with me and allowing me to serve as one of your assistants over the last few years. It has been an honor and I have learned so much from you. You are the model toward which I aspire as a woman in ministry. This is just the beginning and I look forward to worshipping and celebrating with you in the new church home of The Church of The Living
God.
And to Elder Matthew and Eldress Evelyn Moore, I’m speechless in thinking about the role that you both have played in helping me to reach my dream of becoming Dr. Perzavia
Praylow. You both have become an important and stable part of my life. Regardless of where viii my journey takes me beyond Champaign, I know that I will always have your support. Thank you both for serving as my parents during my time in Champaign. For all the Sunday dinners at your home, for your prayers, for the nightly phone conversations just about every night for the last seven years, for all the holidays we’ve shared together and for always believing that I could make it when I did not believe that could, I thank you both and owe you so much. Eldress
Moore you will always have a special place in my heart when I think about my life in
Champaign. Your unselfish care and commitment to my personal, spiritual and professional success has been unyielding. You have been and continue be one of my greatest blessings. I love you both.
I wish to thank my closest friends in New Jersey who have known me since before my desire to pursue a Ph.D. in history. I wish to acknowledged Samaria Paul, Maria Norales
Crompton, Rhenotha Whitaker and Keisha Bolaji. I wish to also thank other close friends who have been my spiritual mentors including Ms. Denise Maldonado and Minister Monica Hooks.
To my colleagues at Augusta State University, thank you for welcoming me as the newest member of the History, Anthropology and Philosophy department. I look forward working with you starting with the fall 2012 semester.
And above all, to God, who is the author and finisher of my faith, I dedicate this dissertation, all that I ever was, all that I am today and all that I am to become.
In gratitude,
Dr. Perzavia Praylow
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY ...... 1
CHAPTER 2: STRIKING BACK: STUDENT SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE NEW FISKITE, 1914-1929 ...... 39
CHAPTER 3: BEHAVIORS UNBECOMING A FISK STUDENT: DISCIPLINE, GENDERED SPHERES AND THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE “FISK MAN” AND THE “FISK WOMAN” IN THE 1930’S ...... 86
CHAPTER 4: PREPARING PROFESSIONAL LEADERS FOR THE RACE: STUDENT APATHY AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN THE 1940’S AND 1950’S ...... 125
CHAPTER 5: FISKITES, CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK POWER: ACTIVISM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF STUDENT LEADERSHIP AT FISK, 1957-1970 ...... 154
CHAPTER 6: ALUMNI ‘EVER ON THE ALTAR’: FISKITE LEADERSHIP AND THE LEGACY OF RACE-UPLIFT ...... 202
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 211
1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Introduction
Throughout the decades between the 1920’s and the 1960’s, students at historically Black colleges protested against their college administrators. At Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee, as on other Black college campuses, student dissent was a direct challenge to the stringent policies that governed academic affairs, student life and the socialization of students for leadership in the Black community. In the spring of 1925, Fisk students inspired by W.E.B. Du
Bois’ harsh critique of the college and the New Negro movement, went on strike to protest what they thought was an entrenched spirit of paternalism amongst the administration. Inspired by
Alain Locke’s anthology titled the New Negro, the self-determination of the New Negro movement emphasized the valuing of Black culture and an affirmation of the Black self as important ideological assertions.1 On the Fisk campus, the New Negro movement encouraged students to stand up against President Fayette McKenzie and Fisk’s missionary leaders who thought that student lives needed to be controlled and regulated because Black students were not, in the eyes of the administration, capable of controlling supposed culturally inferior tendencies.
Similarly, in the fall of 1969, influenced by the rise of the Black Power movement on college campuses throughout the country, students attempted to make Fisk a “Black University.”
In their work defining Black Power –Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America--
Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton defined Black Power as “pride rather than shame in Blackness, and an attitude of brotherly, communal responsibility among all Black people for
1 See Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925); Alain Lock’s anthology of essays detailed the contributions of Black artists which affirmed positive images of Blacks in American culture. His collection of writings by Black authors inspired the Black arts movement of the 1920’s.
2 one another.”2 In addition, in her study of Black colleges and the Black Freedom struggle in
Mississippi, Joy Ann Williamson asserts that Black Power in and of itself became “a call for
Blacks to recognize and be proud of their heritage, build a sense of community, define their own goals, and control their own organizations.”3 For Fisk students, this meant that they wanted the academic and administrative affairs at Fisk to be run by Black people and from a Black cultural perspective. In both the 1924 and 1969 demonstrations, student dissent was aimed at transforming an enduring model of student leadership at Fisk that dictated regimental control over student lives, limited student involvement in the affairs of the school and educated students through a curriculum that was not predominantly relevant to the lives and culture of Black people.
Students participating in these demonstrations were most concerned with encouraging administrators to rethink the relationship between student rights, an education relevant to the
Black experience and students’ socialization for leadership in the Black community. Students wanted a complete transformation of the administration of academic and student affairs at the college. Further, they wanted the rules and regulations that governed student conduct and behavior to be changed to accommodate a student culture that was less repressive and one that promoted more autonomy. As such, the demonstrations of the 1920’s and 1960’s, on the one hand can be viewed as students’ critique of Fisk’s stringent regulations that governed appropriate student behavior. However, more importantly, their dissent should be viewed as a critique of the school’s educational philosophy used to educate men and women for leadership.
2 Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in American (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), viii.
3 Joy Ann Williamson, Radicalizing the Ebony Tower: Black Colleges and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi (New York: Teachers College Press, 2008), 132. 3
Through their dissent, students asked, “How should Fisk best prepare Black men and women for race leadership?” At the heart of their protests was a call to Fisk administrators to transform their philosophy of education and the policies and procedures that undergirded their educational ideologies. These policies and procedures governed academic and student affairs at
Fisk and influenced models of leadership. As a result, contested models of leadership shaped appropriate gender behaviors for male and female students. In turn, appropriate behaviors, as defined and governed by college administrators through the Fisk student codes, were the prerequisites for becoming what administrators thought to be ideal or representative race leaders in the Black community. In response, through their protests, students attempted to contest models of leadership and the definition of acceptable student behavior.
In so doing, students looked to alumni to support their efforts at redefining models of leadership and student behavior. In both the student protest of 1925 and the demonstrations of
1969, students co-opted W.E.B. Du Bois’ critique of Fisk in its training of students for manhood and womanhood during his commencement address on February 2, 1925.
Thus self-expression and manhood are chocked at Fisk in the very day when we
need expression to develop manhood in the colored race. We are facing a serious
and difficult situation. We need every bit of brains and ability that we have for
leadership. There is no hope that the American Negro is going to develop as a
docile animal. He is going to be a man, and he needs therefore his best manhood.
This manhood is being discouraged at Fisk today and ambition instead of being
fostered is being deliberately frowned upon.4
4 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Diuturni Silenti,” in The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques 1906-1924 by W.EB. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker, (Amherst, Massachusetts: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), 48.
4
Two days after his speech on February 4th “the campus erupted,” and “reportedly, approximately one hundred male students disregarded curfew and marched around campus, banging trash cans, breaking windows, and chanting ‘Du Bois, Du Bois!’ and ‘before I’d be a slave!’ ”5 Du Bois’ speech was a motivating factor in the students’ decision to strike. More than forty years later, in
1971, in the midst of the student movement at Fisk, students used Du Bois’ critique to theorize their activism and the rise of Black Power on campus. In addition, they affirmed their standing with Du Bois’ by inviting his widow --Shirley Graham Du Bois-- to speak on campus.6 Similar to Du Bois’ claim that “self-expression and manhood” had been “chocked at Fisk,” Mrs. Du Bois declared to Fisk students that “Youth want to live, but [you] do not want to live on [your] knees.
Stand up! Be Proud! Be Beautiful! Right on!”7
Both W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois made claims for students at Fisk to develop as self-directed, bold leaders who stood on behalf of the race. Fisk students and their peers, as the best and brightest of the race comprised what W.E.B. defined as the Black talented tenth. The
Black talented tenth was a group of educated Blacks who as the best of the race guided the Black working class “away from the contamination and death of the worst, in their own and other races.”8 Further he asserts, “The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro
5 Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 267.
6 “Mrs. Du Bois Coming Later,” Fisk Forum, 6 February 1970, 2; Shirley Graham Du Bois’ visit to Fisk was supported by the Black Academy of Arts and letters –an organization of scholars, artists and authors. In addition to supporting Mrs. Du Bois’ invitation to speak at Fisk, Dr. Eric Lincoln, a professor at Union Theological Institute, invited Mrs. Du Bois to New York to represent her husband --W.E.B. Du Bois-- on his induction into the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. See C. Gerald Foster, “Du Bois Widow Granted U.S. Visa,” New York Times, 16 August 1970; “Urges Visa for Du Bois Widow on House Floor,” Jet, 27 August 1970, 3;
7 Alpha Jeanne Fowler, “Mrs. Du Bois on Campus,” Fisk Forum, 5 February 1971, 5.
8 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” in the Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of Today, ed. Booker T. Washington, (New York: James Pott and Company, 1903), 33.
5 colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.”9 As such, W.E.B. Du Bois’ critique and Shirley Graham’s call for students to stand up and be proud were calls to students to be “leaders of thought and missionaries of culture,” among the race. While not outright encouraging students to rebel, both W.E.B. and
Shirley Graham Du Bois encouraged Fisk students to exert their self-determination in making a claim to a relevant and alternative model of respectability and race leadership.
The end goals of the student strike of 1925 and the demonstrations of the 1960’s were to transform the politics of respectability at Fisk and ideologies of race leadership. The politics of respectability as defined by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in Righteous Discontent: The
Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880-1920, “emphasized reform of individual behavior and attitudes both as a goal itself and as a strategy for reform of the entire structural system of American race relations.”10 Baptist women and Fisk students, both as leaders of the race and the Black middle class, encountered a model of respectability --originating from the white middle class-- that defined the manners, morals and behaviors of working class Black people as inherently inferior and immoral. “Through the discourse of respectability, Black
Baptist women emphasized manners and morals while simultaneously asserting traditional forms of protests such as petitions, boycotts, and verbal appeals to justice.”11 Further, the care and concern which many Black leaders devoted towards improving Black working class life was an outgrowth of their genuine concern for the social realities experienced by Blacks every day. In helping to improve their lives, they attempted to imbue the Black working class with white
9 Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” 75.
10 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), 187.
11 Ibid. 6 middle class values. Their efforts were geared towards producing respectable and moral men and women through the improvement of Black working class culture and behaviors. As a result, the politics of respectability advanced by Black Baptist women denied claims of cultural and behavioral inferiority amongst Blacks and instead asserted that Black men and women of any class could be moral and respectable.
Like Baptist women, students transformed the language of respectability espoused by administrators in order to adopt their own model of respectable race leadership throughout the history of Fisk. In their everyday infractions of university rules and regulations and through organized protest, students made claim to a new politics of respectability. The new politics of respectability that they espoused stressed the creation of academic policies and student life regulations that encouraged student autonomy, awareness of Black history and culture and a relevant education that prepared youth for leadership in their community. Throughout the twentieth century students’ continuing transformation of the politics of respectability espoused by Fisk administrators, resulted in definition of their own model of race leadership. Drawing on
Higginbotham’s definition of the “politics of respectability” and Du Bois’ definition of the
“talented tenth,” the term “respectable race leadership” is used in this research to represent models of race leadership used to socialize liberal educated Blacks for race work. Competing models of respectable race leadership influenced policies and procedures at Fisk. These policies and procedures in turn socialized students to be “leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people” through the governance of student behavior.12 As such, there is a direct link between models of respectable race leadership and the policies and regulations that undergirded perceptions of respectable student behaviors. Thus, Fisk administrators, faculty, students and
12 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Talented Tenth, 75. 7 alumni each held specific views about the relationship between Black colleges and their training of students for race leadership.
The Historiography of Black Colleges: Gender and Coeducation at Fisk University—an
Intervention in the Scholarship
The historiography of Black educational institutions raises important themes about the relationship between Black colleges and their socialization of students for race leadership.
Historians of Black higher education have been mostly concerned with understanding the link between philanthropy and the development of Black education. The major work in this vein is
James D. Anderson’s The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935.13 Anderson’s work is significant in that he examines the impact of three types of philanthropy on the development of
Black education. Anderson’s intervention in the literature is that Black philanthropy played a significant role in the development of Black education.
Related specifically to the history of the student as a subject in the history and historiography of Black colleges, sociologists and social investigators have been strongly interested in the background, college education and subsequent experience of Black college graduates. The College Bred Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois’ was the earliest work that looked at the demographic background of Black college students.14 The two studies of Fisk graduates that date from the 1930s are Ambrose Caliver’s A Personnel Study of Negro College Students and
Charles S. Johnson’s The Negro College Graduate.15 Yet, while these studies provide important
13 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
14 W.E.B. Du Bois, the College Bred Negro (Atlanta, GA: The Atlanta University Press, 1910).
15 Ambrose Caliver, A Personnel Study of Negro College Students: a Study of the Relations Between Certain Background Factors of Negro College Students and their Subsequent Careers in College (New York: Teachers 8 statistics on demographic trends of Black college students by sex, they do not reveal how the experiences of male and female students at Black colleges were distinct or similar. Nor do these scholarly works reveal important information about how male and female students were uniquely prepared for gendered leadership.
With the exception of histories of Black students in single sex institutions, historians of
Black colleges that enrolled both male and female students generally do not highlight the distinctiveness or similarities in student experience. For example, this is true of the history of activism among Black college students both in their participation on campus and in their participation in local and national activist movements. Through their activism, Black students not only protested social inequality but they also transformed models of student leadership at their institutions. Related, some scholars have documented the history of student activism on
Black college campuses including Raymond Wolters study of Black college rebellions in the
1920’s titled The New Negro on Campus and Joy Ann Williamson’s Radicalizing the Ebony
Tower: Black Colleges and Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi.16 Wolters analyzed the rise of student activism on college campuses in relation to the New Negro movement of the 1920’s whereas Williamson analyzed student radicalism in relation to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. However, both scholars fail to analyze how the gender identities of activists impacted their activism both on and off campus. Furthermore, neither author underscores how gender identity led to similarities and dissimilarities in the activism of male and female activists.
College, Columbia University, 1931); Charles S. Johnson, The Negro College Graduate (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1938).
16 Raymond Wolters, The New Negro on Campus: Black College Rebellions of the 1920s (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); Joy Ann Williamson, Radicalizing the Ebony Tower: Black Colleges and Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2008).
9
This is but one example of the exclusion of gender analysis in historical trends in the historiography of Black colleges.
As such, in an effort to document the unique experiences of Black females in higher education, scholars of Black women --primarily Black women themselves-- have been interested in the experiences of Black women at a single school or at many Black colleges. For example, the first study conducted at Fisk of the subject of Black women in higher education was the master’s thesis of Ollie Phillips in 1939 titled “Higher Education for Negro Women in
Alabama.”17 Marion Cuthbert studied the experiences of Black women college graduates in 40 communities in her Teacher’s College dissertation entitled “Education and Marginality: A Study of the Negro Woman College Graduate” in 1942.18 Influenced by Cuthbert’s work, Jeanne
Noble surveyed 467 women alumni of Black colleges who were also members of Black sororities and published the results of her survey in her book, The Negro Women’s College
Education.19 These and other studies covered a range of themes pertaining to the history of
Black women’s education including but not limited to curriculum design, the philosophy of education—liberal or industrial and the relationship between higher education and the socialization of Black women for leadership in their community.”20 In addition, most of the
17 Ollie Phillips, “Higher Education for Negro Women in Alabama” (Master’s Thesis, Fisk University, 1939).
18 Marion V. Cuthbert, “Education and Marginality: A Study of the Negro Woman College Graduate” (Ph.D. diss., Teachers College, Columbia University, 1942).
19 Jean L. Noble, the Negro Woman’s College Education (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1956).
20 For more information on Black women in higher education, refer to the following histories by Black women scholars: Anna J. Cooper, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including a Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters, eds. Esme Bhan and Charles Lemert (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1998); Marion V. Cuthbert, Education and Marginality: A Study of the Negro College Woman Graduate (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1941); Opal Easter, Nannie Helen Burroughs (New York: Garland Publishers, 1995); Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Linda M. Perkins, "Fanny 10 institutional histories of women in Black colleges are histories of single sex institutions— specifically Spelman College and Bennett College for Women.21 These histories represent interventions in the historiography of gender and Black higher education. However, Black women scholars and others have not fully documented how the socialization of women for race leadership was shaped by the socialization of men for race leadership. That is, in their studies of women in college, Black women scholars have isolated the experiences of male students from that of female students.
Further, since most Black colleges enrolled male and female students from their founding, it is important for historians to consider the experiences of both men and women through the lens of gender relationally. As such, beyond the study of philanthropy in Black higher education, descriptive studies of the background of the Black college students and gender specific studies of the female or male experience in Black higher education, few histories reveal how Black colleges prepared men and women uniquely for gendered race leadership. As a result, what is missing from the historiography of Black colleges and universities is a study of the relationship between coeducation and the socialization of Black men and women uniquely for race leadership. This is important because the socialization of men and women for gender specific race leadership, while distinct, was corollary in coeducational institutions. Analyzing the historic development of coeducation at historical Black college and universities would require gender to be used as a central lens of analysis and would also require an interrogation of
Jackson Coppin and the Institute for Colored Youth: A Model of Nineteenth-Century Black Female Educational and Community Leadership" (Ph.D. Diss, The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1978).
21 For example, see Beatrice Bower Butcher, “The Evolution of Negro Women’s Schools in the United States” (Master’s Thesis, Howard University, 1936); Yolanda L. Watson , Daring to Educate: The Legacy of Early Spelman College Presidents (Virginia: Stylus Publishing, 1916); Harry G. Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1967 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005); Juanita Patience Moss, ed., Tell Me Why Dear Bennett: Memoirs of Bennett College Belles, Class of 1924-2012 (Westminster Maryland, Heritage Books Inc., 2012).
11 the particular rules, procedures and practices that socialized students for gender specific leadership. This would require historians of Black higher education to look at the histories of men and women through the lens of gender and coeducation.
Historians of women in higher education have used coeducation as an important theme in analyzing the experiences of both men and women in college and universities in the United
States. Among these scholars, coeducation is general defined as the education of men and women in the same institution.22 In analyzing the history of coeducation, historians have been able to study the history of women and men in higher education in relation to each other. This sentiment in espoused by Joan Scott in her important article, “Gender: A Useful Category of
Analysis.”23 In her definition of gender, Scott asserts that “gender is relational and constitutes an analysis of social relations.” In this sense, using gender as an important category of analysis moves historical research beyond separate histories of the lived experiences of male or female students.
Yet, over the last twenty years, historians of education –primarily Black women historians -- have asserted the necessity of studying the experiences of Black women in the history and historiography of Black higher education. In so doing, while they have made important contributions to the history of Black women’s education, they have not always advanced the historiography by looking at Black women’s experiences as gendered. Further, related to the study of gender in Black higher education, many historians have not adopted the
22 For a thorough overview of the history of coeducation in the United States refer to any of the following: Thomas Wood, A History of Women’s Education (New York: Octagon Books, 1974); Lynn D. Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1990); Amy Thompson McCandless, The Past in the Present: Women’s Higher Education in the Twentieth-Century American South (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, The University of Alabama Press, 1999).
23 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis,” The American Historical Review, 91, No. 5 (December 1986): 1053-1075.
12 study of coeducation as a framework or have looked at gender relationally. However, historian
Stephanie Wright provides a model. In her important dissertation, “Education and Changing
Social Identities of Black Southerners, 1865-1915,” Wright analyzed the development of educational opportunity for Black women and men in Southern education as a byproduct of expectations related to the role of Black men and women in Southern society.24 Further,
Wright’s dissertation looked at the development of education for female and male students in relation to each other. In this sense, Wright’s dissertation shows both the similarities and dissimilarities in the experiences of male and female students. As such, scholars who use the relational analysis of gender in their research on Black education will produce histories that reveal both the complimentary and distinct experiences of men and women in education.
This study of gender, coeducation and race leadership at Fisk expands on this model.
Fisk founders saw that the important project of preparing Black youth for race leadership would be incomplete without the higher education of both men and women. Toward that end, this research analyzes the socialization of students for respectable race leadership not only as distinct and separate but also as relational. This study of gender and coeducation at Fisk adopts a relational model in using gender as a central category of analysis. By using gender relationally as a central lens of analysis, this research is concerned with analyzing how shifting ideologies of the politics of respectable race leadership structured higher education and prepared Fisk men and women for gendered leadership. Thus throughout this research, the relational model of gender is used to analyze the history of race leadership at Fisk as a system of social relations that both uniquely and comparatively structured the higher education experiences of men and women based on expectations related to respectable gender behaviors.
24 Stephanie Wright, “Education and Changing Social Identities of Black Southerners, 1865-1915” (Ph.D., Rutgers, 2004). 13
As such, this research on gender, coeducation and race leadership at Fisk moves the historiography of Black higher education beyond segregated historical accounts of the experiences of Black men and women. Further, this research recognizes the influence that the simultaneous development of educational opportunity had on the unique and corollary experiences of students. Finally, this model further complicates the history of Black student’s socialization for race leadership because the history of race leadership for men and women is positioned both as separate and distinct. This raises questions about the relationship between the development of manhood and womanhood at Fisk and the gendered behaviors that produced models of respectable leadership each for men and women students.
Future studies of Black higher education must analyze existing archival sources though a relational gender lens and through the organizing framework of coeducation in order for the history of Black coeducational institutions to more fully reflect how male and female students were educated for gendered leadership. This study of coeducation, gender and race leadership uses numerous sources as evidence of the gendered histories of Black men and women at Fisk.
The source materials for this dissertation include primary documents from the Fisk University archives, specifically from the processed collections of Fisk presidents, faculty, staff and students.25 Throughout, presidential reports, college catalogs, student handbooks, and newspapers have also been included in this research.
Further, to insure that the distinct and complementary gendered history of Black women and men at Fisk is included, this dissertation uses oral histories to supplement evidence from the
Fisk University archives. Oral histories of Black alumni are analyzed in order to attend to the lived experiences of students at Fisk. Excerpts of oral histories used in this dissertation were
25 Completed bibliographic information for all works referenced and consulted in this dissertation can be found in the appendix. 14 collected from The National Visionary Leadership Project archives held at the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. and the Nashville Public Library Civil Rights Movement Oral
History Collection in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, excerpts from oral histories undertaken by the author and by other scholars have been included this research. Throughout, the author defines oral history methodology as critical analysis of writings by and interviews of Black women and men who reflected on their collegiate experiences at Fisk. Also, analysis of oral histories of students and of their writings of their experience at Fisk was essential to the research and writing in this study of gender, race leadership and coeducation. Through the use of both archival and oral history methodology, this gendered history of the socialization of students for race leadership aims to highlight both the distinct yet related gendered experiences of male and female students.
Preparing Leaders for the Race: The Historic Importance of Fisk University
Founded as a coeducational college for Black students that offered liberal arts training to socialize youth to become both middle class professionals and race leaders, Fisk University holds a unique position within the history of Black higher education. The school was founded after the
Civil War in 1866 by the American Missionary Association (AMA) --a group of northern white
Christian philanthropists-- who were concerned not only with the education of former slaves but their socialization, as well, for race leadership. “Building upon their commitments to abolition, physical relief and elevation for Blacks, the founders of Fisk established a model of classical higher education which aimed to demonstrate the intellectual and moral potential of the Black race.”26 Fisk University and other AMA schools including “Straight University (now Dillard),
Talladega College, and Tougaloo College”-- were byproducts of the AMA’s “civilizing mission”
26Joseph Turner McMillan Jr., “The Development of Higher Education for Blacks During the late 19th Century: A study of the AME church, Wilberforce university, the AMA, Hampton Institute and Fisk University” (Ed.D. Diss, Teachers College, Columbia University 1986), 359. 15 that “demanded permanent institutions of higher education that could educate exceptional youth to become leaders of the race,” according to historian James Anderson.27 Toward this singular purpose, the American Missionary Association positioned Fisk University as one of the leading producers of Black college graduates, as a model in Black private higher education and as one of the earliest colleges that trained both Black men and women for race leadership in a coeducational environment. Further, the history of Black higher education would be incomplete without a historical recognition of the important contributions made by Fisk.
Recognizing this, some historians of education have posited that by 1930 Fisk was one of a few institutions comprising the backbone of Black higher education. Related, Joseph
McMillan Turner’s dissertation and James Anderson and V.P. Franklin’s co-edited collection of emerging trends in the history of Black higher education both center Fisk as an important subject of historical inquiry. In his dissertation, “The Development of Higher Education for Blacks during the late 19th Century: A study of the AME church, Wilberforce university, the AMA,
Hampton Institute and Fisk University,” McMillan discussed the development and founding mission of Fisk University in comparison to other 19th centuries Black colleges founded by the
African Methodist Episcopal Church and the American Missionary Association.28 By comparing
Fisk University to Wilberforce and Hampton, McMillan makes the claim that Fisk played an important role in developing the backbone of Black higher education during the late nineteenth century. Similarly, Anderson’s article on Fisk, “Fisk University and the Training of Black
Leadership: Fisk University, a Case Study, 1915-1930,” in his co-edited collection of essays,
New Perspectives on Black Educational History, centered Fisk University as an important case
27 James Anderson, the Education of Blacks, 241.
28 Joseph Turner McMillan Jr., “The Development of Higher Education for Blacks,” 359.
16 study in understanding the intricate relationship between white philanthropy and the development of Black private higher education.29
Second, Fisk is also important to the history of Black higher education because it was among one of the earliest of the Black institutions which upon evaluation was classified and credentialed as an institution at the college level. Consistently, in evaluations of the development of Black higher education by W.E.B. Du Bois in The College Bred Negro, Thomas
Jesses Jone’s study titled Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for
Colored People in the United States and Dwight Wendell Oliver Holmes study The Evolution of the Negro College in 1934, the university was classified as an African American educational institution at the collegiate level.30 In 1930, the college became the first historically Black college to gain accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.31 This academic honor was later enhanced by a Phi Beta Kappa charter in 1952.32 Thus Fisk became among one of the earliest Black institutions to be recognized and honored as a collegiate institution both in name and in practice.
Third, this study on the relationship between Fisk University and its training of students for race leadership is important because of Fisk’s percentage in graduating students compared to other colleges. “From the Reconstruction era through the Great Depression, Black higher education in the South existed essentially through a system of private liberal arts college” as
29 James D. Anderson, “Northern Philanthropy and the Training of the Black Leadership: Fisk University, a Case Study, 1915-1930,” in New Perspectives on Black Educational History, James D. Anderson and Vincent P. Franklin eds., (Boston, MA: G.K. Hall & Co., 1978).
30 See Du Bois, The College Bred Negro; Thomas Jesses Jones, Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United State, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1917); Dwight Wendell Oliver Holmes study The Evolution of the Negro College (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1934).
31 Joe M. Richardson, A History of Fisk University 1865-1946 (Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1980), 135.
32 Rodney T. Cohen, Fisk University (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2001) 8. 17 surmised by James Anderson.33 By the 1920’s Fisk was among the leading private Black colleges producing graduates. Surveys of Black higher education administered by W.E.B. Du
Bois in 1910 and Thomas Jesses Jones in 1917 evidence this. Between the founding of Fisk in
1866 and W.E.B. Du Bois’ survey in 1910 of Black graduates of both white and Black colleges, the top five coeducational Black colleges with the most graduates in declining order included
Fisk University with 245 graduates, Shaw University with 218 graduates, Howard University with 182 graduates, Bennett College with 139 graduates and Wilberforce University with 138 graduates. From Du Bois’ important survey, Fisk was a major producer of Black college graduates.34 Also, in his survey of Black higher education, Jones asserts that
Only three institutions, Howard University, Fisk University, and Meharry Medical
College, have student bodies, teaching force and equipment, and income
sufficient to warrant the characterization of “college” Nearly half of the college
students and practically all of the professional students are in these institutions.”35
The results indicate that Fisk University had 722 college students, Howard University had 188 college students and Meharry Medical School had 534 students.36
Further, Fisk was among one of the top three colleges graduating Black women by 1910.
By 1910, Shaw University graduated 82 Black women, Bennett College graduated 71 Black women and Fisk University graduated 58 Black women.37 In addition, historically, while the
33James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks, 238.
34 W.E.B. Du Bois, The College Bred Negro, 47.
35 Thomas Jesse ones, ed., Negro Education: A Study of the Private and higher Schools for Colored People in the United States (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1917), 60.
36 Ibid., 59.
37 W.E.B. Du Bois, The College Bred Negro, 47.
18 ratio of male to female college graduates outnumbered that of Black women at Fisk, Fisk women increasingly outnumbered male college graduates throughout the 20th century. In particular, throughout the 1940’s, Fisk played a significant role in graduating Black women graduates as more and more Black men participated in the WWII campaigns.
However, the most significant importance that Fisk played in socializing students for race leadership is not that it was an important producer of Black college graduates. The significance of Fisk as an educational institution is that its founders included Black women in the project of educating Blacks for race leadership. Comparable to other schools founded by the American
Missionary Association, coeducation was the institutional structure of education at Fisk. As a result, because of its egalitarian approach to educating both men and women in numerous professional occupations, Fisk graduates made important contributions towards the uplift of their communities throughout the South and the nation.
The Shifting Politics of Respectable Race Leadership at Fisk 1866-1970: An Overview
The educational experiences of Fisk graduates were shaped by numerous and competing models of respectable race leadership. Throughout its history, the model of race leadership at
Fisk was negotiated between expectations for students as leaders held by Fisk administrators and those of students themselves. In addition, depending upon the particular historic moment, parents and alumni either sided with the educational views of Fisk administrators or students related to the socialization of students for race work. Throughout its history, the numerous and competing models of race leadership espoused by Fisk administrators were influenced by ideologies associated with race-uplift, industrialism, Jim Crow racial accommodation, and progressively moderate racial politics. In response to the models of leadership implemented by 19 administrators, students developed their own models drawing on different but more progressive ideologies of leadership. Fisk students made claims to a mode of leadership that was much more self-determined than those supported by the administration. In so doing, Fisk students looked to
New Negro ideology, Civil Rights and Black Power to create alternative models of leadership.
Each of these ideologies was rooted in specific ideas about what constituted respectability at
Fisk. As a result, theses ideologies of leadership resulted in the continuing contestation of what constituted respectable race leadership and transformed the Fisk student code of conduct.
In addition, in socializing students for race leadership, Fisk administrators upheld particular gender expectations for male and female students. As a result, my work, through the lens of gender, explores how models of race leadership impacted the governance of coeducation in the higher education of men and women. As such, the central question of my dissertation is
“How did the shifting politics of respectability at Fisk develop competing ideologies of respectable race leadership which governed the higher education of Black men and women?”
These ideologies of leadership held by Fisk administrators, faculty, parents, alumni and students reveal contentious and sometimes corollary politics of respectable leadership.
Throughout the twentieth century, culminating in the rise of Black Power at Fisk, students continually contested the model of leadership held by administrators of the college. Toward that end, this dissertation is concerned with interrogating how the socialization of students for race leadership was transformed between the student strike of 1924 and the student dissent at Fisk during Civil Rights and Black Power demonstrations of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. This research has four specific goals. First, this dissertation analyzes how Fisk administrators defined and implemented their model of race leadership for students. Second, it analyzes how students negotiated and redefined models of race leadership at Fisk. Third, this history of Fisk critically 20 interrogates the relationship between the shifting models of race leadership and the transformation of coeducation. Fourth, this dissertation is concerned with using gender as a lens to chronicle how different models of respectable race leadership uniquely shaped the educational behaviors of Fisk men and women.
As a result, this research makes the claim that throughout the twentieth century, Fisk students used self-determination to make claims to an alternative model of leadership that was more relevant to the social needs of the Black community. Influenced by the New Negro movement of the 1920’s, the anti-segregation campaigns of the 1930’s, the push for racial integration in the 1940’s and 1950’s and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the
1960’s and 1970’s, students forced administrators to transform the institution. Student self- determination took many forms including organized protests, infractions of the students code, participation in local and national social movements and letter campaigns to alumni to name a few. Administrators conceded to the self-determination of Fisk students by transforming the student code at Fisk and the governance of academic and social affairs. Thus, the politics of respectability was continually reshaped by Black students themselves in order ensure that graduates were able to perform relevant leadership in response to the changing social struggles encountered by the Black community.
The chapters of this dissertation trace the restrictive and empowering aspects of the female and male experience at Fisk. Within each chapter, the experiences and behaviors of Fisk students are critically interrogated in order to analyze the relationship between ideologies of respectable race leadership, gendered expectations for male and female students, and the structure and governance of coeducation. This is important because a scholarly interpretation of the experiences of students in Black colleges from their point of view has been rendered 21 secondary to the perspective of college founders, administrators, faculty, parents and alumni.
Fisk students not only impacted Fisk but they impacted the world. Their behaviors and experiences become an important lens through which the development and transformation of the ideology of respectable race leadership at Fisk can be understood.
Chapter Two, entitled “Striking Back: Student Self-Determination and the New Fiskite,
1914-1929,” analyzes the impact of students use of New Negro ideology to contest the contradictory model of race leadership that missionaries implemented through their belief in race-uplift. In addition to outlining the shifting polities of respectability espoused by Fisk administrators in the form of race-uplift and Fisk students and alumni in the form of self- determination influenced by New Negro ideology, this chapter presents an overview the paternalist administration of President McKenzie in his governance of the college juxtaposed against the self-determination of students. The self-determination of Fisk students manifested itself in the student strike of 1925 and in their everyday infractions of the code of conduct. As a result, the rise of self-determination among students at Fisk resulted in a more autonomous student culture.
The missionary founders of the college, through their affiliation with The American
Missionary Association, adopted race-uplift as the model of leadership for Fisk students in the first fifty years of the institutions history. Historian Kevin K. Gaines defines race-uplift as “an emphasis on self-help, racial solidarity, temperance, thrift, chastity, social purity, [and] patriarchal authority,” in his discussion of middle class Blacks and their work to advance the
Black race.38 His definition of race-uplift is also appropriate in giving meaning to the work that white missionaries undertook in advancing Black social progress after slavery. By all accounts
38 Kevin S. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 2.
22 the missionaries believed that racial uplift in the form of liberal arts education for Black men and women was the solution to the “Negro problem.” The “Negro problem” was the challenge of integrating former slaves into American society after slavery. Similarly, middle class Blacks looked to uplift ideology at the turn of the twentieth century in order to advance African
Americans. Yet, while the white missionaries and the Black community were in agreement over race-uplift ideology as a solution to the “Negro problem” and the liberal training of students towards that goal, what they differed on was its social end.
The missionaries and administrators at Fisk attempted to promote Black social progress and to solve the “Negro problem” through an egalitarian social gospel that James Anderson has concluded was carefully defined as “political and legal equality and not social, economic or cultural equality.”39 Thus he asserts, “on the one hand “assuming that former slaves would be active participants in the republic on equal footing with all other citizens,” the missionary philanthropists “intended to prepare a college-bred Black leadership to uplift the Black masses.”40 That is, their Social Gospel was aimed at preparing Black men and women for race leadership as long as their leadership did not challenge economic and social inequalities existing in the South nor encourage the end of social segregation.
Furthermore, these same missionaries, as Anderson’ declares, “consented to inequality in the economic structure, generally shied away from the questions of racial integration, and were probably convinced that Blacks’ cultural and religious values were inferior to those of middle- class whites.” As a result, the missionaries’ assumption that education could uplift Blacks from the legacy of slavery was founded first on their belief in Blacks’ intellectual capability. Yet, at
39James D. Anderson, the Education of Blacks, 241.
40 Ibid.
23 the same time, their rhetoric of egalitarianism was limited by their belief in Black cultural inferiority. Because of slavery, the missionaries believed that the behaviors and culture of Black people did not make them culturally fit for American society. As a result, Anderson asserts that the missionaries believed that “it was essential for education to introduce ex-slaves to the values and rules of modern society,” so that they could develop “important moral and social values of thrift, industry, frugality, and sobriety.”41 By the missionary standards, these and others were important values needed amongst middle class Blacks in their work as respectable race leaders in their community.
As such, the rhetoric of egalitarian social progress for Blacks espoused in mission- sponsored schools like Fisk and the administrator’s emphasis on promoting white middle class behaviors among the Fisk student body developed an attitude of paternalism between Fisk administrators and their relations with Fisk students, alumni and the larger Black community. In order to socialize Black men and women for leadership service within the Black community, missionary administrators heavily policed and sanctioned the behaviors of students. Because missionaries wanted their students to be exemplary role models of the race, they exerted excessive control over their students in order to stamp out what they believed to be the inferior behaviors and cultural practices which they attributed as the byproduct of slavery. The missionaries expected their students to exhibit respectable behaviors while they served as leaders in their community with the end goal of keeping the Black working class subservient. As the best and brightest of the race, they were to help uplift the Black community from its slave past through the improvement Black cultural behaviors and practices and the promotion of white middle class values. In addition, they were not to encourage the Black community in challenging economic or social inequality.
41 Ibid. 24
However, while many in the Black community did see racial uplift and the liberal education of the talented tenth as a solution to the “Negro Problem,” they believed that Blacks should uplift the race by transforming the racial, economic, political and social conditions of
Black life. As a result, some Black leaders held different expectations of the training of youth for race-uplift through the liberal arts education. Both W.E.B. Du Bois in his article, “The
Talented Tenth,” and Carter G. Woodson in his famed polemic entitled The Mis-Education of the
Negro assert that Black students’ socialization for race leadership through the liberal arts must be given an education that was relevant to the culture and history of the Black community. As a result, Woodson concluded that the early generations of Blacks who graduated from the mission colleges were mis-educated. In addition, both Du Bois and Woodson made the claim that in order for Black professionals and the Black middle class to contribute to progress of the race, they must have a better understanding of the Black experience.42
In addition to Du Bois and Woodson, the Black community in general had a different expectation for race-uplift than that of the Christian missionaries who governed Fisk because of the important role that the Black community placed on individual education in relation to the social progress of the race. Through the first quarter of the twentieth century, race-uplift represented a movement in which Black people looked to themselves and their own resources to pull themselves up from the degradations of slavery demanding their right to equality citizenship.
In addition, race-uplift ideology, as defined by Linda Perkins in her essay entitled “The Role of
Education in the Development of Black Feminist Thought, 1860-1920,” was founded on the
42 For an overview W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson discussion of the role of liberal arts education in the training of Black youth for race-uplift see W.E.B. Du Bois, “Diuturni Silenti,” in The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques 1906-1924 by W.EB. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker, (Amherst, Massachusetts: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1973) and “The Talented Tenth,” in the Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of Today, ed. Booker T. Washington, (New York: James Pott and Company, 1903); Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Washington, D.C. : Associated Publishers, 1933).
25 basis that “the educational obtainments of all African-Americans, gender notwithstanding, would be for the advancement and uplift of the race.”43 Thus the Black community expected educated men and women to use their education to provide leadership in response to the economic, political and social struggles that Black community encountered in their quest for full citizenship.
This belief was instilled in Black children through their families and other institutions in the Black community including the church. In her discussion of Black women’s engagement with the uplift of their community, historian Stephanie Shaw asserts in her book What a Women
Ought to Be and Do: Black Professional Workers during the Jim Crow Era, that the socialization of Black women as children greatly impacted their professional work lives.44 She claims that Black girls were imbued “with a determination to use their education in a socially responsible way,” so that they would not simply become just “schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, and librarians,” but also “become some of the political and social leaders in the formal and informal movements” within the Black struggle for racial equality.45 In using the term
“socially responsible individualism,” Shaw posits that Black women coming of age during the
Jim Crow era were raised by their family and community to understand that their education should be used as a vehicle of social transformation.
As a result, the form of race-uplift espoused by Black parents and alumni of the school differed from that of Fisk’s missionary founders and administrators. The model of race-uplift espoused by the community of Blacks associated with the college required graduates to
43Linda Perkins, “The Role of Education in the Development of Black Feminist Thought,” History of Education Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1993): 165.
44 Stephanie Shaw, What A Black Woman Ought To Be and Do: Black Professional Workers During the Jim Crow Era (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1966).
45 Ibid.
26 transform and not accept the social and economic inequalities in Black life. This form of race- uplift, unlike that associated with Booker T. Washington’s politics of racial accommodation, attempted to transform segregation and the order of social relations in the South at the turn of the century. Washington’s politics of racial accommodation encouraged Blacks to accept the politics of the South --which relegated them to a subservient class-- with the understanding that as
American society changed, the race would uplift itself. In explaining Washington’s model of race-uplift, Gaines asserts, “rooted in the assumption of evolutionary racial hierarchy,”
Washington’s leadership “contributed to the view that African American people of the South were incapable of self-government.”46 Further he concludes, that Washington’s “evolutionary thinking lent credibility to the fallacy that people of color were culturally underdeveloped, rather than at the mercy of political and economic subordination.”47 Unlike Washington’s belief and the contradictory model of racial uplift of the school’s founder, Black alumni and students of
Fisk wanted graduates of the institution to transform racial politics and the conditions of Black life.
In response to the model of race leadership espoused by Fisk’s founders and those Black leaders and white philanthropists who supported Washington’s model of race leadership, Fisk students drew upon New Negro ideology with its emphasis on self-determination in order to develop an alternative model of leadership. As such, as an outgrowth of their model of race- uplift, the New Negro model of race leadership claimed by students throughout the 1920’s aimed to transform the administrations’ goal of educating race leaders who would uplift the Black working class without challenging their political and economic subordination. As such, as Gaines
46 Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 38.
47 Ibid.
27 asserts, Black who embraced New Negro ideology –including students on Black college campuses—looked to “New Negro race consciousness” to challenge “uplift ideology’s accommodation to the racial and economic status quo.”48
In this regard, Fisk students protested rules and regulations at their college that socialized them to be leaders of accommodation and not transformation throughout the 1920’s. This more self-determined model of race leadership and race-uplift was directly influenced by the national
New Negro movement. The self-determination and militancy of the New Negro movement according to Gaines “ranged from socialist, anti-imperialist internationalism fusing race and class consciousness,” to the “population nationalism of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro
Improvement Association, to the NAACP’s liberal program of antilynching agitation and a judicial struggle against segregation.”49 Resultantly, similar to national and international movements of New Negro militancy, student self-determination at Fisk and on other Black college campuses throughout the 1920’s had as its end the social and institutional transformation of Black higher education.50
The social and institutional change toward which students directed their acts of self- determination was in retaliation against not only the contradictory politics of the uplift ideology of the administration but also the rise of industrial education as a model of race leadership at
Fisk. “The industrial philanthropists selected Fisk University as the college to be developed into a model institution of Black higher education.”51 In addition, “Fisk was at the financial crossroads that precipitated the transformation of the power structure in Black private higher
48 Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 11.
49 Ibid.
50 See Raymond Wolters, The New Negro on Campus, for a thorough overview of Black college rebellions and the New Negro student movement at Fisk, Howard, Tuskegee, Hampton and Wilberforce University.
51 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks, 263. 28 education from missionary to industrial philanthropy.” 52 In need of financial support to keep the institution of afloat, President Fayette McKenzie looked to leading industrialists to boost he endowment of the college. His look to philanthropy from industrialists came at cost to Fisk.
“The philanthropists’ financial assistance to Fisk University was accompanied by a new coalition of Negro accommodationists, Southern whites, and northern industrialists who took control of the university’s administration.”53 They hoped that their “economic and firm political hold on
Fisk would squelch the school’s equalitarian tradition and open the way for the development of a more conservative Black leadership class.”54 As a result, the model of industrial education was a direct challenge to the legacy of race-uplift with its emphasis on legal and political equality promoted by Fisk’s founders.
The results of this move towards making Fisk a model industrial college resulted in the addition of industrial arts courses to the curriculum In addition, the rise of industrial education brought even more stringent rules and policies to the Fisk campus, more so than before President
McKenzie’s administration. However, this move towards industrialism was short lived as students and alumni, through differing acts of self-determination resulting in the Fisk student strike of 1924-1925, brought a halt to its influence at Fisk.
By 1930’s, in the years immediately following the Fisk student strike, the model of race leadership at Fisk had become more entrenched into a model of racial accommodation in which students were socialized to be leaders of the race and middle class professionals who lived but did not challenge the politics of Jim Crow race relations. Chapter Three, “Behaviors
52 Ibid.
53 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks, 266.
54 Ibid. 29
Unbecoming a Fisk Student: Discipline, Gendered Spheres and the Socialization of the “Fisk
Man” and the “Fisk Woman in the 1930’s” charts the impact that Fisk’s increasing move toward accommodation had on the preparation of students for race leadership under President Thomas
Jones administration of Fisk starting in 1926. As a model of race leadership, accommodationism was a byproduct of the Jim Crow race relations of the South in which Blacks across class were forced to accommodate to the social, economic, political and racial etiquette of the region.
Gaines asserts that
Jim Crow in Atlanta, and throughout the South, beset African Americans with
substandard facilities, forbade Blacks and whites to interact in public and private
life as equals, as human beings, and menaced Blacks’ attempts at social
advancement. Under Jim Crow’s reign of terror, whites coveted the property and
possessions of successful Blacks and raised the constant threat of psychic and
physical violence and humiliation.55
The politics of accommodationism --termed throughout the remainder of this research as the politics of Jim Crow respectability-- in turn dictated that Blacks accommodate or assimilate their livelihoods, behaviors and their self-respect to the social mores of Jim Crow with its juxtaposition of the supremacy of whiteness and the subordination of Black bodies, culture and behaviors.
The politics of Jim Crow respectability dictated how students were educated and socialized for leadership at Fisk throughout the 1930’s. To be sure, while Fisk was progressive in the sense that it had an integrated faculty and staff, the rigid student code of conduct with its resulting regulations forced students to concede to the respectable behaviors associated with
Fisk’s Jim Crow model of leadership. To be sure, while the Fisk student strike increased
55 Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 51. 30 autonomy in student culture at Fisk by 1930 through the development of more student clubs and organizations, the administration still emphasized the stringent policing of student behavior.
This was partly due to the awareness among Fisk’s leaders that Southern whites and industrialists saw liberally educated Blacks as a threat to the racial politics of the South. As such, Fisk administrators --having learned from their encounter with the New Negro activism of their students of the late 1920’s-- used excessive rules and regulations to keep students in their place.
Further, excessive rules and regulations were also designed to squelch the self- determination of students and their desire to challenge Jim Crow as the social and political status quo. The rules associated with the Jim Crow model of leadership at Fisk were designed to impact where students could and could not go on and off campus and to shape how Black students were to behave when interacting with white society. Thus, segregation and Jim Crow respectability existed within the integrated world of the Fisk campus. For example, segregation existed on campus at Fisk’s special events where important Black and white leaders were invited to speak on the campus. In this regard, Fisk throughout the 1930’s prepared students to be leaders of their race and exist in the Jim Crow South by teaching students to abide by the social mores of segregation and its resulting racial politics even as they socialized students to engage in the work of uplift.
Thus, at Fisk, Jim Crow respectability dictated that students, while prepared to be leaders of their race, must be prepared to play their role in the segregated South. As such, the few concessions that Fisk students had gained as a result of their self-determined stances again administrators in the student strike of 1925 gave way to an increased policing of student behavior and a student code of conduct that was much more rigid than the student code governing student culture before the strike. However, like their peers who protested against the student code and its 31 polices in the 1920’s, students at Fisk in the 1930’s exhibited behaviors increasingly unbecoming of a Fisk man and woman in order to shift the discourse around respectability and race leadership. At the local level, through their infractions of the student code at Fisk and on the national level through an organized protest of student lynching, some Fisk students exemplified the legacy of self-determination as they attempted to undermine Jim Crow respectability the paternal rules and regulations that supported its existence.
Beyond practices of racial segregation both on and off campus, gender segregation at
Fisk uniquely shaped the social experiences of male and female students. Specifically, gender segregation in the social affairs of Fisk male and female students resulted in the development of a distinctive women’s sphere at Fisk. Even with the development of such a women’s sphere at
Fisk, defined as increased social activities and educational opportunities specifically for female students, the politics of Jim Crow respectability and accommodationism as the model of race leadership of Fisk administrators had a direct impact on Black women’s socialization for race leadership. Specifically, Black women’s bodies, behaviors and sexuality were policed even while more professional occupations opened to them as a result of their increased majoring in the social sciences at Fisk.
First, as the rise of a distinctive women’s sphere at Fisk developed, the policing of Black women’s bodies and sexuality increased. Throughout the 1930’s student life for women expanded to include sororities, female literary societies and the development of female student networks in extracurricular activities and organizations. In the aftermath of the death of Juliette
Derriocote, Fisk’s first dean of women, in 1929, there was no leadership at Fisk that was specifically charged with teaching Black women norms associated with Fisk’s perception of their role as race leaders. In that light, in order to ensure that Black women understood and were 32 prepared for the racial politics of Jim Crow America, administrators, later including Fisk’s dean of women in the late 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, established stringent rules that conformed Black women students into the image of respectable leaders who conformed but did not challenge Jim
Crow. However, Fisk women wanted to make the model of leadership for women students more modern. They attempted to do this by expanding avenues for leadership --in student government, sorority life, the Ms. Fisk beauty pageants and sports for example-- and through their ongoing contestation of the student code of conduct for women students. As a result of the changes in these developments in the student culture of female students, Fisk women were able to gain essential experiences important to their work as race leaders. As the same time, the policing of their bodies and sexuality socialized Black women to lead within the limitations of Southern racial etiquette.
However, like their male counterparts, Black students expressed their affinity toward self-determination as a leadership model among Black students in that they repeatedly engaged in infractions of the student code for women students. Whether they broke curfew, wore dangling ear rings, entered into relationships with Fisk and Meharry Medical College men or traveled into segregated Nashville, Black women students who misbehaved badly used self- determination to contest the politics of Jim Crow respectability.
Second, the ascendance of the Department of Social Science emerged under the leadership of sociologist Charles S. Johnson who would subsequently become president of Fisk in 1946 after President Jones’ resignation. Social science replaced education as the most popular major for undergraduate women students by the 1930s. While Fisk students were prepared for a variety social welfare occupations –including those occupations associated with 33 social work-- in addition to teaching, they had to learn how to be middle class professionals and uplift their community within the political and social constraints’ of Jim Crow.
Throughout the 1940s and the 1950’s ideologies of race leadership shifted from the Jim
Crow respectability of the 1930’s to a form of respectability that was moderate but also did not disrupt the politics of Jim Crow and segregation as the rule of the land in the South. Under
President Charles S. Johnson’s administration of Fisk University between 1947 and 1956, the model of race leadership espoused by Johnson’s administration was moderate in the sense that
President Johnson did not outright advocate radicalism or changes to the politics of race relations in the South. In addition, he was heavily critiqued by Du Bois and other Black leaders as being very similar to Booker T. Washington in race politics. However, while one can argue that
Johnson was conservative in how he related to Black and white leaders, moderate racial politics more adequately describes Johnson’s administration and leadership of Fisk. In many ways,
Johnson was more of a behind-the-scenes leader who built up a strong support base with white philanthropists and leaders to fund his important program of research on Black life at Fisk as well as many of the new programs and interventions he developed at Fisk during the late 1940’s and 1950’s.
The implication of Johnson’s leadership of Fisk is that he espoused a model of race leadership that focused on students acquiring a solid education in order to advance their professional careers in service to the race. Further, through the development of his famed department of social sciences, students were able to engage in research, thus relating their collegiate education to solving critical problems in the Black community. For example, Johnson encouraged a model of leadership that encouraged Fisk students to uplift the race through their aspiration of professional success founded on improving the realities of Black life. Johnson 34 personified a model of race leadership for students that was moderate in that Fisk students were socialized for new professional opportunities in the post WWII era but was conservative in that
Fisk graduates were not socialized to push for integration by engaging in the movement to end racial segregation.
Chapter Four is titled, “Student Culture, Fisk Deans, and the Negotiation of Students
Affairs in the 1940’s and 1950’s.” It juxtaposes the idea of moderate racial politics as an ideology related to the higher education of Blacks against the program of student development organized by Fisk deans in the important role they played in socializing students for race-uplift through their rise to professional leadership. During the 1940’s, Fisk was a campus where men were largely absent during the years of the war. The imbalance in the undergraduate student body grew even greater during World War II because men were away at war. As a result, Black female students moved into many of the leadership positions they had been denied before on campus and majored in math and the sciences at higher rates. With the men away at war, more fellowship opportunities opened up for Black women through the Rosenwald Fund. After the war and throughout the 1950’s, schools were reoriented toward the needs of returning servicemen. Further, as the GI Bill increased financial aid for male students and made them more valuable as students, a majority Black female student body was no longer unnoticed, but instead was seen as a liability. In 1947 President Johnson announced a policy to equalize the enrollment of Black male and female students at Fisk-presumably by admitting less qualified males. 56
Throughout all of these rapid changes, Johnson improved Fisk so that the institution could use its
56 George Streator, “Dr. Charles S. Johnson is Inducted as President of Fisk University,” New York Times, 8 November 1947. 35 educational and financial resources in preparing students for professional work and service to the race through a solid liberal arts education.57
Related to the development of student culture during this time period, Fisk deans, specifically the dean of men and the dean of women, played important roles in shifting the politics of respectable race leadership at Fisk. In response to the professional opportunities that opened up to men and women in post-World War II years and throughout the 1950’s, Fisk deans transformed the program of student affairs for male and female students at Fisk. As a result, the student culture at Fisk also shifted. Between 1940 and the mid 1950’s, at Fisk the program of student development carved out by Fisk deans focused on preparing students for professional leadership.
In addition, with more of an administrative goal toward their educational and professional socialization, the attitudes among Fisk students toward social issues were apathetic and showed less of the self-determination that existed in the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Numerous articles in the
Fisk student paper lamented the apathy of Fisk students. As both enrollment patterns and educational opportunities at Fisk opened, students accepted the model of race leadership at Fisk during the 1940’s and 1950’s, which stressed academic excellence and socialization for expanding careers. This goal was made possible because the moderate model of student leadership was founded on a solid program of student academic and social affairs.
After the Brown decisions, Fisk administrators and faculty saw themselves training a
Black educated elite who would take advantage of new opportunities opened by the desegregation of the professions. Chapter Five, “Fiskites, Civil Rights and Black Power:
57 For an overview of Charles Johnson leadership, career and racial politics see Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman, Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: State University of New York, 2003). 36
Activism and the Transformation of Student Leadership at Fisk, 1957-1970,” examines the impact that the social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s had on the development of leadership among Fisk students. In particular, Chapter Five looks at the influence of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power movement and the students’ rights movement on students’ awareness of themselves as leaders. This chapter also underscores distinctions and similarities in the experiences of male and female student activists. In particular, related specifically to the activism of female students, the leadership roles of women in the civil rights movement, beginning in the late 1950s, created a model of the woman student leader who challenged the more limited roles of women in sororities and in sports and encouraged much more active criticism of the campus rules policing Black women’s seemingly unrespectable behaviors associated with activism both on and off campus. Black women leaders came to the fore during the Civil Rights era not so much because of their numerical predominance in Fisk’s student body but instead because several of them, like Diane Nash, were early and important activists in the local civil rights movement in Nashville.
During the late 1950’s and 1960’s students developed a model of race leadership that forced Fisk administrators to take a bolder stand in their relationship between the college and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. As more and more students participated in local and national struggles of the Civil Rights movements and later attempted to use the rhetoric of Black
Power to transform Fisk into a “Black University” complete with the development of a Black studies program and the hiring of more Black faculty and staff, Fisk administrators transformed their model of race leadership for students by governing the college in ways designed to be more responsive to the social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970’s. The shift in the ideology of the leadership by Fisk administrators was a direct by product of students’ claims to equality at Fisk. 37
Thus students used their awareness of civil rights, students’ rights, and Black Power to demand a model of race leadership that socialized students to become self-determined leaders who did not want only civil equality but wanted, as well, transformation of race relations and opportunity in
American society. Students during this era emerged as leaders who did not want only integration in American culture but wanted transformation of the power structure throughout the nation.
Toward this goal, Chapter Five charts the response of Fisk’s progressively moderate racial politics of President Stephen J. Wright between 1957 and 1966 and President James R. Lawson between 1967 and 1975 towards the model or race leadership that Fisk students developed as a result of their participation in local and national movements associated with the Civil Rights and
Black Power movements.
Chapter Six, the concluding chapter, “Alumni ‘Ever on the Alter’: Fiskite Leadership and the Legacy of Race-uplift,” examines what legacies of the Fisk student model of self-determined respectable race leadership exits among alumni through their activism and professional contributions in the post-Civil Rights era. As such, this chapter presents an overview of the contributions that noted Fiskites have made both in their professional fields and on behalf of and related to Black social progress. In addition, this chapter chronicles the efforts of self- determination that alumni have taken throughout the twentieth century, especially in the post-
Civil Rights era, to improve the governance of Fisk. Throughout its history, alumni have become actively involved in the affairs of the college in order to insure its success in preparing students for leadership in the Black community and the professions.
Fisk University today produces graduates who go on to top career fields. The institution’s expectations of preparing Black women and men for leadership are important and unique. This research aims to chart how expectations about race leadership at Fisk were 38 contested and negotiated. In the process, the concept of the best model of respectable race leadership for the Fisk man and the Fisk woman was never static but remained fluid as the politics of respectability at Fisk were reformed and conformed throughout the institution’s history. 39
CHAPTER 2: STRIKING BACK: STUDENT SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE NEW FISKITE, 1914-1929
Introduction
During the spring semester of 1925, Fisk students participated in organized protest against the rigid governance of their university. At the time, the college was governed by
President Fayette McKenzie who presided over the college between 1926 and 1946. The Fisk student strike of 1924 was a byproduct of the rise of self-determination among Fisk students.
Like rebellions on other Black college campuses throughout the 1920’s --including Howard,
Tuskegee and Lincoln, student strikes attempted to transform the governance of student culture at Black institutions. As Martin Summers writes, “between 1914 and 1929, at least eleven other historically Black college and universities endured protests in which a segment of their student bodies registered their dissatisfaction with the state of higher education available to them by walking out en masse.”58 In particular, students who participated in the Fisk strike wanted personal freedom and saw autonomy in secular terms, not the language of uplift espoused by their college founders.
Fisk students understood the relationship between higher education and race-uplift. They demanded a collegiate education that would socialize them to become race leaders who uplift rather than keep the race in their place. Thus, they wanted to transform both the legacy of paternalism at Fisk and the racial subordination of Blacks in the South. As such, “students at
Fisk, Howard, and elsewhere were also taking on administrative policies that were deeply rooted in American racial ideologies, specifically with respect to the education of Blacks in a caste society.”59 The Fisk student strike and others on Black college campuses were “reflections of a refusal to conform to the disciplinary nature of the missionary paternalist model” of student
58 Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents, 242.
59 Ibid., 243. 40 governance and socialization for race leadership.60 At Fisk, student nonconformity posed a major challenge to administrative policies. As a result, it effected change in the organization of academic affairs and demanded a more self-determined student culture at the school. The student strike led to the creation of an alternative model of race leadership by students. They wanted a model of race leadership for students that promoted equality rather subordination, autonomy rather than restriction and respectful rather than denigrating ideals about Black morality.
Since its founding and through the mid 1920’s, the model of race-uplift at the college was a byproduct of the enduring legacy of sixty plus years of missionary paternalism. Missionary founders and administrators ardently believed that moral education and rigid rules would counter the supposedly immoral predisposition of Black students. These missionaries, as E. Franklin
Frazier argues, “were imbued with Puritan tradition” and “as a consequence they maintained a strict surveillance over the conduct of their Negro students in order to stamp out any tendencies toward frivolous or immoral conduct.”61 As a result, at Fisk, moral education was combined with a classical curriculum that stressed the training of Black youth for a model of race leadership that was respectable. At missionary-founded schools, this model of race leadership was based on the enforcement of respectable behaviors requiring students “to be differentiated in their morals as well as in their manners from the Negro masses.” Therefore, “first, students were taught to speak English correctly and thus avoid the ungrammatical speech and dialect of the
Negro masses. They were expected to be courteous, speak softly and never exhibit the spontaneous boisterousness of ordinary Negroes.” 62
Thus at Fisk and other missionary-founded Black colleges, rigid discipline was used to socialize youth in respectable behaviors. Students were expected to accept and not challenge
60 Ibid.
61 E. Franklin Frazier, The Black Bourgeoisie, (New York: Collier Books-Macmillan Publishing Company, 1957), 65.
62 Ibid., 71. 41 these rules as a prerequisite for race leadership. Specifically at Fisk, the denigration of students’ inherently bad behaviors and morals by college founders resulted in a specific form of race leadership. Students were socialized by administrators to accept but not challenge white superiority and Jim Crow racial politics. However, by the 1920’s “Black college students rebelled against entrenched administrations that advocated industrial education over instruction in the liberal arts; school authorities who either tolerated or actively encourage segregationist policies on campuses; and, in general, organizations and individuals that practiced ‘missionary paternalism’ through philanthropy.”63 Through their protests, students at Fisk and on other Black college campuses expressed their desire to transform rather than facilitate the perpetuation of racial segregation. Thus, striking students in the 1920’s made claims to an alternative model of higher education for race leadership that promoted autonomy, independence and Black self- determination among students in the governance of student life and academic affairs at the college.
The student strike at Fisk not only challenged repressive rules at the college but also called into question the administration’s inability to treat students as men and women. The denial of autonomy at the college was directly linked to students’ claim for manhood and womanhood rights. Specifically students wanted to define and perform gender behaviors associated with their conception of manhood and womanhood. Thus when Fisk students declared
“Give us to the open air, and not the sands of the arena; we are not reptiles but Men” in striking literature, they challenged administrators to adopt a new model of respectable race leadership. 64
Students wanted a model of race leadership that would allow them more control over their bodies and behaviors. This new model of respectable race leadership espoused by students was
63 Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents, 242.
64 The Papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1980-1981.)
42 influenced by the New Negro movement. This more self-determined model of respectable race leadership shifted the politics of race leadership at the college. The New Negro model of race leadership stood in opposition to the model of acceptable student moral conduct espoused by the school’s administrators. Instead, the New Negro model of race leadership advocated by striking students aimed to redefine gender behaviors associated with what students could or could not do.
The strike itself, Summers concludes, reflected “a fundamentally different gender identity formation” among students “in which the self-controlled, and externally controlled, body was no longer paramount,” resulting in a “modern definition of masculinity [and by default femininity] revolved less around character, production, and respectability and more around bodily virtuoso and sexual virility.”65 Thus, the strike was an outward manifestation of students’ desire to recast themselves through a new politics of respect that allowed them to negotiate their gender behaviors and identities. Through the negotiation of seemingly archaic, compulsive and obsessive policies, Fisk students questioned, challenged and attempted to reshape the relationship between administrative policies and their socialization for race leadership.
Specifically, through acts of self-determination and the adoption of New-Negro ideology, they transformed conceptions of manhood and womanhood associated with race leadership at the college.
By the 1920’s some Fisk students no longer wanted to be positioned as the middleman or middle woman whose primary responsibility was to keep working class Blacks subordinated in
Southern society. On the contrary, students protested because they recognized the need to participate more fully in American society, starting first within the environs of their college community. The Black college rebellions across the country, as Raymond Wolters’ concludes in
The New Negro On Campus, represented “ a rejection of the condescending belief that whites unerringly knew the best methods of Negro education and an insistence that Black youth must be
65 Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents, 244. 43 trained according to principles endorsed by the Black community.”66 By the end of the 1920’s, students –influenced by the New Negro movement— sought greater control of Black higher education. In addition, they had a more affirming view of themselves as race leaders and their ability to uplift the race. This group of Black elites, or the “College Bred Negro,” as W.E.B. Du
Bois writes, “had long thought of themselves as a Black vanguard leading the struggle for racial emancipation,” and was “long convinced [that] the higher education of Black leaders was essential for progress of the race.”67 Thus, through partnership with alumni, students demanded that the design of higher education at their school and other Black colleges prepare them to more fully participate in all facets of American society. In addition, they want an education that was more relevant to the Black experience. The desire for autonomy and a greater say in the affairs at Fisk, specifically, and Black higher education in general, was perhaps the most important goal in preparing college students for a model of leadership that sought to uplift and not subordinate the Black race.
Under President McKenzie’s administration, Black students wanted to shift the paternal model of respectable race leadership to a model of race leadership influenced by the New Negro
Movement. Their model of respectable race leadership emphasized autonomy, pride, self- control, and an inherent belief in the ability of students at Fisk to govern and run their own organizations. In addition, this New Negro model of race leadership emphasized student participation in the shared governance of the school. As such, students used the discourse of
Fisk administrators to advance themselves and subsequently their race.
This New Negro model of respectable race leadership toward which Fisk students made claim --with its emphasis on autonomy and greater self-control-- required a reorganization of the school’s academic organization and governance of student life. Students hoped that the strike
66 Raymond Wolters, The New Negro on Campus, 18.
67 Ibid. 44 would influence administrators to rethink the relationship between higher education and the socialization of students for respectable leadership. They hoped that the strike would recast Fisk students as independent men and women capable of self-governance. Interpreting the relationship between the student strike and the socialization of students for race leadership requires a critical evaluation of the governance of student academic and social affairs at the college through the lens of gender.
The Fisk student strike was more progressive for male than female Fiskites. Specifically,
New Negro ideology increased opportunities for self-determination more so among male than female students. As a result, after the strike and through the 1930’s, the continued policing of
Fisk women via their bodies, behaviors and sexualities curtailed how autonomous women could be at Fisk. The New woman at Fisk was a limited womanhood for the Black women student that was jointly impacted by paternalism and sexism. As such, the student strike should be seen first as a turning point in the organization and governance of academic and student affairs at Fisk throughout the 1920’s. Second, the student strike should be seen as an alternative model of respectability that created a more autonomous model of manhood for male students that was coupled with a policed and protected model of respectable womanhood for Fisk women.
Paternalism and the Socialization of Respectable Race Leaders
The New Negro model of race leadership, drawing upon student’s self-determination stood in opposition to the legacy paternalism among the college’s administrators who governed the school after 1915. The paternalistic model of race leadership at Fisk was based on rules and regulations that originated in the paternalistic control exerted over students by Fisk’s former missionary presidents. The American Missionary Association and the presidents they elected to govern Fisk were concerned with instilling moral middle class behaviors in their students in order to transform Black youth into a social class, or the “Talented Tenth,” who would be set 45 apart from the Black masses. The missionaries, as Franklin describes them “represented the native New England stock and were imbued with the Puritan tradition” and “as a consequence they maintained a strict surveillance over the conduct of their Negro students in order to stamp out any tendencies toward frivolous or immoral conduct.” 68
As a result, the missionaries developed an excessive code of moral conduct outlining what their students could and could not do in order to promote piety among the Black student body. In general, for many Black colleges governed by missionary boards,
Moral behavior meant that the students were not to dance, smoke, or play cards.
In some schools a concession was made to the desire on the part of the student to
dance by permitting them to “march” on social occasions. But a strict
surveillance was maintained in order to prevent any steps that would be
surreptitious dancing. In such an environment for piety it was natural that chapel
services on Sunday were especially important that the students should spend the
day as quietly as possible, even refraining from light or frivolous conversation.69
For the missionaries, the training of Black youth for respectable leadership was dependent upon policing their behaviors. The mission boards closely related their commitment to providing
Black youth with tools for social uplift –or rather racial uplift—with their ability to keep Black men, and especially Black women, chaste and pure.
To be sure, early on, the Black community in general and Black parents of Fisk students in particular were in general agreement with the founding mission of Fisk’s executive leadership—namely the moral and liberal education of students for the work of race-uplift.
Many Black parents and leaders supported the noted historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois in his belief in the success of the missionary pursuit to uplift the race through liberal education as
68 E. Franklin Frazier, The Black Bourgeois, 65.
69 Ibid., 66. 46 articulated in his influential text titled The Souls of Black Folk.70 The missionaries, Du Bois approvingly notes, “trained in Greek and Latin and mathematics, two thousand men; and these men trained full fifty thousand others in morals and manners, and they in turn taught thrift and the alphabet to nine millions of men.”71
Class Relations at Fisk
Yet even while supporting the administrative control of Fisk by white missionaries, the
Black community in Nashville and Fisk alumni across the country felt as if Fisk was their school and as such they should play a role in its direction. For elite Blacks in Nashville, the feeling that
Fisk University was their school was due in no small part to two primary factors. First, Fisk and the other Black colleges and professional schools in Nashville --Roger Williams University,
Meharry Medical College, Walden University and American Baptist Seminary, as well as
Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State School-- produced graduates who generally stayed in
Nashville to pursue their professional careers and thus comprised the backbone of the local Black professional. As in the case of Fisk administrators, Black alumni saw Fisk as an important contributor to Black social progress both on a local and national level. Secondly, through the late nineteenth and early century, because Fisk suffered financial emergencies that threatened its continued existence, the Fisk Jubilee Singers --through their concert tours-- raised enough funds to assure the college’s successful development. Because of the efforts of the Jubilee Singers, both the Black alumni of Fisk and Black community in Nashville felt as if they were important investors in the historic and future development of Fisk. As historian Joe Richardson asserted in his history of Fisk, “the contribution made by the Jubilee Singers is incalculable”72 in that
70 W.E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk, (New York: Penguin Books, 1989).
71 Ibid., 189. 72 Joe M. Richardson, A History of Fisk, 39. 47 through their concert tours, they were able to “complete the new campus, support their fellow students, and keep the school operating.”73 Thus, while the American Missionary Association governed Fisk, from its early history, Black philanthropy played a vital role in Fisk’s development and it is because of these contributions that Black alumni felt as if they had a voice in the affairs of Fisk.
However, not all Blacks in the Nashville community felt as if Fisk was their institution.
There was an assumption among working class Blacks in Nashville that Fisk was an institution that supported the Black elite because of the strong ties that the Black middle class had in the affairs of Fisk. It was “because the elite Negros mostly claimed Fisk University as ‘their college,’ that at times Fisk University seemed to be alienated from the local Negro community,” which made “many common Blacks believe that Fisk only catered to elite Negros and mulattos.”74 Some of Nashville local Blacks at the turn of the century would argue that, early on,
Fisk University had a more formal connection to middle class Blacks --because of the number of
Fisk and Meharry professionals who remained working in Nashville after their baccalaureate graduation.
The Social Purposes of Higher Education for Blacks
However, despite their successful governance of Fisk University during its earlier years, at some point, the missionary egalitarian zeal gave into the white Southern critique that education could not and should not be used as a vehicle of social progress for an inferior race.
The missionary movement to provide higher education for Blacks shifted from a movement to uplift through education to subordination through education. As a result, “Blacks were to be
73 Bobby L. Lovett, The African-American History of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1930, (Arkansas: The University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 160.
74 Ibid., 159. 48 given a special vocational curriculum to prepare them for their special responsibilities. The schools initially conceived by the missionaries [including Fisk] as institutions that would promote cultural mobility, were to serve instead as the formal channels for socializing youth in the etiquette of American race relations.”75 And as a result “Blacks were to be taught to think of themselves as inferior menials while whites would be instilled with the conviction that they were members of a master class.”76 The previous missionary zeal shifted from a form of uplift that was egalitarian to a form of uplift --with its particular emphasis on moral and respectable behaviors--that was racist. It is for this very reason that the rise of student self-determination among Black students, resulted in organized student rebellion at Fisk and other Black college campuses throughout the nation during the 1920’s.
Shift in the Spirit of Leadership at Fisk
The rise of student self-determination at Fisk was influenced by both a change in the spirit of leadership and the rise of self-determination among students, which was influenced by self-determination in local and national Black communities. The change in the spirit of leadership of Fisk administrators provided the catalyst for the Fisk student protest of 1924-1925 while the rise of self-determination among Blacks students and Black alumni throughout the
1920’s provided the inspiration and rational for the student movement at Fisk.
This change in the spirit of Fisk leadership between 1867 and 1924 was directly tied to the philanthropic support of Fisk from white benefactors and had significant impacts on the development of Black higher education throughout the 1920’s. Throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century, missionary organizations began to wane in their support of private mission
75 Raymond Wolters, The New Negro on Campus, 15.
76 Ibid., 16. 49 sponsored schools. As a result, “the survival of Black higher education could not be met effectively by missionary philanthropists or Black organizations, and the Black colleges were forced to seek help from industrial philanthropists.”77 As such Black colleges founded by private missions, including Fisk, fearful of losing their institutions sought financial assistance through the General Education Board—the philanthropic agency of leading industrialists including John
D. Rockefeller. This coupled with “a confluence of changing political and social developments in Black America [namely Black northern migration and the self-determined leadership of Black militants like Marcus Garvey] heightened the industrial philanthropists’ interest in the scope and purpose of Black higher education.”78 Thus the financial crisis experienced by mission boards in funding Black colleges intersected with a growing interest among white industrialists to socialize
Black higher education to produce complacent and less radical leaders for the race.
In identifying reputable institutions to develop through industrial philanthropy, Fisk
University was chosen by leading industrialists including the Rockefeller foundation. “Not surprisingly, the industrial philanthropists selected Fisk University as the college to be developed into a model institution of Black higher education. Fisk was at a financial crossroads that precipitated the transformation of the power structure in Black private higher education from missionary to industrial philanthropy.”79
In addition, Fisk was chosen by industrialists as a model institution because of specific and important factors. First, by 1915, the financial crisis at Fisk created the necessity for a new president who would be able to negotiate interactions with industrial philanthropists. “President
George A. Gates, who headed Fisk from 1909 to 1913, faced a drying up of the old missionary sources of revenue and, in turn, made a strong plea for Southern white friendship and financial
77 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks, 251.
78 Ibid, 260.
79 Ibid., 263. 50 support.”80 Fisk showed a willingness to work with industrial leaders in re-defining higher education at Fisk by inviting Booker T. Washington to serve on Fisk’s Board of Trustees in 1909 and by sporadically introducing industrial arts courses throughout the Fisk curriculum between
1900-1915. Finally, Fisk was selected as perhaps a viable and model private Black college because “outside of Howard University, Fisk had 20 percent of the Black college students enumerated in Thomas Jesse Jones 1917 survey of Black higher education.”81 By 1915, Fisk
University nevertheless became an important institution through which the shift from mission to industrial philanthropy in private Black higher education was modeled.
This shift in philanthropic support at Fisk and other Black liberal arts colleges had a direct impact on the philosophy of higher education for Black men and women at Fisk.
Previously the end goal of Black higher education founded by the missionaries of the 1860’s were aimed at providing Black youth with skills for social mobility. However, as the major source of external funding at mission-founded schools like Fisk shifted from mission to industrial philanthropy, private mission-founded related Black colleges had to reconsider how they could maintain their commitment to liberal education by also showing a willingness to work with industrialists who wanted to see the model of industrial education embraced at private Black colleges in any capacity. For Fisk, this meant that between 1900 and 1915, Fisk administrators attempted to incorporate industrial and agricultural courses into the Fisk curriculum. First in
1903, President Merrill “made a strenuous effort to secure money for the college from the Slater fund,” and used “the need for teachers, a demand which Fisk was well equipped to supply” as a part of selling pitch to Slater fund industrialists. And “when he thought it prudent, he added that
80 Ibid., 263.
81 Ibid., 264. 51 industrial schools were not equipped to so such work.”82 Second, in 1906 in “an apparent concession to industrial education, several new electives were added for college students,” with the goal of familiarizing “students who wished to be industrial and business leaders with the necessary principles.” Although Fisk continued its allegiance to the liberal arts, Fisk administrators were acutely aware of how sprinkling industrial arts courses into the Fisk curriculum could appease industrial philanthropists while bringing much-needed dollars to the institution.83 This move toward the inclusion of industrial courses was, however, short lived as the Black elite and alumni of Fisk protested vehemently. Among the many voices of dissent, Du
Bois critiqued the inclusion of industrial arts courses into the Fisk curriculum.84
Another shift in the spirit of the leadership of the administration of Fisk dealt with a shift in a presidential leadership at Fisk from one motivated by egalitarian ideals to a presidential leadership that, in lieu of securing funds from industrial philanthropists, attempted to transform
Fisk into an accommodating institution that sided with white industrialists in subordinating
Blacks in Southern society. The previous generations of missionary presidents at Fisk ended with the presidency of Erastus Milo Cravath (1875-1900), who believed that Black youth could be socialized to coexist racially with whites in American society. Thus their socialization of students for race leadership held egalitarian ends. However, it was during the presidencies of
James G. Merrill, George A. Gate and eventually Fayette A. McKenzie, where the socialization of Black students for race leadership was based on preparing Black students to occupy subordinated social positions in Southern society. White industrialists looking to achieve this goal selected President McKenzie and Fisk University as the portal through which they attempted to reshape private Black higher education in the South. Industrial “philanthropists no
82 Joes M. Richardson, A History of Fisk, 61.
83 Ibid., 63.
84 Herbert Aptheker (ed.), The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1973). 52 doubt hoped that their economic and firm political hold on Fisk would squelch the school’s equalitarian tradition and open the way for the development of a more conservative Black leadership class.”85
This shift in both the spirit of leadership and social purposes of higher education for Fisk students, under McKenzie’s regime was characterized by a repression of student culture, by a climate of intimidation by the McKenzie administration of students, faculty and staff who did not support his model of governance and by a desire to keep both Black students and Black
Southerners in their proper place by developing allegiances with figures in white society who attempted to influences the affairs at Fisk. As Anderson concludes, “McKenzie favored autocratic rule over his students and faculty, sought personal association mainly with the teachers and administrators of the white schools in Nashville, and cultivated goodwill of the city’s white business community.”86 Thus, McKenzie’s leadership at Fisk was geared towards appeasing the external white community and not Fisk students, alumni or Nashville’s local Black community.
President McKenzie inherited a college that was entrenched in financial problems the result of which became the catalyst behind McKenzie’s affiliation with industrial philanthropists.
Because of the dire financial strain on his presidency, McKenzie had to strategically request support from white benefactors while also holding true to the founding ideals administered from
Fisk’s previous presidents towards the higher education of Black youth. McKenzie was not successful in navigating this fine line. On the one hand while he was able to get financial support from white benefactors both nationally through the General Education Board and locally in Nashville, he did so at the loss of support from Fisk students, the Black elite in Nashville and
Fisk alumni. These groups clearly thought that McKenzie bought into the racist views of white
85 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks, 267.
86 Ibid, 265.
53 industrialists and Southerners who believed that Blacks should and must occupy a subordinated social position in American society. As such, “the philanthropists’ financial assistance of Fisk
University was accompanied by a new coalition of Negro accommodationists, Southern whites, and northern industrialists who took control of the university’s administration from the of alliance of Black educators and northern whites missionaries.”87
McKenzie’s failure to navigate this fine line between Fisk’s white benefactors and the community of Black students, alumni and citizens in Nashville was only one result of the change in spirit among the administrative leadership of Fisk. With shifts in the Presidency at Fisk and undercurrents of paternalism between the 1860’s and 1920’s, the day-to-day operations at Fisk also changed. The turn of the century through the end of President McKenzie’s presidency set the tone for the development of policies and procedures against which Black students, both individually and collectively dissented. McKenzie’s presidency thus represented a turning point in both the perception among students of the philosophy of higher education for Black students at the college.
Academic and Student Administration
The model of race leadership developed for the higher education of Fisk men and women under the McKenzie administration was based on a system of authoritarian rule in which there were numerous rules and regulations implemented to control students. Fisk students under
McKenzie’s administration had neither autonomy nor independence. Under President
McKenzie’s administration, the governance of student academic and administrative affairs was based on the common held assumption that the rigid enforcement of Fisk’s academic standards and the strict policing of student social conduct was the most appropriate way to govern Fisk students. This controlled governance of Fisk students, as historian James Anderson concluded,
87 Ibid, 266. 54
“Attempted to repress student initiative, undermine their equalitarian spirit, and control their thinking on race relations so as to produce a class of Black intellectuals that would uncomplainingly accept the Southern racial hierarchy.”88 Thus, while it was the goal of Fisk to prepare Black men and women to be race leaders and to occupy what Du Bois has termed the
Black talented tenth, Fisk administrators wanted their students to be intermediaries who would encourage the Black populace to accept Jim Crow. In order to do this, the Fisk administration adopted and enforced numerous rules and regulations to shape both the academic and social experiences of Fisk students and the type of men and women that they would become.
In shaping the academic and social experiences of Fisk students, President McKenzie managed the governance of Fisk students through the development of numerous committees to ensure that Fisk students were socialized to uplift the Black race without challenging the racial politics of the Jim Crow South. President McKenzie’s governance committees were composed of faculty, personnel and other Fisk University officials. Regardless of the committees that were organized, President McKenzie relied on these committees to ensure that Fisk students were socialized into respectable race leaders who adhered to Southern paternalism.
During the nine years of McKenzie’s regime, in addition to University matters administered by the Board of Trustees, governance at Fisk was organized into three separate committees. First, overall matters related to the administration of Fisk on a university-wide level was governed by the Executive Committee. The membership of Fisk’s Executive Committee was confined to former presidents of Fisk. During President McKenzie’s administration, the
Executive Committee included former president Erastus Milo Cravath who was Fisk’s first president from 1875 to 1900 and former President James G. Merrill who was Fisk’s second president from 1901-1908. Members of Fisk’s Board of Trustees also served as additional
88 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks, 268. 55 members of the Executive Committee.89 The appointment of former and current presidents on
Fisk’s Executive Committee ensured continuity in the governance of Fisk’s overall administration.
Secondly, fiscal matters at Fisk were governed by Fisk’s Investment Committee which was staffed by a former president of Fisk, the treasures of the Board of Trustees and reputable business, industrial and philanthropic leaders from across the country. Selected fiscal leaders from the business, industrial and philanthropic sectors were appointed by President McKenzie in order to generate external funding to strengthen Fisk’s endowment and to cut its deficit. In addition, reputable leaders were invited to sit on Fisk’s Investment Committee in order to show that Fisk University was concerned with educating Black students to meet the social and economic needs of the South. In particular, Booker T. Washington’s service on Fisk’s
Investment Committee benefited Fisk immeasurably.90 Fist, Fisk’s affiliation with Booker T.
Washington suggested that Fisk University was sympathetic to the desire among white
Southerners to have a labor force serviced by Black men and women. Secondly, Fisk’s affiliation with Booker T. Washington suggested to white industrialists that Fisk was capable of becoming an accommodating University that was willing to embrace industrial education as one of the goals of its curriculum.
Finally, related specifically to the governance of student academic and social affairs, the
Prudential Committee under President McKenzie’s administration was charged with enforcing
Fisk’s academic expectations and social standards.91 The rules and regulations governing the
89 For detailed information concerning the goals of Fisk’s Executive Committee and its membership, refer to the Fisk University Catalogs, (Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1915-1926) for the years 1915-1926.
90 Ibid.
91 For detailed information concerning the goals of Fisk’s Prudential Committee and its membership, refer to the Fisk University Catalogs, (Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1915-1926) for the years 1915-1926. . 56 academic and social affairs at Fisk were based on the assertion that the uplift of the Black race required the education of race leaders who were set apart from the Black masses. This meant that Fisk students had to be capable of high academic achievement and disciplined enough to portray exceptional moral behaviors. As such, during President McKenzie’s regime, the
Prudential Committee was charged with both defining and enforcing McKenzie’s model of respectable race leadership—a model based on paternalism and a strong belief in student’s inability to appropriately govern themselves in relation to the expectations, rules and regulations governing student academic and social affairs at Fisk.
Nowhere is this more evident than within the academic governance of Fisk students. In socializing Fisk students to be competent in their chosen area of academic study, Fisk academic advisors and deans required Fisk students to attend compulsory study hall hours, maintain exceptionally high grades and to prioritize academic seriousness over desires to participate in social organizations. If students did not adhere to Fisk’s stringent academic guidelines they were temporally dismissed or expelled. For example, attendance at required daily Study Hall at the
Fisk Library was a non-negotiable academic expectation that attempted to promote academic discipline among Fisk students. On November 14, 1923, Mr. C. R. Norsworthy was expelled from the University for his lack of attendance in Study Hall. Mr. Norsworthy was expelled because he had “acquired an excessive number of absences, even permissible ones, in being absent from the Study Hall at the Library.”92 Prior to the Prudential Committee’s voting on Mr.
Norsworthy’s case, who outlined in a long letter several reasons why he felt a student with numerous absences but no case of delinquency from his professors, should be allowed to skip
Study Hall. Mr. Norsworthy argues that studying in Study Hall was impracticable because of
“inadequate equipment, various changes in weather, and loss of time in traveling to and from
92Dean D.L. Graham to C.R. Norsworthy, 23 October 1923, Box 1, Folder 16, Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN. 57
Study Hall.” All of these issues with Study Hall, suggest that Mr. Norsworthy and other Fisk students wanted more leeway in controlling the parameters of where, when and how they chose to study. Mr. Norsworthy summed this sentiment best when he wrote in his letter to dean D. L.
Graham
Finally, I think that a real student should have gumption enough, be competent
enough, and please-excuse the slang expression- have ‘get up’ enough about him
to keep him well informed that the money that his parents are sacrificing should
be used for what it is intended and not squandered or wasted.93
Outside of Study Hall requirements, students who failed most of their classes in any given term were immediately dismissed for failing to adhere to the Fisk academic standards. For the most part, the Prudential Committee and Fisk deans were not flexible and did not allow failing students to remain at Fisk. On November 14, 1923, Mr. Jesse E. Allen was notified that he was “dropped from the university on account of poor scholarship,” because his teachers had reported him “falling in Latin 4, French 101 and Algebra.”94 While it is unclear in the archive as to whether Mr. Allen was a freshmen or upper-class student, it is clear in the archive that Mr.
Allen had other extenuating circumstances which influenced his academic performance including
“taking too much work,” that he was “forced to work in the afternoons for room and board” because he did not have “sufficient funds to room and board on the campus.”95 In addition, even after “pleading for another chance” he was still forced to leave the college. Based on Mr.
Allen’s failed work --which was based only on the first six weeks of the fall 1923 term-- Dean J.
93Ibid.
94 Dean D.L. Graham to Jesse E. Allen, 14 November 1923, Box 1, Folder 2, Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
95Jesse E. Allen to Dean D.L. Graham, 16 November, 1923, Box 1, Folder 2, Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
58
L. Graham suggested that Mr. Allen should “choose a profession which does not include or require a long academic preparation for [he] felt that [Mr. Allen] would be less happy in that sort of work and probably have difficulty in getting his studies.” The best that Dean J.L. Graham could do for Mr. Allen was to remind him that “his poor scholarship at midterm season did not include a dishonorable discharge,” and that Fisk was happy and “ready to transfer [his] credit to any school.”96 Clearly, Fisk maintained important academic standards for students and did not show flexibility to those students who failed to meet Fisk’s high expectations for academic excellence.
In addition to producing academically talented graduates from its college, Fisk University stressed academic excellence as the prerequisite to socializing students for race leadership to serve in Black communities throughout the country. Toward this goal, Fisk administrators recruited Fisk students from most states. Between 1915-1930, during and after President
McKenzie’s administration, most of the Black students enrolled at Fisk originated from the
Southern central states of Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky and Alabama; the Southern Atlantic
States of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina; the Midwestern states of Missouri,
Indiana, Ohio and Illinois; and the North Atlantic State of New York. Specifically, during academic year of 1929-1930, student enrollment included the following: 157 students from
Tennessee; 59 students from Texas; 40 students from Kentucky; 23 students from Alabama; and
18 students from Georgia. Collectively these states represented more than half --305 students in total-- of Fisk’s 525 students enrolled during the 1929-1930 academic year.97 As a result, Fisk was a geographically diverse institution. In addition, while, it was committed to the economic and social uplift of Blacks in the South, the geographic diversity of Fisk’s student population
96 Dean D.L. Graham to Jesse E. Allen, 20 November 1923, Box 1, Folder 2, Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
97“Distribution of Fisk Students,” June 1936, Box 34, Folder 12, Thomas E. Jones Collection 1-71, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
59 uniquely positioned Fisk to economically and socially uplift Black people wherever Black communities existed throughout the nation in proximity to Fisk alumni.
The geographic diversity of Fisk’s student population was made possible because most of the students at Fisk could afford to pay Fisk’s tuition. Limited funding for student scholarships and financial aid suggests that since its founding, funding derived from student tuition represented a significant source of Fisk’s operating budget. However, since its incorporation,
Fisk always tried to help students from the poor or working class to lessen their expense thus making collegiate education possible through the allocation of student work aid to students needing financial assistance. Through work aid “work to the amount of 20 hours per month
[was] offered to students, for which a credit of $3.00 [was] made, thus reducing the cash monthly payments from $16.00 to $13.00.” While this form of work aid was helpful to students in need, it still left a substantial amount of the estimated student fees, board and other expenses –which totaled from $150.00 or more in 1915 to $270.00 or more in 1925—unpaid.98 Even so, the work aid offered to students in need was “to give encouragement and help to such persons,” and was one of “the most efficient and economical ways of helping to lift up the race.” Fisk administrators believed that the “the best success of Fisk in its most useful forms of Christian educational work dependent largely upon its ability to command money, so as to render financial help to earnest, struggling, worthy young men and women in securing their education.” 99
Regardless of how they paid for their tuition and fees at Fisk, all students were required to adhere to strict academic standards while they pursued a course of study that they could use in the work of race-uplift. Under McKenzie’s administration, the model of higher education for race leadership for Black students emphasized the historic emphasis on training Fisk student for
98 For detailed information concerning the tuition, fees and student aid at Fisk refer to the Fisk University Catalogs, (Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1915-1926) for the years 1915-1926.
99 Fisk University Catalog 1915-1916, (Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1915-1916), 28.
60 social service occupations. However, unlike other Presidents, under McKenzie’s administration, the greater emphasis on industrial arts as a course of study within collegiate studies at Fisk resulted in the increasing enrollment of some students in the quantitative and analytical sciences.
Within a five-year time span, between 1922 and 1927, the most popular selection of majors among Fisk students included sociology with a total of 86 student majors; chemistry with a total of 30 student majors; English with a total of 29 student majors; History with a total of 26 student majors; and Education with a total of 24 student majors.100 This breath of major of selection among Fisk students resulted from President McKenzie’s interaction with industrial philanthropists who encouraged the development or more applied and quantitative courses at
Fisk, the employment of more faculty in the social sciences and a greater emphasis from Fisk administrators on the need of Fisk students to connect their education at Fisk to the needs of
Black communities outside of Fisk. Related to the latter, Fisk students were required to volunteer and work in academic laboratories related to research on education, race relations, and life in the rural South.101
As such, throughout President McKenzie’s administration, the College curriculum was restructured so that students could choose among four distinct areas of major concentrations.
Beyond completing requirements for the general curriculum, students could choose a specialty major in any one of the following courses of study—classical studies including Latin and Greek; the scientific course including studies in the physical sciences and the biological sciences; the
100“Number of Graduates from Major Courses 1922-1927,” 1927, Box 2, Folder 29, Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
101 For detailed information concerning the development of Fisk’s curriculum, refer to the Fisk University Catalogs, (Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1915-1926) for the years 1915-1926.
61 education course including significant coursework in psychology and education; and the Home
Economics course which was a department limited to the enrollment of Fisk women.102
The Prudential Committee and The Student Code of Conduct
Fisk had a very stringent set of rules about what students could and could not do socially.
Most of these rules were governed by the Prudential Committee. The major goals of the
Prudential Committee were to enforce rules and regulations to keep Black students in line with the paternalist rules of the McKenzie administration. In addition to the governance of academic affairs, the Prudential Committee was charged with governing all administrative matters related to the governance of the social dimensions of student life.103
The Prudential Committee –which included the dean of Academic Affairs, representatives from the faculty, the dean of men and the dean of women-- defined and enforced gender specific behaviors for male and female students to ensure that Fisk students behaved respectably in all social matters. The Prudential Committee accomplished this task by establishing a Student Code of Conduct, developing policies to govern student housing, directing the participation of students in extra and co-curricular activities and finally by setting gender specific guidelines related to dress attire and interactions between Fisk male and female students, to name a few. Fisk students were judged and evaluated by standards established by the
Prudential Committee. Any student accused, after a fair hearing, of violating any of the
102 For a thorough overview of the historic development of college studies at Fisk University under President McKenzie’s administration, refer to the Fisk University Catalogs for the years 1915-1926.
103 To explore more fully the range of student academic and social affairs which fell under the governance of the Prudential Committee, refer to the folders titled “Prudential Committee: Student Correspondence,” Box 13-14, Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN. The correspondence between members of the Prudential Committee and students accused of infractions cover a range of student academic and social issues including suspensions related to academic failure and student misconduct as a result of drinking, partying and socializing with members of the opposite sex to name a few. Collectively, the issues governed by the Prudential Committee define the scope and work of the Prudential Committee. Also, between 1915-1926, the membership of the Prudential Committee is chronicled in the Fisk University Catalogs for the years 1915-1926. 62 standards established by the Prudential Committee was accused of exhibiting behaviors unbecoming of a Fisk man or a Fisk woman. In addition, while Fisk men and women were trained to be respectable leaders of the race, the rules and regulations governing their socialization as race leaders differed by gender. Thus, their socialization as race leaders was influenced by distinct gender boundaries which gave men more autonomy then Black women in social affairs.
Concerning the socialization of Black women students prior to the student strike, Black women, their bodies, and their behaviors were stringently policed because of the special expectations placed upon them by the Fisk administration. These expectations included training for the work of the family and occupations that rendered service to the Black community. The special expectations that Black college administrators held behind the higher education of Black women rested on the belief that Black women at Black colleges were supposed to set a good example for the women of the race by their demeanor, speech, personal habits, dress, comportment and sexual behavior. By setting a positive example they would dispel racial and gendered stereotypes about Black women as immoral and lustful. The Prudential Committee used rules and regulations to rigidly enforce the special expectations placed upon Black women.
Among the rules enforced, there were strict guidelines about the housing of Fisk male and female students. Fisk administrators utilized university housing as an important tool in socializing Fisk students for respectable leadership. University housing did more than house
Fisk students. Because all students who originated outside of Nashville were required to maintain residence at Fisk, the Boarding Department bore the responsibility of providing a home away from home for students –especially women—at Fisk and placed a strong emphasis on morality and character building among student boarders. “The Boarding Department is a
Christian home,” where “Christian discipline is parental in character and aims to develop
Christian manhood and womanhood.” As a result, the rules of Fisk’s Boarding Department 63
“were in general those of a well-regulated household.”104 As such, the dorms at Fisk, personified familiar spaces where students were socialized to be contributing members of society. Thus the
Christian model of respectable race leadership --with an emphasis on morality, character development, discipline and the call for service beyond oneself-- provided important guidelines that guided dormitory living in Fisk University housing. Clearly, the philosophy of housing and the Boarding Department at Fisk was based on a model of race leadership that was connected to
Christian principles.
During President McKenzie’s regime, men and women were required to live on campus and to seek the permission of housing staff related to their housing choices. The Fisk Boarding
Department was adamant that “no student may live in a college dormitory without the permission of the Matron in charge, and no student shall room in a private house without permission from the dean.”105 Acting in “loco parentis,” Fisk took seriously the responsibility of controlling and socializing student lives both inside and outside of the classroom.
Between 1915 and 1925, Black women students were housed in Jubilee Hall. Jubilee
Hall was the centerpiece of the Fisk campus. Financed from dollars raised by the Fisk Jubilee
Singers, its physical image represented the goal that Fisk administrators held of the higher education of Black women students—respectability and strength. In the 1920’s, “Jubilee Hall, was one of the largest, best equipped, and most beautifully located buildings in the South that was a home to Black women students. It was surrounded by eight acres of land, well planted with trees and shrubbery, furnishing amble grounds for healthy exercises.”106 Jubilee Hall, by its
104 Fisk University Catalog 1915-1916, 16.
105“Code of Conduct,” 1924-1925, Box 1, Folder 2, Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
106 Fisk University Catalog 1915-1916, 16.
64 design and presence, encouraged Fisk women to be dignified and cultured. It was and remains a byproduct of Fisk’s model of paternalistic respectability.
Furthermore, Fisk University, as all Black colleges, expressed great concern related to the housing of women students as chronicled yearly college catalogs. Because “Fisk University recognized the absolute necessity of the right education for young women,” and ardently believed that “the highest interest of every community depends largely upon the intelligence, frugality, virtue and noble aspirations of its women,” a dean of women and a nurse were employed to assist in the governance of the Boarding Department for Fisk women. “The dean of women [had] the general oversight and direction of [dorm] life, and [gave] special instruction and counsel regarding womanly conduct and character,” whereas an “experienced nurse [was] employed to look after the health of the women and to give them individual advice.”107
Related to the housing of Fisk men, Livingston Hall and Bennett Hall were used for accommodations. Whereas the accommodations for women in Jubilee Hall were tightly enforced and policed by a live-in dean of women and nurse, Livingston Hall and Bennett Hall were designed to accommodate the desire for autonomy and independence among male students.
Specifically, as described in the University Catalogs of the 1920’s, “Livingston Hall and Bennett
Hall contained rooms for one hundred and fifty men. The rooms were large, adequately furnished, and heated by steam. In addition to dormitory rooms, Livingston Hall contains a chapel, study room, domestic science laboratory, class room, the administration offices and a
Y.M.C.A. recreation room. Bennett Hall also contains class rooms and the Y.MC.A. prayer room.” The male dormitory sphere, unlike the female dormitory sphere, recognized the desire of male students to have more control and autonomy over their living spaces.108
107 Ibid.
108 Fisk University Catalog, 1915-1916, pg. 15.
65
In addition to governing student life in Fisk dorms, the Boarding Department also administered guidelines for dining established by the Prudential Committee. Governance of students in the halls was a direct extension of governance in the dorms. Like dorm life, dining at
Fisk in the 1920’s was segregated by space. Whether dining hall facilities were located in separate buildings or separated spaces within one building, female and male students dined separately based on their sex.109 In addition, within their segregated dining facilities, student had to further adhere to additional guidelines that kept male and female students from fraternizing during meal times. In particular, in dining halls that were segregated spaces by sex, Fisk women were not allowed to leave the dining halls until all male students returned to their rooms. When they did leave the dining halls, they were required to exit through a separate door. Infractions of the dining codes of conduct, as in the case of Mr. Walter P. Adkins, a student at Fisk during the
Fall 1923 semester, were reported to the Fisk dean, Mr. J. L. Graham. Mr. Adkins was reported to the Fisk dean because he was asked three times not to enter the female side of the dining hall to socialize with Fisk women during meal times. Although dormitory staff “made certain remarks to [him] concerning the entrance of boys and girls to the cafeteria,” Mr. Adkins, made the claim the he “didn’t know about the arrangement.” Thus while the dining code of conduct was written on paper, appropriate gender behaviors and expectations for dining were taught to students case by case, infraction by infraction.
Outside of class work and dorm life, Fisk students were allowed to participate in a limited number of student organizations. Under McKenzie’s administration, the participation of students in organized clubs and activities was based on the assumption that the socialization of Fisk students must be based on a diligent program of study resulting in academic excellence. As such, from its founding and through the 1920’s, Fisk University did not have a vibrant social life
“Code of Conduct,” 1924-1925, Box 1, Folder 2, Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
66 for students. In the years prior to the Fisk Student Strike of 1924-1925, students were allowed to participate only in student literary societies and alumni clubs. Students were not allowed to participate in dances or socials except at approved restricted times. Also, although Fisk
University had no athletic teams, there was continued interest among students in developing a governing committee that would help to develop and govern intercollegiate activities at Fisk throughout the early 1920’s.110
Also, the regularly proposed Greek system at Fisk was continually rejected by the
Prudential Committee. Students “were not allowed to join or to belong to any fraternity or sorority or other secret college organization,” because Fisk administrators believed that a ban on secret organizations was a “necessary party of school democracy."111 Yet even with this standing policy on the organization of fraternities and sororities at Fisk, alumni continuously put forth the development of a fraternal system at Fisk. As early as 1919, Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity sought permission for a local chapter to be organized on the Fisk campus. R.W. Brooks a corresponding secretary of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity argued against the threat to school democracy by arguing that the aim of the Alpha Phil Alpha Fraternity is to “always to lift as they climb, and thus make the environment, wherever they are found, better because of their having lived in it.”112 Yet, even with the social benefits offered by a fraternal system and other organized activities, the limited availability of student organizations at Fisk ensured that Fisk administrators could carve out comparable social experiences for all students that were easily governed by Fisk administrators and their approach to student request for social independence and self-governance.
110 Fisk University Catalog 1924-1925, 24.
111 Fisk University Catalog 1924-1925, (Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1924-1925), 24.
112 R.W. Brooks of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity to President McKenzie, 24 February 1919, President Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
67
Beyond providing social outlets for students, the administration of student affairs at Fisk was also heavily influenced by the Christian model of respectable race leadership, which was based on the character development of Fisk students. The development of character among Fisk students was closely related to the goal of socializing students to become moral race leaders.
Administrators were concerned with making its “students strong, earnest, broad-minded
Christian men and women.” As a result, religious education became the conduit through which they attempted to shape and mold the character of students while preparing them for race-uplift.
As such, all students were required to participate in required worship. At Fisk in the 1920’s,
“distinctively [Christian] religious services upon which attendance is required are a church service on Sunday morning, Sunday school, chapel services on school days, and a midweek prayer meeting on Wednesday night.”113 Character development was further strengthened through the student participation in a variety of religious organizations including the Young
Men’s Christian Association, the Young Women’s Christian Association, a Young People’s
Christian Temperance Union and the Mission Study Society of Fisk. The frequency of religious education and the student religious organizations at Fisk were central components of the socialization of Fisk students via Christian respectability. Combined with excellence in scholarship and service, Christian educational socialization provided the core foundations for the varying models of respectability at Fisk.
In addition, the centrality of Christianity at Fisk as a basis of respectability also influenced the rules and regulations that defined the student code of conduct. The conservatism that the student code of conduct attempted to promote was directly tied to Fisk’s attempt to graduate respectable race leaders who were guided by Christian conservatism. However, during President
113 Fisk University Catalog, 1915-1916, 17.
68
McKenzie’s administration at Fisk, the model of respectable race leadership shifted from a politics of respectability based on Christian conservatism to paternalism. This had a direct bearing on the administration of student affairs at Fisk in the early 1920’s. In the administration of student affairs at Fisk, no where is the relationship between student rules and paternalism more apparent than the rules governing the drinking of alcohol and the dress of female students.
For example, ever mindful of protecting the university’s image as a Christian institution, the Fisk prudential committee did not tolerate the drinking of alcohol. All students convicted of drinking alcohol were immediately suspended.114
Related to the university dress code for students, Fisk administrators adopted a conservative model of dress that gave more attention to how female students dressed their bodies than their male counterparts. While there were no clear guidelines on what male students should wear, the Fisk catalogs outlined specific requirements for female dress attire. For the most part, women students were encouraged to be modest in their attire. In addition, female students were discouraged from wearing silk dresses which were considered wasteful. Instead, Black women were required to wear white conservative cotton dresses. Also, female students were disciplined for wearing dangling earrings.115 These expectations on female dress were designed to downplay
Black women’s sexuality. In addition, the inclusion of rules for female dress and the exclusion of rules for male dress in the Fisk Catalog suggest that Black women’s autonomy in dress selection posed a threat to the strict boundaries that Fisk administrators attempted to carve out related to policing the performance of sexuality at Fisk. What Fisk students wore around campus
114 Refer to folder 13, box 18, President McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, which contains correspondence from Fisk administrators to students who were expelled because of drinking in 1918.
115 For additional information on expectations related to student dress, refer to any Fisk University Catalog between the years of 1867-1925.
69 was a less an expression of individuality and more a symbol of Fisk’s attempt to govern student individuality and autonomy.
Besides governing the attire of Fisk students, Christian respectability also influenced social relations between male and female students. The Fisk Student Code of conduct outlined specific rules and shaped how and to what extent Fisk male and female students socialized with one another and members of the opposite sex outside of Fisk’s immediate campus.116 At all times,
Fisk administrators and staff wanted to know where their students went, what activities they engaged in, and with whom their students socialized. Fisk students had to be chaperoned at all times. Male and female students were not allowed to socialize with each other without a Fisk administrator or faculty member being present. These rules resulted in strict policies designed to shape student interaction in social settings on Fisk campus including chapel, dormitory rooms, and other university spaces like cafeteria rooms. Any infractions resulted in severe discipline and punishment that could result in a student being sent home or expelled.
Within dorms, strict rules dictated who could or could not go into dorm buildings and the conditions in which male and female students socialized within dormitory spaces. Throughout the 1920’s, common dormitory rules included the provision that “friends of students obtain permission from the matron in charge before going to a student’s room, unless they were accompanied by the student whom they desired to visit;” that “no student may live in a College dormitory without the permission of the matron in charge, and no student shall room in a private house without permission from the dean,” and that students must sign in and out of their dorms.
These rules were designed to limit the amount of male and female interaction within dorms, to
116 Student Code of Conduct, ND, Box 1, Folder 14, President McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 2. 70 control where students lived during their time as students at Fisk, and to account for where students spent their time when not congregating in Fisk dorms.
The policing of dormitory life at Fisk was influenced by both Christian and paternalistic ideologies of respectability. First, morality dictated that Fisk administrators scrutinize how Fisk students behaved in living spaces and required limited interaction between male and female students in those social spaces. Secondly, paternalism among Fisk staff resulted in strict surveillance of dormitory life –i.e. the check in and check out system—because of the assumption that Fisk students were incapable of engaging in civil and autonomous social relations with each other that were moral and trustworthy. Any infractions of dormitory rules were immediately reported to Fisk’s Prudential Committee for disciplinary action and were directly tied to the ability of Fisk students to be socialized as respectful Black men and women.
As in the case of Mr. James C. Whitaker, who was a student at Fisk during the Fall semester of
1918 who was accused of looking through the window of Jubilee Hall to spy on female students, any infraction of dormitory rules represented a character flaw among a student and called into question their ability to mature into a respectable man or woman. In responding to the accusation of his unmanly behavior, Mr. Jefferson’s apology to the Prudential Committee reflected his awareness of the relationship between the Christian model of respectability and the rules that enforced Christian respectability. After thinking the case over, he wrote to the
Prudential Committee that “he was wrong in what he did . . . and that if he had thought before he acted he would have known at the time that he had no right to leave Jubilee Hall by the way he did. . . But acting without thinking, he did the first thing that occurred to him. Looking back upon his actions he saw that they were not in accord with what one would expect of a gentleman, nor in harmony with the rules of the university.” Further, he made the claim that, he would 71 always try to refrain from doing anything that would lower his character in the least,” and that he would try to “act in accordance with the rules of good breeding and the rules of the university.”117 Dormitories at Fisk not only represented spaces where students lived and socialized but also represented spaced where students tried to negotiate their sexuality.
Similar to their interactions in the dorms at Fisk, the interactions between Fisk students during chapel and during meals were designed to make sure that Fisk students behaved morally and kept themselves separate from each other when not chaperoned. Thus, Fisk administrators wanted to make sure that Fisk students did not portray affection toward one other or engage in immoral behaviors –i.e. sexual relations, drinking, gambling etc. in private spaces beyond the watchful eyes of Fisk staff. Students who chose to exercise autonomy in how they related to the opposite sex were disciplined. For example, Mr. Lenida Crosthwait, a Fisk student during the
Fall semester of 1918, was put on probation for “violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the law with regard to association with young women.” Mr. Crosthwait persistently sat behind a female
Fisk student in Chapel prayer meeting services where he did not belong. In another disciplinary case, a male student at Fisk during the Fall semester of 1923 was accused and “acknowledged wrongful relations with a girl in the neighborhood and was expelled by the Prudential Committee from the University.” The Prudential Committee advised Theodore’s father to remain watchful of Theodore’s actions until he “reestablished his strength of character and his reputation with the world.” Finally, in another case Ms. Marie Dillard –a student at Fisk during the Fall semester of
1924, was caught in the Fisk “cafeteria after closing time” with “several young women in company with young men.” In a letter from the Prudential Committee, Mrs. Dillard was informed that Fisk tried “hard to safeguard young women everywhere on campus,” and that
117 James C. Whitaker to the Prudential Committee, 24 July 1918, Box 14, Folder 10, President Fayette McKenzie Papers, 1. 72
“meetings between young men and women were not permitted.” While Marie and the other student involved were not disciplined, the Prudential Committee wanted the mothers of the girls to know about the incident because the Prudential Committee ruled that this incident “was almost in the nature of a clandestine meeting,” that “always sends young people home from Fisk.”118
Collectively, these incidents all point to the positive realization that both Christian and paternal models of respectability saw relations between male and female students within and outside of
Fisk as being inherently immoral.
In addition, the policing of social relations between Fisk students and the opposite sex was not only based on the supposedly immoral and untrustworthy behaviors of Fisk students but was also connected to the desire among Fisk administrators to socialize Fisk students for race leadership void of the distractions of other obligations. Nowhere is this more evident than among Fisk’s policy on student marriage. “The Fisk Student Code of Conduct specifically stated that “students were not allowed to marry during their college course.” If a student did marry, they severed “their connection with the institution.”119 The Prudential Committee exercised no flexibility in this rule. For example, Miss Adams, “a student at Fisk University for a number of years,” was suspended after Fisk “discovered on January 6th, 1920 that she had in the preceding spring escaped their jurisdiction and clandestinely married.”120 Fisk administrators thought that marriage in college prevented the proper socialization of their students for race leadership.
Specifically, for women students, it posed a major conflict as Fisk administrators supported the
118 Disciplinary records for these student infractions can be found in the “Student Correspondence” file of the Presidential Fayette McKenzie Papers found in Box 13, folders 12-15. These files document student misconduct between 1918 and 1924. Refer to these files for additional incidents of student infractions of the Fisk Student Code of Conduct.
119 Student Code of Conduct, ND, Box 1, Folder 14, President McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 2. 120 President McKenzie to Ms. Adams, 15 September 1920, Box 13, Folder 20, Presidential Fayette McKenzie Papers, Fisk University Special Collection, Nashville, TN. 73 belief that higher education first and then marriage second would make Black women better mothers and wives while preparing them also for adequate employment and leadership in social occupations like teaching and social work.
Social guidelines were not only limited to interactions only between Fisk students and members of the opposite sex, but also governed the conditions under which students could engage in social activities that were more autonomous or organized by student groups. The Fisk
Student Code of Conduct prohibited “profanity, betting, gambling and the use of intoxicants, or of tobacco.” “Promiscuous dancing and card playing between the sexes was prohibited in any
University building.” “Students were not allowed to keep or operate automobiles during the college year.” In addition, students were not allowed to keep or use pistols or other weapons, any fireworks, gasoline, benzene, or flame producing stove, candle or article.”121 Given the limited number of organized student activities at Fisk prior to 1924 and the stringent set of guidelines in the Fisk Student Code of Conduct to which students had to adhere, respectability whether Christian or paternal, insured that students were socialized by a model of race leadership that did not encourage independence or autonomy.
By 1915, Fisk employed matrons for the women’s dorms and advisors for the male dorms and created the dean of men and the dean of women position to shape and police the lives of students outside of the classroom. Under President McKenzie’s administration, the matron/advisor system and the dean of men and the dean of women positions were the conduits through which both Christian and paternal ideals of respectability were enforced. Charged with the definition and enforcement of all rules governing social life, the matron of women and
121 Student Code of Conduct, ND, Box 1, Folder 14, President McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 2. 74 advisor of men were charged with “all cases of discipline, of permission.”122 The matron and dean positions were key staff positions that both modeled and enforced typologies of respectability.
Also, as student enrollment at Fisk increased the administrative system of student affairs and the administration of the social lives of students –including housing—was organized through an administrative system where the dean of men and the dean of women positions became the key positions of policy formation and implementation. With the creation of the Fisk dean of men and the Fisk dean of women positions, the Fisk dean of men and dean of women were required formulate and implement policy and to hire and manage the matrons/advisors who provided direct services of supervision, care and discipline to students. In distinguishing between the relationship between the matron and dean of women positions, President McKenzie required all matrons and advisors to report to the dean of women or dean of men. In general, as explained to
Mrs. Jane E. Crawford—the matron and advisors were charged with all authority related to the
“dormitory and living portions” of their halls whereas the dean of men and dean of women were
“expected to occupy their full field and to in general be in charge of the girls [or boys] and of all of the other persons in authority.123
The staff positions that governed student affairs and the social lives of students, prior to the
Fisk student strike, were occupied by white men and women who worked to ensure that the collegiate experiences and behaviors of Black students were characterized by respectability.
Serving in positions of influence the staff who governed student social affairs not only were charged with enforcing topologies of respectability, but they were also required to model
122 President McKenzie to Mr. William W. Hastings, 23 August 1913, Box 8, Folder 3, Presidential Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collection, Nashville, TN.
123Ibid.
75 respectability. Thus President McKenzie required all staff, like his students, to behave respectfully at all times. McKenzie’s expectations of faculty and staff at Fisk were at times paternal in nature with his demands that faculty and staff uphold the highest standards of
Christian morality. He ardently believed that faculty and staff exercised the greatest influence over Black students and played an important role in shaping middle class race leaders who did not challenge but accepted race relations in the South. In his recruiting of faculty and staff,
McKenzie was most interested in employing individuals at Fisk who were “cultured, refined and
Christian persons of tact and discretion.”124
As a result, the faculty and staff who were hired to work at Fisk had to also abide by the same system of regimented rules that governed the lives of Fisk students. Thus while enforcing rules to govern student behaviors they were responsible for abiding by policies that President
McKenzie used to promote his model of respectable race leadership. For example, women staff members were required to live in the dorms with female students.125 Also, Fisk staff was required to teach course content that did not pose a conflict to McKenzie’s model of respectable leadership. For example, under McKenzie’s administration, all faculty were required to refrain from frivolous behaviors that were immoral. As such, the health officers for men and the health officer for women could not promote the teaching of dance in their physical education courses.
In a letter to Mr. Major F.H. Blake—the physical education director for men during the spring
1923 academic semester-- President McKenzie inquired about Mr. Blake’s rumored teaching of dance in physical education courses and stated that it was “customary for all instructors to feel a
124 Ibid.
125 Ibid. 76 responsibility for proper instruction and chaperonage,” in their classes. 126 Clearly while faculty and staff were the conduits through which respectable behaviors of students were shaped and enforced, faculty and staff had their own behaviors and duties policed by the same methods of respectability.
Working in tandem with the Fisk dean of men and the Fisk dean of women, the health officer for the men and the health officer for women also exercised positions of influence over students. Under McKenzie’s administration the health officers were women and men were charged with maintaining “classes in physical education in recreation,” giving formal physical examinations,” and with undertaking a “series of investigation” in order to calculate “the material advantage for the Fisk program of hygiene and recreation.”127 In addition to the Fisk dean of men and the Fisk dean of women, the health officers at Fisk perhaps held the second most important staff positions in the administration of students’ social affairs. Related to the administration of the social affairs related to women students, in September 1919, the health officer for women was a position that McKenzie deemed to be “one of the most important positions at Fisk that “paid the highest salary of any woman.” The health officer for woman was paid the highest salary of any Fisk female staff in 1919 because of financial support from the
Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board of the American Missionary Association. The
Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board was concerned with the educating Black students in proper hygiene methods so that they in turn could educate others. An important position at Fisk, the health officer for both men and women defined what behaviors were associated with good and bad hygiene.
126 President McKenzie to Major F. H. Blake, 9 July 1923, Folder 5, Box 6, Folder 1, President Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
127 President McKenzie to Miss Leonora Anderson, 3 Sept 1919, Box 6, Folder 1, Presidential Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN. 77
While the deans of men and women, matron or advisor positions and health officers positions were seemingly separate, the duties associated with each were at times fluid whenever there was a vacancy in any of these position. Thus at any time, a matron or adviser could be called upon to function in the duties associated with a dean of women. For example, in correspondence with Mrs. Jane C. Crawford, the matron of Jubilee Hall in 1915, McKenzie informed Mrs. Crawford that Fisk did “not as of yet have a dean in sight” and when hired she would “be unacquainted with the details of housekeeping in Jubilee Hall.”128 As a result, it was necessary for Mrs. Crawford, as matron of Jubilee Hall, to arrive early in the academic year to help. The fluidity of duties between the advisors, matrons, health officers and the dean of men and women positions placed a heavy emphasis on the importance of student supervision in the administration of student affairs. The reallocation of duties and the student personnel department were related to the absolute belief of the McKenzie administration in the support of a heavily supervised and less autonomous student sub culture.
The rules for Black male students, while strict, gave more freedom and autonomy to male students than female students. Black women were more policed and restricted.
Both the Fisk Student Code and Fisk staff played a major role in the policing of Fisk students and the maintenance of Christian morality and the paternalist model of race leadership at Fisk in the early 1920’s. However, the individual acts of dissent waged by Fisk students against the
Student Code of Conduct evidenced the desire among Fisk students to challenge the paternal model of race leadership that the Fisk Student Code of Conduct attempted to enforce. In addition, these individual acts of dissent evidence an existing history of student self- determination before the Fisk Student Strike of 1924-1925.
128 President McKenzie to Mrs. Jane Crawford, 25 August 1915, Box 8, Folder 3, Presidential Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN. 78
The Rise of Student Self-Determination and The Fisk Student Strike
To be sure, the rise of self-determination among students at Fisk leading into the 1920’s, including the individual and collective moments of dissent at Fisk between 1900-1924 were directly influenced by the New Negro protest movement on both a national level and a local level. On a national level, “the wave of rebellion that engulfed most of the leading Black colleges of the 1920’s was one of the most significant aspects of the New Negro protest movement.”129 As Blacks began to assert their claim to full citizenship in American society they began to protest in numerous ways. Nationally, “the rising tide of Negro protest was manifested in many ways—in the warfare of the Red Summer, 1919; in Marcus Garvey’s Black nationalist movement; in the resurgence of Black pride celebrated by the authors of the Harlem renaissance; in the development of Negro-controlled businesses and institutions; in the growth of the
NAACP, the Urban League, and the Black press; and in the substantial Black migration from the rural South to the urban North.”130 On the Black college campus, rebellion was influenced by the refusal of Black Americans to accept a subordinate role in American society and by their willingness to become active agents in Black social progress. Through Black college rebellions, students called into question the role of the higher education of Black youth in Black social progress.
At Fisk, the years before the student strike of 1924-1925 evidenced the rising tide of self- determination among Fisk students. For example, during the start of the Spring semester in 1919, the college men of Fisk University organized themselves to protest new regulations related to student self-learning. At their first meeting they appointed a committee “to study the facts
129 Raymond Wolters, The New Negro on Campus, 17.
130 Ibid. 79 involved in the compulsory study hall question and to protest against the inauguration of this system.” In a letter written to President McKenzie justifying their need to organize and protest they stated “we adopted this system because we believed it orderly and methodical and reasonable.” After being denied a meeting with President McKenzie, they informed Fisk administrators via correspondence that the “the young men of the college department of Fisk
University in a meeting in the library, Tuesday evening, pledged themselves to remain from study hall until… there is an inclination on the part of the President to regard us as what we are – intelligent men, jealous of our rights, and capable of maintaining them.”131 For the Fisk men who participated in the study hall protest, student self-determination was the best way to assert their manhood and to counter authoritarianism among Fisk administrators.
Although their protest did not change the rules governing study hours and most of the men who participated in the protest, with the exception of five, signed a letter affirming their obedience to all Fisk rules, this dissent by Fisk men is emblematic of the rise of self- determination and a new articulation of manhood and students rights among Fisk students. The rise of self-determination among Fisk students--with its resulting call for a new model of respect
-- in the 1920’s resulted in a negation of the paternalistic philosophy of higher education at Fisk designed to socialize Fisk youth for respectable race leadership. The dissent against compulsory study hall in addition to numerous individual acts of student dissent waged by Fisk students between 1918 through 1924 culminated in the Fisk student strike of 1924-1925. Both the individual acts of dissent and the strike were direct challenges to the strict surveillance of student behavior that was designed to socialize Black men and women for a model of race leadership that would teach them to support but not challenge the social order of Jim Crow politics.
131 J. C. Whitaker to President McKenzie, 1 January 1918, President Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN. 80
Striking: Revising the History of The Fisk Student Strike of 1924
The rise of self-determination among Fisk students in the years preceding the strike— which itself was a byproduct of the local and national New Negro movement—culminated in the
Fisk student strike in the Fall of 1924. Throughout the Fisk student strike, Fisk students attempted to further negotiate the organization of academic and student affairs at Fisk and how their behaviors at Fisk were policed by the student code while making greater claims for a more autonomous and student-regulated social culture. Thus, they attempted to dismantle the paternal model of respectable race leadership and the paternalist respectability that governed the student code at Fisk. Fisk students who participated in the student strike wanted personal freedom and saw autonomy and greater student control in secular terms and not in the reality of President
McKenzie’s paternalism. For Fisk students, the New Negro model of respectable race leadership, which was the ideological basis behind the Fisk student strike, was the solution that
Fisk students proposed to transform the politics of paternalism at Fisk.
Within this context, Black students went on strike against the Fisk administration during the Fall semester of 1924. The Fisk student strike of 1924-1925 not only challenged the existing model of coeducation under President McKenzie’s administration, it also represented a major turning point in student-staff relations, the governance of student life, and the future direction of
Fisk University throughout the twentieth century. Much like their peers rebelling at historically
Black colleges and universities across the South in the 1920’s, students participating in the Fisk strike demanded greater autonomy and independence in the governance of academic and social affairs at Fisk. Coupling their claim for greater independence with their demand to be treated as men and women, Fisk students demanded improved relations with faculty and administrators, the creation of more social opportunities and the creation of a less stringent system of rules and regulations. Inspired by New Negro ideology, Fisk students included in their list of regulations a 81 provision to address Fisk’s governing committees; the creation of a Student Council; fraternities, sororities; student publication; a recognized athletic association; as well as the abolition of excessive chaperoning, modifications of the dress rules, and fewer compulsory exercises –i.e.
Sunday school.132 As a result, Fisk became more of a 1920’s college and less of an institution begun by missionaries. Through these requests and their continued participation in the Fisk student strike, Fisk students attempted to redefine and dismantle the model of the Fisk man and the Fisk woman that existed at Fisk since its founding in 1867.
However, despite the efforts of students and alumni, McKenzie stated that during the academic year following the strike there would be no changes to Fisk’s policies and the governance of Fisk students. Eventually, McKenzie resigned. Even while the administration gave some ground, student life at Fisk was continuously policed and controlled throughout the
1930’s. As such, the training of Black men and women for race leadership, while transformed by the politics of New Negro respectability, was still contested between Fisk students and administrators. As a result, while the strike did indeed have an impact on governance at Fisk, the concerns that Fisk students identified in the strike were not completely settled and remained issues that students periodically attempted to negotiate with Fisk administrators throughout the administration of Fisk during the remaining decades of the twentieth century.
In addition, the legacy of paternalism at Fisk throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century was heightened by the repressive rules and policies of President McKenzie and other administrators. Secondary histories of student discontent in the 1920’s, including Martin
Summers’ Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and The Transformation of
Masculinity, 1900-1930, which document rebellions on Black colleges in the 1920’s, have
132 Senior Class of the Student Body to the Board of Trustees, 16 November 1924. The Papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1980-1981.) 82 attributed the cause of student dissent to being a by-product of students desire to reclaim their autonomy and independence.
While the Fisk strike should be viewed as students’ desire to reclaim or gain greater control over their bodies, the Fisk student strike should also be seen students’ desire to transform the management of gender behaviors and gender relations at Fisk. The Fisk student strike was originally viewed by historians as a struggle to assert Black manhood; there, too and precisely because of that discourse, the history of Black women participating in the strike and their response to the strike has been absorbed in the discussion of Black masculinity and Black men’s participation in the strike. As such, the history of the Fisk student strike must be rewritten to include Black women’s participation. Historically analyzing the collegiate experiences of Black women students in relation to the causes and the outcome of the Black college rebellions complicates how the history of the Fisk student strike and others is documented. In particular, inclusion of the experiences of Black women in the historical narrative of the Fisk strike shifts the history of the Fisk student strike away from the story of the performance of masculinity and self-determination by Fisk men to a historical record documenting how Fisk students attempted to transform the management of gender behaviors and gender relations.
In order to revise historical accounts of the Fisk student strike, it is necessary to look at the Fisk students’ strike in relationship to the management of Black women’s sexuality in the
1920’s. Further, since the historiography of Black college rebellions focus on students’ desire to reclaim their bodies and themselves, it is also important to look at archival records evidencing student attempts to re-own their bodies and actions. The archival records of student affairs at
Fisk in the 1920’s extensively detail how Fisk students attempted to portray their autonomy and self-determination by breaking the rules enforced by the Fisk student code. In the case of Black 83 women, the overwhelming accounts of female disciplinary cases appearing in the archives challenge historical accounts of the Fisk student strike by Sumner that posit that the strike resulted primarily from the desire of male student to reclaim their manhood through participation in the strike. While Black male students did exhibit behaviors unbecoming a Fisk student through individual cases of student misconduct and through collective participation in the strike,
Black women too exhibited behaviors unbecoming of a Fisk woman. In the months and weeks prior to and after the strike, numerous Black women students were disciplined for breaking the
Fisk student code.
The archive details a wide range of disciplinary incidents involving Black women students. Most of the student discipline cases dealt with the policing of Black women’s bodies and their sexuality. The policing of Black women's sexuality was directly related to how the entire progress of the Black race was defined. Black women’s bodies and sexuality were policed heavily because of the emphasis on middle class Christian respectability and the double standard that was placed on Black women at Fisk. Historians have attributed the striking response of
Black students to paternal regulations at Fisk arbitrarily to self-determination or the desire of
Fisk students to participate in the consumer culture of the 1920’s. However, both definitions have thus conflated student protests, both individual and collectively, within the lens of manhood rights or the performance of masculinity thus submerging the realization that Black women students, while active participants in student protests of the 1920’s and wanting like their Black male counterparts to acquire a new representation of their personhood --influenced by the New
Negro ideology-- were perhaps first and foremost concerned with issues related to the policing of their bodies and sexuality. Black women, while articulating the need to be more autonomous as students and their desire to have more student organizations at Fisk for women, were perhaps 84 first and foremost concerned with changing the rules that confined their bodies and sexualities.
Only after Black women students became more liberated in this area could they be in a position to more fully call for the creation of a “New Negro womanhood” that sought to give them more opportunities both within their campus environments and within larger society.
In addition, the inclusion of Black women’s stories transforms the historical record of the
Fisk student strike. As a result, the strike should not only be seen as the assertion of Black manhood among Fisk men but the Fisk strike should also be seen as the assertion of a new Black womanhood among Fisk women. More importantly, the disciplinary records of misbehaving female students show that for Black women students who engaged in individual acts of dissent and the collective dissent of the strike, the New Negro model of respectability was not only about performing a new model of womanhood but was also about the management of their gendered behaviors and gender relations. In this way, they wanted to transform how their bodies and behaviors were policed. Thus, Black women who exhibited gender behaviors unbecoming a
Fisk woman also attempted to transform the paternal model of respectable race leadership that emphasized the historic legacy of Christian respectability. Their misbehaviors –although not respectable by Christian standards—called for a different model of race leadership that encouraged Black women’s independence both in matters of social progress and in the management of their sexuality. Finally, this neglect among historians and other scholars more concerned with showing the Fisk strike as an assertion of Black masculinity rather than a transformation of the management of gender behaviors and relations at Fisk has resulted in a failure to adequately evaluate the impact of New Negro respectability on the management of student affairs at Fisk. While the Fisk strike did result in more autonomy for Fisk men through the development of more gender specific student organizations and activities –i.e. football and 85 fewer social rules--the strike resulted in the further policing of Black women’s sexuality through the tightening of the Fisk student code, which continued to be a set of regulations that policed
Black women’s behaviors and activities more than Black men. Thus coming out of the strike,
President McKenzie’s refusal to transform the governance of student regulations at the school, and the impact of the New Negro respectability on the Fisk strike, resulted in a limited womanhood for Fisk women throughout the late 1920’s. 86
CHAPTER 3: BEHAVIORS UNBECOMING A FISK STUDENT: DISCIPLINE, GENDERED SPHERES AND THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE “FISK MAN” AND THE “FISK WOMAN” IN THE 1930’S
Introduction
Throughout the 1930’s, Black students at Fisk were socialized to perform race leadership but not to challenge the etiquette of Southern race relations. Key events in the history of the college during the 1930’s had a direct impact on the development and organization of student affairs at the institution. Further, the administration of Fisk during this time period took place under the veil of Jim Crow both on campus and throughout the city of Nashville. As a result, the history of the college in the 1930’s is characterized by unrest among Black students who, since the mid 1920’s, remained adamant about transforming the politics of respectability at their school. Similar to their predecessors attending Fisk in the 1920’s, Fiskites of the 1930’s wanted to transform how they were socialized for race leadership through acts of self-determination and unrest.
These moments of unrest and self-determination were at times collectively organized and at other times individualistic. Specifically, in 1934 students organized against the lynching of
Cordie Cheek --a Black man from Nashville who was seized just beyond the boundaries of the
Fisk campus. Also, in 1934, some students organized a petition campaign protesting the
Scottsboro case in Alabama. Finally, acts of organized protest also included student dissent against the expulsion of Ishmael Flory. Flory was a graduate student in sociology who was expelled in 1934 because of his protest against Fisk administrators who supported practices of racial segregation in the business affairs and social practices of the college. Individually, students protested against Fisk’s student code of conduct --especially Fisk women-- through their everyday behavioral infractions. 87
The self-determination of Fisk students throughout the 1930’s evidences their increasing desire to respond to and participate within local and national civil rights struggles. In addition, their dissent also represents students’ ongoing struggle to transform paternalism in the governance of student affairs and the socialization of students for respectable race leadership throughout the 1930’s.
President Thomas Jones, Conservatism and Student Affairs at Fisk in the 1930’s
Following the resignation of President McKenzie after the Fisk student strike in 1925, the election of Thomas Jones as the President in 1926 brought numerous internal changes to the college. These changes resulted in improvements in the academic and student affairs of the school that were shaped by the reality of Jim Crow segregation. However, besides the improvements to student and academic affairs that Jones made during his presidency, his socialization of students for race leadership was dictated by the reality of Jim Crow. In the socialization of students for race leadership and race relations within and outside of Fisk, Jones was concerned more about educating students rather than preparing them for race leadership.
Joe Richardson in quoting Jones writes, “Upon arrival in Nashville in September 1926, he announced to the press that he was present as an educator and not as a man who is expected to solve the race problem.” Jones stated, “I am here to build a college that is second to none in the
United States and my whole being is in the task.”133 Yet, in taking as his agenda the building of
Fisk and in his refusal to govern the college in relation to the racial politics of the South, Jones’ presidency upheld the politics of Jim Crow. Thus his presidency also adopted the politics of Jim
Crow as the model of race leadership for Black youth.
133 Joe M. Richardson, A History of Fisk University, 103.
88
Indeed, Jones’ administration of Fisk was characterized by what Richardson described as the “The Good Years,” in his history of the institution. Richardson writes that the “first years of the Jones administration were ones of unprecedented growth at Fisk.” During his presidency of the college, he accomplished many feats including erasing Fisk’s debts. By the time that Jones took office in 1926, the debt of the college had risen to $300,000. He also was successful in securing a $1,000,000 endowment for the college. Half of this endowment was financed by the
General Education Board. Other academic and administrative improvements included raising money to construct a new library; increasing the percentage of Black faculty and staff to 50% of all faculty by 1936 and 66% of all faculty by 1945; the development and growth of Fisk’s graduate programs; and increasing the academic standards of the institution’s curriculum such that the college became the first Black college to receive an “A” standing by the Association
American Universities.134 Related to the administration of student affairs, “within a short time of his arrival students had been partially appeased and the misgivings of a majority of the alumni allayed.”135
However, Jones’ successful management of the college did not extend to his ability to be progressive in race relations. For example, after being accused by some students of supporting racial segregation in events on campus, in a chapel speech to students Jones stated,
Fisk always has been, is now, and will continue to be opposed to all race
segregation with the injustice, misunderstanding, and bitterness that results from
it. From its foundation, teachers and students have been welcomed here on the
basis of merit and not race, and throughout the history of the school those in
134 Joe M. Richardson, A History of Fisk University, 110-121.
135 Joe M. Richardson, A History of Fisk University, 110.
89
charge of its destinies have maintained their loyalty to the group being served. In
standing unflinchingly for this principle it has sought a non-violent way of
correcting wrong. It has striven to rise above bitterness and suspicion as it has
proclaimed the rights of the Negro and sought to open new doors for
achievement.136
In his attention to building an institution where all were welcomed on the basis of merit and not race, President Jones developed a conservative politics toward Black-white race relations. As a result, under Jones’ leadership some students felt that the college did not properly prepare them for progressive and self-determined leadership in the Black community.
Indeed, on the one hand, President Jones’s administration of Fisk was not characterized by the paternalism and authoritarianism reminiscent of President McKenzie’s administration.
However, under his tenure, Fisk administrators upheld the politics of Southern Jim Crow race relations. As a result they did not advocate for students desire to directly challenge the established social order. To be sure, President Jones and other administrators socialized students to promote social progress in their community without disrupting the racial politics of the South within the boundaries of Jim Crow. In this regard, higher education at Fisk, despite numerous programs promoting Black social progress, trained men and women to occupy the middle ground between white Southerners and the Black masses. As such, the legacy of paternalism as an ideology shaping students’ education for race leadership merged with the politics of Jim Crow respectability to form the Jim Crow model of race leadership. The Jim Crow model of race leadership for Black youth upheld by college administrators encouraged but limited student
136 “Transcript of President Jones’ Chapel Talk,” 28 February 1934, Box 31, Folder 3, President Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Library, Nashville, TN, 5.
90 autonomy and participation in race relations. In addition, the Jim Crow model of race leadership was a direct and limited response to the New Negro model of respectable race leadership that
Fisk students articulated through their self-determination of the 1920’s.
The Jim Crow model of race leadership shaped the administration of student life and culture in certain ways. Specifically, President Jones was sensitive to the legacy of self- determination among students. Related, immediately following the Fisk student strike of 1925,
Fisk staff tried to appease students by implementing targeted changes affecting the administration of student affairs. President Jones also was concerned with developing programs that socialized students for specific gendered roles. After the strike, some of the immediate changes included the development of gender specific student organizations. Allowances were also made for limited student self-government. However, throughout the 1930’s, these initial changes developed into distinct gendered spheres that served a dual purpose of increasing student autonomy while governing students’ gendered behaviors for leadership.
This increase in student autonomy at Fisk paralleled the continued policing of gendered and race behaviors of Fisk students. The squelching of student unrest in response to Jim Crow racism, both within and outside of Fisk, evidenced the administration’s general stance in upholding the racial politics of the South. While Jones’ administration understood the abuses of
Jim Crow, they did not want the college to become a battleground for fighting against it.
Student’s collective protests against the lynching of Blacks nationally and their contempt for the excessive discipline of Fisk students locally, posed a direct challenge to Jim Crow respectability at the college throughout the 1930’s.
First, student dissent of the 1930’s uncovered the ways in which the politics of Jim Crow defined approaches to Fisk’s external race relations. That is, students were encouraged to engage 91 in racial uplift within the boundaries of acceptable race relations. This meant that while students were trained as race leaders they should not take a direct stand against the established order of racial segregation in the South. Also, there was a corollary relationship between the paternalism of the 1920’s and the Jim Crow model of educating students for leadership. Finally, the self-determination of Fisk students of the 1930’s further evidence how Fiskites attempted to negotiate Jim Crow respectability by exhibiting behaviors unbecoming a “Fisk man” and a “Fisk woman.” In so doing, students drew upon the legacy of self-determination of the 1920’s to transform Jim Crow respectability and the administration of student and academic affairs at their college throughout the 1930’s.
Jim Crow respectability shaped how Fisk students were allowed to engage race relations and gender behavior beyond and within the Fisk campus. In addition, the rules undergirding Jim
Crow respectability shaped the structuring and policing of students gendered behaviors. The administration of student affairs at Fisk in the 1930’s developed into distinct gendered spheres that were a byproduct of students’ self-determination of the 1920’s and the social reality of the
Jim Crow South of the 1930’s. The impact of the strike on the administration of student affairs at Fisk resulted in increased autonomy for male students and limited social organizations and privileges for Fisk women. But the New Negro ideology of the 1920’s resulted in a more limited womanhood for Black women compared to a more autonomous manhood for Black men.
Coming out of the strike, the limited opportunities for Black women were coupled with the continued policing of their bodies and behaviors. As such, the program of student affairs developed into distinct spheres that while complementary were governed by gender specific ideologies of respectable race leadership. 92
Gendered spheres developed at Fisk in order to define and enforce behaviors among Fisk students that would socialize them to be race leaders in Jim Crow America. What this meant is that Fisk students were encouraged to lead within established racial norms of the South. This chapter attempts to answer the following questions: How did Jim Crow respectability structure coeducation and student affairs at the school in the 1930’s? What impact did Jim Crow respectability have on the definition and governance of acceptable student behaviors? And how did Black students specifically respond to the Jim Crow model of respectable race leadership?
Gender, Symbolism, and Student Spheres at Fisk
Student autonomy at Fisk in the 1930’s was based on the development of specific gendered behaviors among Fisk students and took place in specific gendered spheres. In addition, the creation of specific polices and the development of student organizations at Fisk defined the distinctive administration of student affairs for men and for women. Further, specifically gendered rules and polices became a way of defining and policing appropriate gendered behaviors necessary for socializing Fisk students via the politics of Jim Crow respectability. Collectively, the development of separate rules and student cultures throughout the 1930’s, held specific gendered meanings that defined the concept of the “Fisk man” and the
“Fisk woman.” Also, the development of separate rules and student cultures resulted in separated and gendered structures or spheres for the education and socialization of women and men at the college. The response of Fisk students to their socialization was evidenced in their performance of behaviors unbecoming of a “Fisk man,” and a “Fisk woman.”
In studying the relationship between student programing and the education of students for gendered and raced leadership, it is important to define the organizational culture for male and 93 female students and the management of “gender” at Fisk in the 1930’s. In discussing gender and organizational cultures in Gender, Symbolism and Organizational Culture, Silvia Gherardi claims “organizational cultures --as holistic phenomena-- are strongly gendered,” and as a result,
“organizations themselves, therefore, are gendered, and organizational processes are ways of organizing gender relations.”137 She also asserts that “gender therefore, is socially produced by processes in which organizations actively participate and by which these organizations are shaped.”138 Further, she posits that “practices ‘make’ gender in that they produce and reproduce social relations and material culture and the artifacts that sustain them.”139 Adopting, the term
“cultural approach to refer to a performative definition of organizational culture as the system of meanings produced and reproduced when people interact,” Gherardi analyzes how gender in organizations is enforced through policies and practices.
Understanding how gender is enforced through policies and practices is important to analyzing the gendered experiences of women and men in organizations. Related to the study of
Black colleges and universities as organizations, unlike the history of most predominantly white colleges and universities, the history of Black colleges and universities is a history of educating male and female students together. As a result, students at Black colleges --excluding the low numbers of students attending the few single sex institution-- have primarily been educated in coeducational colleges. Within Black coeducational colleges, a distinctive organizational culture developed defined by gendered rules and expectations for the higher education of male and female students.
137 Silvia Gherardi, Gender, Symbolism and Organizational Culture, (Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications Inc. 1995), 2.
138 Ibid., 18.
139 Ibid. 94
From its founding, Fisk University was organized as a coeducational institution. As a result, it has a rich history of gendered policies and practices, which resulted in distinct educational spheres for male and female students. In addition, gendered policies and procedures impacted the competing models of race leadership at the college. The development of a distinctive organizational culture constituted a gendered sphere of higher education for men and women. Gendered spheres are rules, policies, ideologies, physical structures, and student organizations that were managed and negotiated between Fisk staff and students. In addition, gendered spheres comprised the structures and meanings that defined both gender cultures and respectable race leadership at the school. In the 1930’s, Jim Crow respectability was imbedded in meanings given to the management of polices and behaviors defined and enforced within the context of gendered spheres at Fisk.
In studying the emergence of gendered spheres at Fisk and the gendered experiences of male and female students, historical interpretations must not subsume gender difference under the lens of race. In discussing the impact of race on categories of analysis in African American and American history, historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham makes the claim that scholars
“must expose the role of race as a Metalanguage by calling attention to its powerful, all- encompassing effect on the construction and representation of other social and power relations, namely, gender, class, and sexuality.”140 Understanding this point is essential to creating a gendered study of coeducation at Fisk in the 1930’s. By being aware of the all-encompassing power of race, the gendered experiences of Black men and Black women can be highlighted in the history of gender and coeducation in the 1930’s. In this way, this history of coeducation at
Fisk, “will not only call attention to the cultural as well as socioeconomic implications of
140Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “African American women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race,” Signs, Vol. 17, No. 2, (Winter, 1992): 252.
95
American racism,” but will “examine the differential class and gender positions men and women occupy in Black communities,”-- in this case the Black college.141 Thus, in order for women’s experience in histories of Black higher education not to be consumed by issues of race --Fisk
University included--it is important to look at gender in relation to race as a system of power relations by looking at gender as an important category of analysis in historical research.
In addition, by dismantling the all-consuming aspect of race as a category of analysis, other categories of analysis --specifically gender-- must be used simultaneously to uncover the hidden experiences of male and female students in Black higher education. For the history of coeducation, gender analysis is an important tool in uncovering the hidden experiences of women in histories of Black higher education that render the experiences of men as representative of the entire race. Because Fisk University, like many Black colleges and universities, was coeducational from its founding, studies of gender difference requires models of gender analysis that analyze the experiences of male and female students in relation to each other. Joan Scott’s discussion of gender in her article, “Gender: A Useful Category of
Analysis,” provides an important model of using gender as a category of analysis that could be beneficial to historians and their study of gender in the history of Black colleges. Scott’s model of gender as a category of analysis in historical research draws upon using gender as a
“constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived difference between the sexes, and gender as a primary way of signifying relationships of power.”142
Scott’s model of gender analysis is very useful to the purpose of analyzing gender relations and gender power in the history of Fisk throughout the 1930’s. Scott’s model of gender
141 Ibid., 256.
142 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” 1067.
96 as social relation requires an analysis of representative symbols, an analysis of “normative concepts that set forth interpretations of the meanings of the symbols,” a discussion of gender in relation to social institutions and social organizations and finally a study of the “ways in which gender identities are substantively constructed.”143 Drawing from Scott’s model of analyzing gender as a system of relations, this analysis of gender spheres and gender behaviors includes first an analysis of symbolic representations at Fisk of the Black student’s role in American society throughout the 1930’s. Second, the gender analysis in this chapter underscores the relationship between self-determination and Jim Crow models of race leadership in the higher education of Fisk students. Third, a discussion of the institutional practices and organizations at the college that defined and enforced meanings of gender at Fisk is included.
As a result, critically studying race and gender as categories of analysis in the history of
Black higher education renders coeducation as a category of analysis possible in the history of
Black higher education. For the most part “coeducation” as a historical subject has been understudied in the history of Black colleges and universities. This is partly to due to the intellectual efforts undertaken by Black women scholars who endeavored to reclaim Black women’s unique histories in response to the all-encompassing power of racial analysis in the history of Black higher education. As Higginbotham asserts in her article, “race as a
Metalanguage” does not engage an intentional effort to include Black women in white women’s history or Black women in Black history.144 Black women scholars have been at the fore of developing histories of women in Black higher education but have not researched or published histories of Black women in higher education as gendered beings. As such, through the process
143Ibid.
144 Higginbotham, “African American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race,” 256.
97 of reclamation, the early histories of Black women in higher education were primarily descriptive studies of women in Black higher education and were not causal studies of why
Black women were educated a certain way.
The first generation of Black women scholars were concerned with the status of Black women’s education in Southern Black colleges. Black women educators, intellectuals and community organizers were concerned with the effective management of the women’s sphere in
Black higher education. In this vein, Marion Cuthbert’s Education and Marginality: A Study of the Negro Woman College Graduate was among the earliest socio-historical study of the experiences of Black women in Black higher education.145 Cuthbert interviewed Black women alumni of Black colleges to evaluate their experiences in order to offer suggestions for the development of a program of higher education for women at Black colleges throughout the
1940’s in respect to the special needs of women.
A second generation of Black women scholars, influenced in part by the historical studies of Black women in education written by Perkins, researched and published descriptive studies of
Black women in education. In addition, this second generation of Black women scholars chronicled the achievements and contributions to the philosophy and governance of higher education made by Black women intellectuals. Linda Perkins has published widely on the history of Black women’s leadership in the development of Black education including scholarly publications on Black women intellectual leaders like Fanny Jackson Coppin and Lucy Diggs
Slowe. In addition to these, Perkins’ article, “The Role of Education in the Development of
Black Feminist Thought,” had a significant impact on the documentation of the history of Black women intellectuals in education. This important work justifies the importance of analyzing
145 Marion Cuthbert, Educational and Marginality: A Study of the Negro Woman College Graduate (New York: Columbia University, 1942.)
98
Black women’s intellectual work and philosophies of education in histories of Black education.146
Perkins’ influence on the history of Black women’s higher education helped to produce a third generation of scholars of Black education. This third generation of Black women scholars used theory –i.e. Black feminist thought, critical race theory-- to uncover the history of Black women in higher education. Stephanie Evans’ Black Women in the Ivory Tower is the closest work in this vein.147
The contributions of these previous generations of Black women scholars helped to develop the history of Black women in education. However, their research resulted in histories of Black women in higher education that while distinct from that of Black men, was void of a critical gender analysis. In addition, the process of uncovering the hidden histories of Black women in coeducational institutions resulted in histories of Black women in higher education that were not analyzed in relation to the higher education histories of Black men.
However, to fully understand the gendered histories of Black women in coeducational institutions requires the adoption of Scott’s model of gender as a relational category of analysis.
The shift in the broad field of African American history in which the study of Black men and the study of Black women has shifted to a model of gender studies with an emphasis on masculinity and womanhood, must also be reflected in the history of Black higher education in order to accurately document how Black men and women were uniquely shaped and responded to their socialization for race leadership in Black colleges as gendered beings. This trend is reflected in
146 Linda Perkins, “Fanny Jackson Coppin and the Institute for Colored Youth, 1837-1902,” Ph. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1978; “Lucy Diggs Slowe: Champion of the Self-Determination of Black Women in Higher Education,” Journal of Negro History, Winter, Vol. 81: (1996): 89-104; “The Role of Education in the Development of Black Feminist Thought.” History of Education Quarterly 22, No. 3 (1993): 265-275.
147 Stephanie Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History, (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007). 99
Stephanie Wright’s dissertation, “Education and Changing Social Identities of Black
Southerners.” In her research, she adopts a gender model in her history of Black men and Black women in Black colleges similar to Scott’s model of gender as relational.148 While her history only goes to the 1920’s, her work does provide an excellent model of looking at gender and the organization of coeducation at HBCU’s.
As such, studying the collegiate experiences of Fisk students within the appropriate gendered contexts at the college from 1924-1970, pushes the boundaries of using gender as a useful category of analysis in the history of Black colleges. Using gendered spheres as a lens makes it easier to analyze the male and female gendered experience at Fisk. Further this allows the historian to analyze how the management of gendered behaviors at the school defined appropriate gendered behaviors for male and female students based on the politics of Jim Crow respectability.
The Organization of Gendered Spheres and Student Culture at Fisk in the 1930’s
The development of gendered spheres at Fisk for the higher education of male and female students for race leadership entailed the administration of all aspects of student culture at the college. Through the development of distinct rules and organizational structures, Fisk administrators approved specific types of student organizations, established guidelines for student participation in extracurricular clubs and athletics; and finally negotiated with the student government groups over the issue of shared governance and student autonomy throughout the institution. These decisions in the 1930’s built upon the development of the a limited student culture in the year immediately following the Fisk student strike of the mid 1920’s. This increase in student activities at Fisk coincided with the philosophy of gender differentiation in
148Stephanie Wright, “Education and Changing Social Identities of Black Southerners,” (Ph.D Diss., Rutgers University, 2004.) 100 the administration of student affairs and comprised the development of distinct gendered spaces for men and women. Further, the emphasis on creating gendered spheres at the school was designed to further emphasize the unique race roles that Fiskites were to occupy in the Black community.
The development of gender spheres at the college and the differentiation of student culture at the school by gender was the direct byproduct of both general and gender specific rules that defined and dictated what male and female students could or could not do. Collectively these general and gender specific rules defined the nature and scope of gender relations at throughout the school. Relatedly, Joan Scott’s suggestion that gender culture can be analyzed by interrogating the construction of gender in relation to social institutions and social organizations provides a useful model for analyzing the development of gender spheres at Fisk.
Throughout the 1930’s, the administration of student affairs at Fisk was organized by a strong regime by which all students had to abide. For the most part, Fisk administrators regimented every aspect of the daily lives of students. Similar to the administration of academic affairs in which students were required to be at all “classes and not to absent themselves without adequate reasons,” the administration of student affairs required students to be present at all times for all events and required activities.149 Outside of the classroom, students were required to be at specific places at required times without excuse. The daily bell schedule governed student movement and directed student life at Fisk. By the bell, during the week days, all students rose at 6:30 a.m., had breakfast at 7:00am, had lunch at 12:45pm and had dinner at 6:00pm. During the evenings, Fisk students also maintained specific time for study in their dorms or libraries and
149 Fisk University Student Code Book 1933-1934, (Special Collections Archive, Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1933), 20.
101 also for socializing with other Fisk students.150 Throughout the 1930’s students were required to regularly integrate religious devotion into their daily routine at Fisk. “Chapel exercises have always been an essential part of life at Fisk,” and students were required to attend “chapel services on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9:45am and on Sunday at 11:00am.” In addition to time allocated for class attendance and participation in social organizations like the student senates and literary societies, there was little room left for unstructured student autonomy. The regimentation of students’ daily lives was a byproduct of the entrenched paternalism of school’s administration. It was also a catalyst for students’ performance of self-determination and claims for autonomy throughout the 1930’s.
In addition to the general rules by which all Fisk students had to abide, Fisk administrators adopted certain gender rules and guidelines to further structure and control what
Fisk men and women could and could not do. For the most part, gender specific regulations were directly related to this issue of bodily movement. The Fisk student catalogs throughout the
1930’s contained numerous guidelines about where students could or could not go and dictated the conditions under which women left the campus. To be specific, while women were allowed to leave the campus, they had to follow a check and balance system that regularly documented their departure from the school. First, “women students leaving the campus were expected to sign in a book for that purpose.” Second, upper classes women were given more privileges than first and second year students. For example, “seniors and juniors need only sign when going on
Jefferson Street for brief errands” or to local places where as “freshmen and sophomores needed to ask permission and sign when going on Jefferson Street.” In addition, freshmen girls could go to town twice a month with chaperones selected from a stipulated list, by arranging with the
150 Fisk University Student Code Book 1931-1932, (Special Collections Archive, Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1933)19.
102 assistant dean of women and by signing.” Also, “sophomore women could go to town twice a month by permission and by signing,” “junior women could go to town by permission and signing not more than once a week,” and “senior women students could go to town at their discretion in the daytime upon signing.” When going into town, Fisk women were required to
“go in groups of two or more, exception being made in the case of senior women, who may go alone in necessary instances.” Finally, women students were also required to “secure permission for taking meals at public eating places.”151
The numerous guidelines that Fisk women had to follow when attempting to leave the school raise important assumptions about the protection of women students and their bodies on and off campus. First, there was an absence of specific guidelines in the University Student
Code Book outlining the conditions under which male students could freely leave the institution.
Second, the detailed processes of which Fisk women had to abide in getting permission to travel within and beyond the campus, evidenced the administration’s belief that female students needed less autonomy and more protection than their male counterparts. The policy of prohibiting female autonomy within the campus environs also carried over into the policing of their whereabouts off campus. The school’s leaders felt it necessary to know where, when, and with whom female students traveled outside of the school. They believed that this was important to their ability to protect Black women from the dangers of Jim Crow Nashville. The limited autonomy given to Fisk women compared to men defined the relationship between gender and autonomy for Black men and women within the Fisk community with gender and autonomy outside of the Fisk community.
151 Fisk University Student Code Book 1933-1934, 42.
103
Other specific gender rules dealt with controlling the lives of first-year students upon their immediate arrival to the Fisk community. Early on, the social lives of male and female were differentiated by their gender. First, Fisk men and women were housed in different dormitories. Freshmen men “lived in specified quarters in Livingston Hall, and the young ladies in Jubilee Hall.” Second, “the supervision of the freshman men was under the head resident of
Livingston Hall,” and “the supervision of the freshman women was under a member of the [staff of the] dean of the women.” Finally, related to social privileges, freshmen women were limited in their social contact with each other, upper class Fisk students and medical students at Meharry medical school. Fisk administrators defined social contact as “dates for concerts, for calls, for the movies or dances.” Specifically there “was to be no social contact between freshman women and other upper class men or Meharry men and freshmen men and other class women except in the spring quarter.”152
While Fisk students had little control over how administrative guidelines regimented their daily lives, they found the greatest opportunities for student autonomy and self-direction through their participation in student activities. Though the organization and governance of student autonomy came with additional limitations, for the most part, male students had more autonomy than female students. This was a direct by product of the structuring of separate gendered spheres at the school. By its very organization, the development of gendered spheres --or rather student organizations and social opportunities specifically for Fisk men and women-- provided opportunities for autonomy and self-determination. It also allowed students the platform through which they attempted to negotiate the politics of Jim Crow respectability at the college.
152 Fisk University Student Code Book 1931-1932, 48.
104
Coming out of the student strike of 1924 and 1925, one of the many goals toward which students made claims was the organization, development, and administration of students into self-government. By the mid 1930’s, students had organized themselves into multiple organizations with the goal of influencing the administration of student affairs at the school.
Toward this end, student leaders founded and positioned the Fisk Student Council. In so doing,
“students and faculty of Fisk University, in order to develop a spirit of co-operation on the campus, to encourage student initiative, to afford development through self-expression, self- control and leadership, and to create an intermediary between faculty and students in matters of general welfare,” united in establishing the student government association of the school. In addition to developing programming initiatives, the Student Council’s primary purpose was to
“have original jurisdiction over matters of conduct in which both men and women students were involved either on or off the campus, and appellate jurisdiction over matters of conduct in which either men or women’s students were involved falling within the control of the men’s and women’s senates while also recognizing that appellate jurisdiction in matters determined by the
Council finally residents in the faculty.”153 As such, the Fisk Student Council was organized into a central administrative committee and into a women’s senate and men’s senate that were charged with helping faculty to police the behaviors of male and female students who exhibited behaviors unbecoming of a Fisk student. In addition, while the Student Council was able to pass governance decisions related to student misconduct, final disciplinary decisions were decided by faculty and administrators.
Indeed, while the authority of the Fisk Student Council was limited, its greatest strength was that it offered students the opportunity to participate in a student governed organization that held great influence over the development of student life throughout the college. As a result, the
153 Ibid. 105
Student Council played a significant role in challenging the politics of Jim Crow respectability upheld by school leaders. In addition, the Student Council was able to define and shape acceptable student behaviors through the governance decisions they decided in student discipline cases. Further, because these student discipline cases where decided separately by the Men’s
Senate and the Women’s Senate, student governance influenced and enforced behavioral expectations for male and female students.
In addition, while the purpose of the men’s senate and the women’s senate was the same passing down judgments in discipline cases involving either male or female students, the
Women’s Senate dealt more with discipline issues than the Men’s Senate. While serving as an
“intermediary between the faculty and the women student body,” the Women’s Senate was principally concerned with defining appropriate student conduct for female students in addition to deciding judgments in discipline cases involving women. As such, the women’s senate also established policies related to the housing of women in Jubilee Hall – the school’s female dorm, establishing social standards for women to insure that they did not engage in irreproachable behavior, and establishing policies related to how male students related to women.154
Student culture for men and women was also defined by the creation of gendered athletic programs. The athletic program for women and men was controlled by two separate administrative boards. The athletic program for male students was controlled by the Athletic
Board of Control at Fisk. Its major responsibility was to govern all intercollegiate athletics at including football.155 For women students, the athletic program was governed by the Women’s
Athletic Association. However, unlike the board that controlled athletics for male students, the
154 Fisk University Student Code Book 1931-1932, 43.
155 Ibid., 53.
106
Women’s Athletic Association was much more comprehensive in the creation of a sports program for Fisk women. The responsibilities of the Women’s Athletic Association included promoting and supervising the athletics program and stimulating an “interest in all forms of physical exercise.” It was controlled by a governing board that included among its membership
“the head of each sport and the Director of Physical Education for women.” In addition, the
“membership of this organization was open to all women of Fisk university.” The sports program for Fisk women included competition in hockey, basketball, volley ball, baseball, track, gymnastics, hiking, tennis and skating.” 156 The athletic program at Fisk allowed Black women students the opportunity to develop as leaders while also creating gendered social spaces where women students were allowed to interact socially and emerge as leaders without competition from male students.
In addition to student government and athletic programs, gendered spheres at the college were characterized by the establishment of gender specific clubs and organizations for students.
The range of gender specific student organizations included debate clubs, literary societies and campus chapters of the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Young Women’s Christian
Association. By far, the founding of Black fraternities and sororities further led to the most distinct organization of student life at Fisk by gender. Fisk’s fraternal system did not immediately develop through the late 1920’s as students had hoped. However, throughout the
1930’s, Fiskites participating in fraternities and sororities developed additional opportunities for student autonomy and leadership. In addition, the emphasis on social service represented by
Black Greek organizations contrasted with the Jim Crow of model of race leadership at Fisk.
156 Fisk University Student Code Book 1933-1934, 43.
107
While the majority of student clubs and organizations were separated by gender, some of some student organizations required Fisk men and women to interact. Among these organizations, The Greater Fisk Herald was the most significant coeducational student organization on campus. The primary purpose of The Greater Fisk Herald was to serve as the central “vehicle of expression for the students of Fisk University” and was a “thirty page magazine published monthly, edited and managed throughout by students elected by the student body.” As an important vehicle for student self-expression, The Greater Fisk Herald represented the voice of both Fisk students and alumni concerning their views of race relations at Fisk, in
Nashville and across the nation
Fisk Deans and The Administration of Student Culture
In order to assist in the regulation of student affairs at the college and in response to the self-determination of some students, administrators under Jones administration began to hire more student affairs personnel who were African American. The hiring of new personnel in the student affairs division was necessary for the strategic governance of Fisk students. In addition to supervising student culture at the college, student affairs personnel also developed and organized programming initiatives that were designed to socialize Fiskites for gendered race leadership.
The reorganization of student affairs in the early thirties reflected a general trend in the administration of student culture at Black colleges. During this time, the reorganization of student affairs at Black colleges was a result of professionalization. In addition, improvements in the administration in student affairs also resulted in the national and institutional evaluation of student culture at Black college. First, the dean of men and the dean of women position became an established position at Black colleges. This was a by-product the efforts of Black deans, who 108 barred from membership the predominantly white professional organizations, began to form their own professional organizations and associations. For example, women alumni and sorority women who sought employment and recognition as dean of women at Black colleges organized two professional organizations in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. According to historian Linda
Perkins, Lucy D. Slowe -- the first African American woman dean at Howard University -- helped to organize both the National Association of College Women (NACW) and the National
Association of Women’s Deans and Advisors of Colored Schools (NAWDACS).
Following the lead of Dean Slowe, many Black women deans adopted a philosophy of higher education socialization for female students that contrasted with the entrenched conservatism of Black college. Women deans adopted a model of race leadership for female students that encouraged them to take on more self-determined and modern leadership roles on campus and within the Black community. In seeking to socialize their students for less traditional and conservative leadership, women deans posed a direct challenge to the model of
Jim Crow respectability existing at many Black colleges. Dean Slowe, according to Perkins
took seriously the charge that the educated members of the race should be
in leadership positions,” and “she believed strongly that African American
women had a vital role to play in race leadership and, as result, she sought to
develop the leadership skills of Black college women.157
This philosophy of self-determination used by dean Slowe and other Black women deans stood in stark contrast to the moral conservatism that some administrators used in socializing women for gendered leadership. As a result, Black women deans also posed a direct challenge to college
157 Linda M. Perkins, “Lucy Diggs Slowe: Champion of The Self-Determination of African-American Women in Higher Education,” 89. 109 administrators who believed that Black women needed protection from both their own sexual impurity and the dangers of the Jim Crow South.
Second, the reorganization of student affairs at Black colleges was also based on the evaluation of student culture by Black student affairs professionals. In the 1930’s, some Black student affairs professionals concluded that professionals needed to adopt empowering models of race leadership which guided their work with students. Specifically, student affairs professionals felt that students must be socialized to occupy more self-determined leadership roles throughout the Black community and American society. Dean Slowe was at the fore of these evaluation efforts. In a 1933 survey evaluating Black women in higher education, Slowe concluded that in order for female students to be prepared for the modern world, that is “if college women [were] to be intelligent heads of homes, or intelligent members of their communities, more of them must pursue those subjects which have to do with community life in a very fundamental way.” In addition, Slowe asserted that the “classical courses…important though they may be, must be supplemented by those social sciences which enable one to understand the world.” This, according to Slowe, would require the development of opportunities offered to Black women for
“exercising initiative, independence, and self-direction while in college.”158 As a result, the evaluation efforts undertaken by Slowe and other Black educators led to the reorganization of student affairs on Black college campuses. Specifically, the evaluations of Black higher education throughout the 1930’s resulted in the inclusion of higher education philosophies, programs and policies which prepared students for more self-determined leadership.
At Fisk, the evaluation and the professionalization of student affairs personnel resulted in the development of a student affairs program that was a byproduct of the conservatism of
158 Lucy D. Slowe, “Higher Education of Negro Women,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 2, No. 3: (1933), 355. 110 administrators and the self-determination of students. This negotiation of the race leadership ideologies undergirding the development of student affairs at the college began in the late 1920’s in the years immediately following the Fisk student strike. This resulted in an immediate transformation of student affairs at the college during the spring semester of 1925. First, the Fisk student strike resulted in the development of a more structured form of guidance and supervision of all students. To prevent further student rebellions and to better control dissent, the student affairs at the college was governed by,
the chief personnel officers which included the assistant dean of the college and
the dean of women. To assist them, personnel advisers were chosen by them from
the faculty. The general function of the personnel advisors was to orient the
student out of the high school attitude into the college attitude toward study and
intellectual life and to guide and counsel [students throughout] their freshman and
sophomore years…. The personnel advisors [were] expected to acquire
knowledge of the student as an individual, and to inform themselves of his official
record made in the university. On the basis of this information, these advisers
[were] expected to advise and counsel the student. Each student was assigned to a
personal adviser for a period of two years.159
Within this context, administrators attempted to implement effective standards of governance that they felt would best prepare students for race leadership.
Second, the student strike resulted in the hiring of more student affairs professionals who were Black. Endeavoring to socialize students for the goal of race-uplift and in response to the rise of student determination at Fisk in the 1920’s, President Thomas Jones approved the hiring
159 Fisk University Student Code Book 1931-1932, 20. 111 of the first Black dean of women at the school. The dean of women was charged with developing and managing a student affairs program that met the distinctive gendered needs of Fisk women.
Toward this goal, in the fall of 1929, Miss Juliette Derricotte started her short tenure as the dean of women at Fisk University.160 Born April 1, 1897, Miss Derricotte was a graduate of
Talladega College and of Columbia University where she received a Master of Arts. Prior to accepting the call to serve as dean of women at Fisk, Miss Derricotte was employed for eleven years as the student secretary of the national Young Women’s Christian Association “where she visited every Negro College and many white colleges in the Association.” Through her work
“she was known and greatly loved by students in every part of this country, as well as in the countries abroad.” Her work as the student secretary for the national Y.W.C.A resulted in her election and attendance as the delegate from the United State to the 1924 and 1928 annual meeting of the General Committee of the World’s Student Christian Federation. Through her council work with the World’s Student Christian Federation, Miss Derricotte visited numerous countries where she promoted racial tolerance and the need to build bridges through acts of love in the Christian Student Movement.161 “Her religious and educational leadership was by no means confined to the splendid work among [Black] students, but was national, international and interracial in its scope.”162 When she accepted the to call to serve as the dean of women at Fisk,
Miss Derricotte brought her approach to racial justice and transnational activism to her
160 President Thomas E. Jones to Miss. Juliette Derricotte,13 June 1928, Box 31, Folder 3, President Thomas Jones Collection, Fisk University Library, Nashville, TN, 1.
161“Bio of Juliette Derricotte,” Interracial New Bulletin of the National Student Council of the Young Women’s Christian Association, March 1932, President Thomas Jones Collection, Box 31, Folder 13, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
162 “Juliette Derricotte, April 1, 1897-November 7, 1931,” 1932, Box 31, Folder 12, President Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
112 socialization of women students for race leadership. As a result, she made numerous improvements to the student affairs program. Her program of student affairs encouraged Fisk women to be more self-determined and independent.
Dean Derricotte brought a wealth of background to the Fisk family and she personified a new type of role model for the college community and female Fiskites. On one hand, she modeled the virtues of Christian respectability for her students. Also, her work made her a symbol of New Negro respectability in that she believed that women students were capable of self-direction and could benefit from a more autonomous student affairs program. In addition, her deanship at the college symbolized a new generation of women deans who supported Dean
Lowe’s assertion that self-determination was an important philosophy in educating Black women for leadership. In her role as dean of women, Derricotte drew upon her experiences as the first female trustee of Talladega College in addition to everything she learned about the student affairs profession from her work with the national and international student organizations.
As the first dean of women, Derricotte was a symbolic representation of the model of gendered leadership that Fisk administrators wanted modeled for women students in their training for race leadership. While emphasizing the call to service associated with the politics of
Christian respectability, her model of respectability emphasized race-uplift within the framework of self-determination and world activism. As such, her work abroad modeled to women students the importance of using self-determination in race work both within and beyond the borders of the United States.
However, the contributions that Miss Derricotte made to the Student Movement of the
World’s Student Christian Federation, the national Young Women’s Christian Association, race relations, and the development of student affairs for women at Fisk were shadowed by the 113 realities of Jim Crow. Though her record of activism evidences her commitment to promoting racial tolerance, her contributions to social justice in the area of race relations were eclipsed by the shameful and stigmatizing practices of racial segregation. On the one hand she traveled freely and transnationally as a single women promoting racial tolerance in her work as a leader in the interracial and international student movement. On the other hand, at home in the United
States, her contributions to professional organizations for deans of women were impacted by policies maintaining racial segregation. For example, in 1929 when Dean Derricotte was invited to attend the annual meeting of the National Association of Deans of Women held in Atlanta in
January 1930, meeting organizers did not know that she was Black. Ultimately, upon learning of her racial background, meeting organizer informed her that while she was invited to attend workshops at the annual meeting, due to the racial restrictions at the Chalfont Haddo Hotel, she would have to find other housing arrangements. 163
While Miss Derricotte brought a wealth of experience to her position as dean of women at the college and was fully prepared to contribute to Fisk’s goal of socializing students for race leadership, her activism was not separate from the realities of Jim Crow. Thus, while she was invited to attend professional conferences in her field as a result of her recognition by interracial professional organizations in the field of student affairs, she was only allowed to participate in professionalization endeavors through her obedience to the social mores of Jim Crow. The contradiction in this is that while she sought to encourage greater autonomy for Fisk women on campus, her how autonomy and growth in her profession was limited by the color of her skin.
While Dean Derricotte implemented numerous changes at the college in her role as the dean of women, her tenure was short-lived. On November 6, 1931, as Fisk students prepared to
163 Juliette Derricotte to President Thomas E. Jones, 18 November 1929, Box 31, Folder 14, President Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
114 participate in the jubilant festivities of football day, Dean Derricotte and three Fisk students -- embarked on a weekend road trip to toward Athens, Georgia to visit with their respective families for the weekend. After driving a few hours outside of the city limits of Dalton, Georgia.
Dean Derricotte’s car collided with a Model “A” Ford roadster. While the driver and his wife went unhurt, the crash left Dean Derricotte and one of the students fatally injured. Because racial segregation in Georgian health care prevented Black patients from being treated at white hospitals, Dean Derricotte and her accompanying injured students was first given medical attention in the office of a white doctors who offered care to Black patients. After initial diagnosis and treatment, Black patients requiring extended medical attention and who had serious injuries were cared for in the home of a Black woman who had no medical training.
Dean Derricotte and her students were given temporary medical care in the home of Ms. Wilson.
The next day after the accident, both Dean Derricotte and the injured student were transported by ambulance to Chattanooga, TN for medical care. The student died in the ambulance in route to
Chattanooga while Dean Derricotte died later on that evening on November 7.164
At Fisk, for Black women students, the death of Derricotte left a leadership vacuum on campus related to the administration of Fisk women. Her untimely death limits an analysis of the impact of her life, leadership and work on female students and the entire Fisk community. Her death, as a result of the lack of proper and immediate medical care, was a reminder to the Fisk administration of the reality that the education that they provided their students did not shield them from the abuses of Jim Crow law.
Yet this remembrance of Derricotte’s death was not the only way that the Fisk community chose to remember her life’s work. Her commitment to race-uplift and belief in the
164 “Report of The Commission on Interracial Cooperation Regard the Automobile Accident in Dalton, GA, November 6, 1931,” 1932, Box 31, Folder 10, President Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1-2. 115 self-determination of her students was memorialized in two specific ways. First, a scholarship was endowed in her name for Black women students who needed financial support in pursuing studies at Fisk. Secondly, Derricotte was immortalized in a statue in her hometown of Athens,
Georgia. Regardless of how she will be remembered, she will always be known as an important leader in the development of a more self-determined model of race leadership for women enrolled at Fisk in the 1930’s.
Black Students and the Challenge to Jim Crow Respectability in the 1930’s
While important administrative leaders like Derrioctte posed a challenge to the existence of Jim Crow respectability at the school, by far the greatest challenge conservatism and the legacies of paternalism at Fisk was posed directly by students themselves. Some students expressed their contempt against the Jim Crow respectability through organized protests.
Through specific incidents of self-determination, some Fisk students favored student affairs programs and policies that resulted in the socialization of students for self-determined leadership in the Black community. Throughout the 1930’s, organized protest at the college, result from students self-determination included a protest campaign organized by Ishmael Flory against
Fisk’s patronage of segregated facilities in downtown Nashville and the continued everyday acts of student’s misconduct --especially by Fisk women. These acts of dissent posed a direct challenge to the influence of Jim Crow respectability in educating Fiskites for race leadership in the Jim Crow South.
Related to the Ishmael Flory protest, on February 22, 1934, Flory received correspondence from the Fisk administration stating, “in light of all the evidence and testimony presented on your behalf, the Committee has concluded for the good of the University that you 116 be asked to withdraw immediate from the University.”165 This ruling from the Executive
Committee was decided in response to Flory’s publication of indicting editorials in local newspapers in Nashville. Through his publication of numerous editorials accusing university officials of supporting Jim Crow practices on and off campus -- including allowing the Jubilee
Singers to perform in segregated theaters throughout downtown Nashville -- Flory called into question the institution’s ability to support Black social equality while also supporting racial practices that impeded Black social progress. As a result, Flory was dismissed from the school for falsely representing the college in the media.
Flory’s protest against the performance of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in Jim Crow theaters was not his first stand against segregation at the school or within the Nashville community.
Throughout his tenure as a graduate student in the Department of Sociology where he studied sociology under Charles Johnson, Flory orchestrated a few protests designed to illuminate the reality of Jim Crow practices locally throughout Nashville and through the entire country.
Through his dissent, Flory’s goal was to reveal to the realities of life for students and the Black
Nashville under the veil of racial discrimination in the city. His goal was also to bring home the point that the Blacks at Fisk and in the Nashville community were not in favor of segregation in the city.
First, in 1932, Flory led protest campaign against the lynching of a Black man imeediatly beyond the borders of the school. After the lynching of Cordie Cheek near the Fisk campus,
Flory “went out in the community to get as many witnesses as possible for President Thomas
Elsa Jones of the University,” to assist in the investigation of the lynching.166 In response to the
165“Statement of Ishmael P. Flory,” 8 March 1934, Box 34, Folder 19, Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 7.
166 Ibid., 1. 117 lynching, Flory “called a mass meeting of the entire student body to call the attention of the students to the importance of the question of lynching and the matter of developing an attitude against it.” Flory generated a sizeable number of students at the mass meeting and they also discussed plans to organize a silent march to further protest the lynching of Cordie Cheek. As a result, Flory’s response to the lynching symbolized the continuing influence of New Negro ideology on the activism and self-determination of Fisk students. In this way, his actions stood against the politics of Jim Crow respectability on the Fisk campus.
However, administrators did not respond favorably to Flory’s organizing. Instead
President Jones allowed conservatism to influence his response to the mass meeting and the student’s desire to organize a silent march. Jones and other administrators attempted to quell the rising student protest in response to the lynching of Cordie Creek. “President Jones came into the meeting and attempted to quell the feeling of the students by a statement to the effect that they should be calm and should not be moved by their emotions; to which [Flory], as chairman of the meeting, responded that in life emotions enter into anything one does, more or less.”167
Clearly, Flory was tired of responding to the abuses of Jim Crow calmly and without the influence of his emotions. Instead, Flory’s self-determination dictated that his activism did not respect the politics of Jim Crow respectability espoused by President Jones and other administrators.
Throughout his experiences as a student at the college and as member of the Black community in Nashville, Flory noted “a number of things that would indicate that the University was not taking a firm stand against the matter of Jim Crow and segregation.” Among these,
Flory “noticed that the students attend Jim Crow theatres and Jim Crow affairs without seeming
167 Ibid.
118 to realize the significance of the thing to have any feeling of shame when they did so.”168 As a result, Flory tried to lead organized protests, as much as possible, against Jim Crow social facilities and events. For example, a few days after a basketball game was held at the segregated
University Social Center -- a community center constructed for recreational purposes for students and Nashville community members -- Flory tried to get Black students and Black community leaders to protest the game. However, his invitation to others to participate in the protest received a feeble response. These failed attempts to protest the system of Jim Crow social practices both on campus and throughout downtown Nashville made Flory question if Fisk had truly ever “taken a stand against this self-imposed Jim Crow, a thing which Charles S. Johnson admits to be a menace to and racist in the community.”169 As a result, he firmly believed that “if any group should stand out against Jim Crow, it should be the Negro universities where some semblance of enlightenment is supposed to prevail.”170
Flory was not alone in his belief that Black colleges should stand out against Jim
Crowism throughout the South. The dismissal of Flory from the university resulted in numerous letters of discontent from Fisk alumni and Black and white leaders and organizations who felt, like Flory, that Black schools must be at the fore of advancing race relations in American society. Letters of protests came from interracial student organizations including the Students of
New York University League for Industrial Democracy who wrote that they “protested Fisk’s support of Jim Crowism and breach of academic freedom.”171 Also, the Denmark Vesey Branch
168 Ibid., 2.
169 Ibid., 4.
170 Ibid., 5.
171 Protest Letter The Students of New York University League for Industrial Democracy,” 2 March 2, 1934, Box Number 34, Folder 19, Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
119 of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights from Los Angeles, California wrote “we protest dismissal of Ishmael Flory, such action is indicative of administrations subservient attitude in further enslavement of Negroes and we demand reinstatement of Flory as well as resignation of
President at Fisk for good of all Negroes through America.”172 In addition, Lillian Robins, chair of the Protest Committee of The International Negro Youth Movement wrote “we cannot conceive of any possible reason or excuse to dismiss a student because he had the “intestinal fortitude” to organize his fellows students against what seemed to have been a clique between the university officials and certain white “gentlemen” to make the Young Negro a cowardly, meek, and submissive creatures to bow and cringe at their beck and call. Therefore, we demand that Ishmael Flory be reinstated in the university, and the officials issue a public apology to the
Negro Youth of America.”173 Similarly, Walter White, writing on behalf of the NAACP stated
“discrimination and segregation of the sort represented in this incident exists in various parts of the United States, but their existence does not justify either acceptance of these conditions or arbitrary dismissal of a student from the University because he has the courage and the manhood to protest against these conditions.”174 Finally, letters against the dismissal of Flory also came from numerous chapters of the National Student League.
While the Fisk administration and others across the country varied in their responses to the Ishmael Flory case and his subsequent dismissal from the college, Flory held his own views in response to the accusations against him. First, he concluded that “the responsibility for the
172 Protest Letter from the Denmark Vesey Branch of the League of the Struggle for Negro Rights, 11 March 1934, Box 34, Folder 19, Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
173 Protest Letter written by Lillian Robinson from the International Negro Youth movement, 14 March 1934, Box 34, Folder 19, Thomas E. Jones Papers, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
174 Protest Letter written by Walter White on Behalf of the NAACP, 9 May 1934, Box 34, Folder 19, Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
120 arrangement for Fisk singers to appear at a Jim Crow theater . . . was in the hands of the
President of the University.” Secondly, he published the news reports because he felt that “when a Negro University engages its students in a Jim Crow performance, it is the concern of the entire
Negro people.” Third, Flory believed that “so long as colored people accepted the inferior status as implied in Jim Crow, just so long will they be the victims of many of the injustices that are heaped upon them; especially should Negro universities fight to develop an attitude against this sort of thing.” Fourth, Flory believed that “there has been no strong stand taken at the University against Jim Crow nor does there seem to be any indication that the faculty and students feel the question keenly as they should.” And finally, Flory thought that instead of taking action against him, “the faculty especially the Negro members should have asked President Jones to resign because he clearly indicates that he does not feel as keenly about it [segregation] as some of the
Negroes who are struggling for freedom.”175 As such, Flory asserted that a more self-determined response against practices of Jim Crow was needed among Black leaders in higher and students in higher education. While he was accused of falsely representing the school’s relations to Jim
Crow businesses in Nashville, he ardently felt that both the existence and prohibition against Jim
Crow politics rested in the hands of the Fisk University president, Black students and the faculty and staff of the college.
The claims for a more self-determined leadership made by Flory and the response of college administrators to his critique of Jim Crowism at the school represented the ongoing negotiation of competing models of race leadership at Fisk. Characteristic of race relations at
Fisk throughout the 1930’s, the Flory case was an example between the conflict of Jim Crow respectability and a more self-determined approach to race relations at the college. On the one
175“Statement of Ishamel P. Flory,” 8-9.
121 hand President Jones and the Executive Committee expelled Flory as a way of preventing another rebellion --influenced by Flory’s leadership-- reminiscent of the student strike of 1924-
1925. On the hand, Flory’s history of activism at the college represented an alternative model of respectability that was odds with Fisk’s socialization of students for leadership in the Black community without challenging the institution of segregation.
Student Misbehavior and the Challenge to Jim Crow Respectability
In addition to the challenge against the politics of Jim Crow respectability at Fisk posed by the Flory incident, students dissented against entrenched conservatism by misbehaving and breaking the student code. Throughout the 1930’s, Fiskites were disciplined for numerous incidents of student misconduct in which they were accused of engaging in unacceptable behavior. In their discipline of student misconduct, the faculty governance committee used the phrase “behaviors unbecoming a Fisk student” in writing to disciplined students who went against the school’s standard of respectable behavior.
Black men were accused of ungentlemanly behaviors as a result of drinking and intoxication. For example, on October 23, 1934, two upper class students -- Charles Morton and
Walther Thomas -- were accused of breaking curfew by staying late in the rooms of two freshmen male students. Upon visiting their dorm room, the smell of alcohol or “strong drink” was detected by Mr. John E. Morris who was the head resident of Livingston Hall. After investigating the room in which both boys were socializing, Mr. Morris discovered that the freshmen who also lived in the room were heavily intoxicated and one of them was unconscious.
Also, in another separate unrelated incident on March 1, 1935, Mr. Wilson Williams was accused of physical assault under the influence of intoxication against a female student -- Miss Carrie Lee 122
Posey -- during their attendance at a dance social.176 While separate incidents, both of these cases involving the consumption of alcohol represented a major student code infraction that Fisk student affairs personnel attempted to curb.
For Black women students, on the other hand, the reported cases in which female students were accused of engaging in conduct unbecoming a Fisk woman varied. Analysis of these cases reveals the ongoing model of respectability and gender norms expected of Black women students. As the number of activities for Black women students increased throughout the
1930’s, Fisk administrators also developed more stringent set of rules to govern the behaviors of
Black women students. The archival records of Fisk’s deans of women evidence case after case of female students engaged in behaviors that were unbecoming of a Fisk woman. In addition, beyond the occasional dismissal or mandatory probation due to academic failure, the records of the dean of students and the dean of women indicated that female Fiskites in the 1930’s were punished for a much wider series of offences than in the 1920’s. These offences included drinking, wearing dangling earrings, going into town without permission, leaving dormitories ostensibly to go to the library when they really went other places such as the theater or other social gatherings in Nashville, riding in cars with men from Nashville and intoxication. Among these numerous types of incidents, Black women were mainly disciplined for intoxication and social relations with men.177
The archives provide some important points about coeducation at Fisk. First, the record of student misconduct evidenced an alternative model of student gendered behavior—a model
176 John E. Morris to James R. Lawson, 23 October 1934, Box 66, Folder 5, Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN; John Hope Franklin to the Executive Committee, 1 March 1935, Box 66, Folder 4, Thomas E. Jones Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
177 For detailed information on the discipline cases related to the misconduct of Black women students, refer to the Thomas E. Jones Collection 1926-1946, Box 66, Folders 27-29 and Box 65, Folders 17 and 22. 123 based more on autonomous and less on conservative gendered behaviors. Second, the cases of student misconduct suggests that Fisk students, like those participating in the Fisk student strike of the 1920’s, looked to individual and collective forms of autonomy to challenge the conservatism associated the Jim Crow model of race leadership. Finally, the intense policing of
Black women’s bodies throughout the 1930’s was based on the assumption that Black women’s sexuality was inherently amoral and stood against Christian respectability.
Whether Black students were prevented from speaking against the college -- as in the case of Ishmael Flory -- or whether they challenged the Fisk student code through their
“unbecoming” behaviors, their self-determination challenged expectations of conformity at the school and in Southern society. First, students who protested against the college’s support of practices of racial segregation forced President Jones to clarify Fisk’s stand for or against Jim
Crow given that the college was originally founded as an integrated school. Second, students also challenged the limitations put upon them by the Jim Crow social order through their challenge to rules and regulations at Fisk. Fisk administrators instituted rules and regulations at the college as a way of socializing students to exist socially in the context of segregation.
Students who broke rules through their everyday infractions and behaviors that were
“unbecoming a Fisk man or woman” --for example, drinking, breaking curfew, dating the opposite sex -- continuously negotiated with administrators over the issue of university control and student autonomy in student affairs. Students who stood against practices of racial segregation involving Fiskites social interactions both on and off campus and students who dissented against rules that they deemed unfair within the Fisk environ, did so as a stance against the legacies of paternalism and conservatism at the school. By standing against the conservatism 124 and paternalism that existed at the school, students attempted to dismantle the influence of Jim
Crow student life at the college. 125
CHAPTER 4: PREPARING PROFESSIONAL LEADERS FOR THE RACE: STUDENT APATHY AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN THE 1940’S AND 1950’S
Introduction
At the end of their winter vacation in Cincinnati, Ohio, six students prepared for their return trip back to Fisk University in Nashville. On January 3rd during the spring semester of
1949, they boarded a crowded train for Tennessee. Upon entering the train, they were told by the conductor to sit in an empty car. After settling in, the students were asked by another conductor to vacate their seats for white passengers who had just boarded the train. The students refused the conductor and explain that they “had to be back to school on January 3rd or pay $5.00 each.”
Wanting to enforce the practice of segregation in railcar transit, the conductor “assured them that if the University administration knew the situation, they would not be fined for being late.”178
Still unable to convince the students, the conductor went to get the station master, a representative of the L & N rail line and a policeman. The students “told each the situation calmly and quietly.” In witnessing this scene and the injustice being forced upon the students, some white passengers expressed their discontent. They began yelling, “They aren’t going to bite us…Is this America?… Democracy hah…Let Them Alone…Civil Rights…They’re
Americans Too.” In addition, “one irate woman passenger marched up to the men and quoted the
Supreme Court’s interstate transportation decision forbidding segregation,” in rail car transit.
Eventually the conductors, the policeman and the railroad representative gave up.179 Because of their calm and quiet self-determined response against segregated transportation, the Fisk students were spared the humiliation of Jim Crow racism. Later they were joined by three other peers in
Kentucky and they all traveled to Nashville in an integrated car.
178 “Students Ride L. & N. Coach Unsegregated,” The Fisk Forum (14 January 1969): 3.
179 Ibid. 126
In making their impromptu yet successful stand against segregated rail cars, the students drew upon their awareness of the important of modeling respectable behaviors in Jim Crow social encounters. They were socialized in the politics of performing respectable behaviors through their familiar upbringing and through their education at Fisk. The calm and respectful manner in which they responded and their refusal to vacate their seats suggests that they understood the social mores of Jim Crow. Their response also shows that they knew how to negotiate its boundaries in order to challenge racial injustice and discrimination.
In doing so, their stand against the practice of segregation in railroad transit was symbolic of the form of race leadership advocated by students at Fisk throughout the mid 1940’s and
1950’s. Understanding that the racial climate of the South and the order of race relations was shifting in the post-World War II era of the late 40’s, Fisk students wanted to emerge as leaders who could make contributions to racial progress even while taking advantage of new professional opportunities. In performing leadership during this time period, Fiskites strategically and cautiously pushed against Jim Crow. This sentiment was expressed in the written commentary of a student reporter covering the students supposed prohibited ride in a Jim
Crow train car. The anonymous author wrote,
Fiskites, when you are riding trains and the Negro coaches are crowded, sit
wherever you can --as long as you are going from one state to another. That is
one of your rights. And know too, that you may sue those who try to segregate
you on trains anywhere in the United States, as long as you are crossing a state
line. Realize also, that if a conductor asks for your seat and you become
belligerent, you are not helping your case, or that of your race. There is a right
way to demand your rights. If those Fiskites had not been calm—but unmoved, 127
the passengers would not have sided with them. All of us have seen and have
been embarrassed by [those of us who are] “loud and wrong.” In interstate
transportation, let’s be calm and right.180
In being “calm and right” their self-determination resulted in an effective stand against railcar segregation. Indeed the students made Fisk proud in their performance of respectable race leadership. Like many of their peers throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s, they did not just accept the social norms of Jim Crow but instead used self-determination to spur its dismantling in social spaces on and off campus.
The experience of confronting segregation on the R. & L. rail line evidenced both the similarities and the contradictions in the model of respectable race leadership espoused by Fisk administrators and students during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Fisk students of the 1940’s the mid
1950’s accepted the administrations’ desire to socialize them for work and leadership in the new opportunities opening to Blacks professionally as the reign of Jim Crow loosened against the backdrop of the activism of Blacks in the 1940’s –namely the legal end to desegregation fought in the courts through the leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People. In so doing, Fisk students were socialized for leadership in both the professions and within the Black community in the post WWII era. However, Fisk administrators did not want students to push toward equality before the South was ready. Thus while they were aware that
Black colleges had to prepare students for leadership and life beyond the veil of Jim Crow, college administrators governed their institutions by adopting a model of race politics that was moderate. College presidents and administrators like Charles Johnson – a faculty at Fisk in the department of sociology from 1928 to 1946 and the first Black president of the college from
180 Ibid.
128
1946-1956 -- socialized students to be advocates of Black social progress without directly challenging Jim Crow through openly defiant protests. Indeed Black college administrators of the 1940’s and mid 1950’s wanted their students and alumni to be progressive when it came to advocating social change for their communities but moderate in how they navigated Southern relations in promoting racial justice. Like those Fisk students who traveled South in an integrated rail car, they wanted their students to be “calm and dignified” in their performance of race leadership and their challenge to Jim Crow.
To be sure, students at Fisk in the 1940’s and early 1950’s adopted the model of moderate racial politics espoused by the administration and faculty. They too understood that the reign of Jim Crow was coming to an end and that if they were to be useful to their race in a post-Jim Crow society, their education at Fisk was essential to their preparation for employment and leadership in the new professional opportunities being opened to them. However, unlike the leaders of the school, some students believed that their adoption of moderate racial politics could be performed through their professional leadership coupled with strategic acts of student self- determination. Though their self-determination was not as flamboyant as their peers of the
1920’s and the 1930’s, Fiskites of the 1940’s and early 1950’s still used acts of self- determination to shift the politics of respectable race leadership and the rules governing student life and academic expectations at Fisk. Many Fisk students bought into the program of dedicating themselves to serious study in preparation for middle class leadership in their community through professional work. However, in addition to their adoption of the moderate model of respectable race leadership, they made stands that respectfully pushed against Jim
Crow respectability and the cautiousness that Fisk administrators adopted in shaping students’ response to segregation. 129
As such, throughout the 1940s and the 1950's, the politics of respectable race leadership at Fisk shifted from the Jim Crow respectability of the 1930's to a form of respectability that was moderate but also did not disrupt the racial politics of the Jim Crow South. Toward this regard, administrators developed new opportunities for students. These opportunities were primarily academic and stressed students’ adoption of a moderate racial politics. In addition, the improvement of academic affairs at Fisk also stressed students’ performance of respectable race leadership through their socialization for leadership in the professions. As professional leaders -- ministers, doctors, lawyers, teachers and social workers, among other occupations-- Fisk students were taught that their advocacy on behalf of their community through their professional work was a strategic way of challenging Jim Crow. In this way, their professional work attempted to advance Black social equality in a way that was dignified and acceptable to American society.
Charles Johnson’s Model of Respectable Race Leadership for Students
Towards that end, as the college’s first Black president, Johnson’s approach towards socializing students for race leadership was to prepare them to lead in an integrated society while also preparing them to specifically advance the social needs of Black America through training in social research. In so doing, Johnson sided with a variety of intellectuals and leaders from different ideological backgrounds to advance this goal throughout out his Presidency of Fisk. In analyzing the intellectual influences on Johnson’s leadership, Patrick Gilpin’s writes
The lesson of Charles Spurgeon Johnson’s life indicates he defies ideological
classification . . . Integration, or what he as a sociologist, called assimilation, was
his goal. But this did not mean rejecting Black history and culture; nor did it
mean being a white European in a Black skin. It did mean being an American.
Yet, Johnson was uniquely international in his commitment to cultural pluralism. 130
He envisaged a world composed of Africa, America, Asia and Europe. In the
United States, he worked with whoever was going his way. If, like Virginius
Dabney, they detoured, he kept on alone until he formed new allies always
moving toward this goal. Hence, he could work with Alexander the white
Southerner, Embree the liberal neo-abolitions, Emmett J. Scott the later day
Garveyite, and Thurgood Marshall the integrationist. After all, race was
sociological and ideological but not biological. In the significant role that Jonson
played for almost four decades in the struggle to overturn segregation and to
advance Black people and all oppressed people, he had time neither for
ideological factionalism nor for popularity contests.181
In this sense, Johnson’s goal of integration for Black people was achieved through collaboration with philanthropists and leaders of different races and ideological stances rather than siding with an ideological camp that symbolized a predominate racial politics.
In this way, Johnson’s socialization of students for respectable race leadership should be seen through the lens of his moderate approach to racial politics. Johnson’s racial politics was thus one of adaptation and negotiation. In describing Johnson’s racial politics, Marybeth
Gasman and Patrick Gilpin assert that Johnson acted as a “bridge between the leadership of
Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King.182 They claim that “as one reviews the history of race relations in the South prior to the years of Martin Luther King,” Charles Johnson “claimed the dominant [leadership] role between the years of Washington and King.” Specifically they
181 Gilpin, Patrick J. “Charles S. Johnson: An Intellectual Biography,” Ph.D Dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1973,
182 Marybeth Gasman and Patrick J. Gilpin, Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow, New York: State University of New York Press, 2003, 141.
131 assert that, he salvaged much that was valuable from the Washington legacy –as, for example, using the financial support of the Rosenwald Fund to develop his programs at Fisk – and at the same time he pointed the way toward the Freedom Movement with his sociology of tensions.”183
As such, Johnson drew upon a wide ideological spectrum ranging from accommodation to civil rights to advance his goal of integration.
Yet while his politics positioned him as both a strategist and moderate, he was critiqued by some alumni, most notably W.E.B. Du Bois, for his collaboration with white intellectuals and philanthropists in support of his intellectual endeavors and work at Fisk. Specifically, Du Bois and other alumni were weary of the similarities between Booker T. Washington and Johnson in that both leaders’ had an affinity towards receipt of financial support from conservative white philanthropists. For Du Bois and other alumni, this “legacy of conflict was the lens through which Fisk alumni viewed Thomas Elsa Jones’s presidency, and it galvanized their determination to select a leader who was free from outside influence.”184 Du Bois expressed his concern over white trustees who elected Black colleges presidents in the 1940 and 1950’s in a scathing critique he published in the Nation on September 7, 1946 inadvertently referring to
Johnson’s election by Fisk’s trustees as president. He wrote, “there can be no doubt as to the present situation; …The white Southern trustees would consent to a Negro president provided he was a Negro amenable to their guidance not “radical” that is, not an advocate of FEPC, the abolition of the poll tax, or any New Deal policies.”185 Du Bois’ critique, however, had more to do with his concern over the role of outside philanthropists in the affairs of Fisk, according to
183 Ibid.
184 Marybeth Gasman and Patrick J. Gilpin, Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil, 218.
185 Marybeth Gasman and Patrick J. Gilpin, Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil, 221.
132
Gasman and Gilpin, given that through his research on Black social life, “Johnson shaped the very New Deal policies to which Du Bois was referring.”186
Throughout Johnson’s presidency of the school between 1947 and 1956, Johnson was able to moderate Black social progress without advocating a radical change to Southern racial politics under Jim Crow. He was able to do this in three specific ways. First, during his presidency he built important local and national networks with philanthropists to support his work. Second, Johnson developed a stellar academic program at Fisk which included the transformation of the sociology department into a top academic program and the founding of
Fisk University’s Race Relations Institute in 1944. Both included the establishment of a reputable research programs which analyzed Black life and race relations throughout the South.
Third, he made substantial improvements and additions to the bachelors of arts academic curriculum at the college throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s by improving academic standards and expectations of students. Through his contributions of race relations from the Fisk campus and his training of students for leadership in race-relations, Johnson had an incalculable impact on the struggle for integration. As Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman assert, “the twenty- eight year struggle that he engaged in from his base at Fisk was tedious, lacking in immediate rewards and anything but glamorous.” Even so, while he “was building strong programs in the
Department of Social Sciences,” he strategically served as a “regional entrepreneur in race relations.”187
In so doing, by example, Johnson encouraged a model of leadership that encouraged Fisk students to uplift the race through their leadership in an integrated American society. Thus,
186 Ibid.
187 Marybeth Gasman and Patrick J. Gilpin, Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil, 141.
133
Johnson’s leadership symbolized a model of respectable race leadership for students that was moderate in that students were socialized for new professional opportunities in the post-WWII era without radically transforming Jim Crow. Rather than push for radical change, Fisk graduates were socialized to transform American social structures from within as a byproduct of integration. Throughout his presidency, Johnson insured that Fisk students understood the complexities of American race relations so that they could strategically advance African
American social progress through their professional work. Yet, in so doing, like Johnson, they needed to know how to chip away at the hold of Jim Crow while partnering with whites in the project of improved race relations. For Johnson, this in and of itself, was a goal of integration -- interracial cooperation in the name of social justice.
Johnson’s Academic Program and the Preparation of Students for Professional Leadership
In preparing students for professional leadership, Johnson gave a lot of his attention to the redevelopment of Fisk’s academic program. Between the start and end of Johnson’s tenure as president, Fisk’s academic curriculum was impacted by Johnson’s belief that students must be taught to live within and understand American culture during the post WWII era. He also believed also that it was essential for students to be socialized for leadership in race relations.
Towards this end, Johnson’s development and governance of academic affairs at the college was the byproduct of what L.M. Collins has defined as Johnson’s “four pillars of faith.” L.M.
Collins asserts that Johnson’s academic program at the school was based off a strong belief in
“practical realism and scientific discipline in education, social responsibility in human relations, international knowledge and understanding as a key to survival and self-discovery, and an unambiguous, well supported ethical universalism.” And as a result, he was an advocate of 134
“work, justice, freedom, and moral power.”188 Through the development of Fisk’s curriculum, improvements in the organization of the academic structure of the college, changes geared towards collegiate education at Fisk made college education more accessible to poorly prepared students. In addition, by building innovative programs that linked academic study to community outreach, Johnson was able to successfully implement his vision of higher education at the college.
Fisk supported the WWII effort in specific ways. During and within the aftermath of
WWII, the Fisk curriculum was responsive to the important need of educating students in world affairs, participation in the war through military service and for mission work associated with social reconstruction of societies ravished by the war. First, the college was one of a few schools across the country that opened its doors as a training campus for the education of Black youth interested and drafted into service in the armed forces. Throughout the years of the war, Fisk administrators developed what they called the college’s “War Program.” Through partnership with the military
Fisk University had been certified as a center for the Army Specialized Training
Program and for the Army Pre-Professional Training Program in medicine. In
addition, the University has given courses in radio technology, organic chemical
analysis and industrial chemical personnel management under the United States
Office of Education’s program in Engineering, Science Management and War
Training.189
188 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents, 113.
189 Fisk University Catalog, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1943-1944, pg. 48.
135
Coupled with its existing undergraduate majors in math, the natural sciences and its pre-medical and nursing program, the “War Program” at the college added additional technical programs that on the one hand prepared male students for military deployment. On the other hand, women students were able to support the war program through training as nurses. As a result, the college was able to successfully train students for leadership in the war by adding to Fisk’s academic curriculum. In so doing, academic officials taught students that they must be concerned about developing as leaders both at home and abroad.
Further, the school’s War Program was also enhanced by the development of curriculum tied to socializing students to make specific contributions to post-war redevelopment. For example, the Christian Foreign Service Curriculum was geared towards “the preparation of capable and consecrated young people both for reconstruction and rehabilitation of war-wrecked communities and for Christian message bearing in various parts of the world.”190 Also, the
Curriculum in Reconstruction was aimed at preparing “Fisk students to take an active part in the shaping of the post-war world.” This major took as its objective the goal of, “offering students a sequence of related courses designed to widen their understanding of the world’s economic, geographic, social and political relationships.”191 Through the development of both curriculum programs, the college drew upon it emphasis on Christian missions and leadership beyond the needs of the Black community in the U.S. as an important components of the administrations historic model of leadership development for students that emphasized Christianity and mission work.
Second , under his tenure, the training of students in social science research and race relations was an important aspect of Johnson’s model of socializing students for leadership in
190 Ibid, 51.
191 Ibid. 136
Black social progress and racial justice. Drawing upon his previous success as a faculty member in the sociology department, Johnson developed the Race and Culture course of study at the college to train students with specialized expertise and skills in researching solutions to social issues impacting Blacks in America and throughout the diaspora. Specifically,
The Curriculum on Race and Culture focuses attention on the Negro in America
with courses on minority status, the nature of folk society, areas of racial conflict,
miscegenation, and social unrest and control with the necessary field trips and
laboratory programs…Programs are offered for rural and urban service, both in
America and abroad. Especial attention is given to African languages and
cultures.192
As such, the Race and Culture curriculum emphasized the training of students in research related to solving problems impacted by Blacks throughout the diaspora.
Related to this primary goal, Johnson further developed the curriculum in Race and
Culture by organizing opportunities for students to undertake research through the Race
Relations Institute and community service projects associated with the school’s Southern Rural
Life Curriculum. In the area of race relations, because he ardently believed that a “separate
Black culture could not exist in the United States,” according to Katrina M. Sanders, Johnson created the Race Relations Institute to build a knowledge base among leaders across the country of best practices in race relations between groups of all races and cultures in the U.S.
Specifically, Sanders asserts that for Johnson, the basis of the Race Relations Institute was to
accommodate training and research and deal with the distinctive character of
national cultures, migrations, statuses of minority and dependent groups in
culturally advanced as was as culturally backward areas, and the effects of local
192 Ibid. 137
customs and social and political restrictions as barriers to effective intergroup
relations.193
The Fisk Race Relations Institute, with its emphasis on understanding how all races could better relate socially in American society, became Johnson’s research and think tank at Fisk where he further developed his belief that African American social progress was tied to the project of integration. As a result, his goal for Blacks was “equal opportunity and assimilation.”194 Toward that end, students were socialized to partner with Johnson in this goal through attendance at lectures and participation in research projects organized by the Institute.
In a similar vein, students also participated in programs designed to evaluate and improve the living conditions of Blacks in the rural South, including their interactions with whites. The
Southern Rural Life Curriculum program attempted to accomplish both of these goals by
“preparing qualified persons for effective and social and educational leadership in the rural
South.” More specifically, the program was
Concerned with the redirection of education for Negroes in rural communities, the
improvement of their standard of living, the development of better health and
recreational services, the improvement of the rural church, and the development
of community leaders.
Students worked toward this goal by participating in community service projects in organizations throughout the rural South. In this way, students were able to both participate in major research projects on Southern rural life organized by college faculty while also helping to improve the living conditions of Blacks throughout local communities in Tennessee. Students could apply
193 Katrina M. Sanders, “Intelligent and Effective Direction: The Fisk university Race Relations Institute and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1944-1969, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1969, 38.
194 Ibid. 138 their Fisk education to important social issues impacting Black Southern life. As such, opportunities for research and community service through the social sciences and Race and
Culture and Southern Rural Life curriculum programs were important opportunities for students to develop as leaders as they learned first-hand about the discrimination that Black experienced in education, health, employment, politics and other areas. These leadership experiences would prove to be very useful as students were socialized for leadership in the professions geared towards orchestrating the integration of Blacks into American society.
Towards this regard, Johnson’s administration of academic affairs at Fisk also included improvements in the organization of the curriculum to improve access to both baccalaureate and graduate master’s work at the college. During his tenure, Johnson restructured both the bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. The University had long been a recruiter of high achieving African American students enrolling Black youth from across the country. Because
Johnson wanted to expand access to a bachelor’s degree at the school, he organized a lower division program of college studies --the Basic College-- and an upper division of college studies
-- The College of Higher Studies. The primary goal of the Basic College was “to help each student acquire a broad cultural background and to help him achieve unusually high standards in mastering the basic “tools” of college work and professional work – writing, reading, and imaginative thinking.”195 As a result, the Basic College was designed to provide both students with academically strong backgrounds and those lacking proper college preparatory studies but who had strong motivation, a solid educational curriculum that would insure their success in specialized studies in the Higher College.
195 Fisk University Catalog, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1951-1952, pg. 19.
139
Building upon a student’s educational growth in the Basic College, students specialized in a specific major or course of study during their junior and senior years while enrollment in the
College of Higher Studies. It provided, “specialized instruction and research leading to the
Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, and Master of Arts degrees.”196 In addition, each student chose a major concentration in in one of four divisions—Social Sciences (Business
Administration, Economics, Education, History and Government, Psychology, Sociology and
Anthropology); Natural Sciences and Mathematics (Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics);
Humanities (Art, English and Drama, Modern Foreign Languages, Music, Religion, and
Philosophy); and Physical Education and Health. Also, a second goal of the College of Higher
Studies was to bridge the gap between the work of the undergraduate student and that of the graduate student.
These changes and additions to the academic program at Fisk supported Johnson’s goal of preparing students for professional leadership. By enhancing Fisk’s academic programs,
Johnson was able to strategically position the college as a leading educator of Black professionals throughout the late forties and early fifties. As such, students graduating from the college both at the bachelor’s and master’s level were fully prepared for success in their professions as doctors lawyers, teachers, ministers, scientists and in other professions. At the same time, they were fully aware of how they could use their training to address problems of racial injustice and equity.
Transforming Student Affairs and the Training of Race Leaders
The development of student affairs in the late 40’s and throughout the early 50’s under
Johnson’s administration was directly influenced by the important work of Fisk deans and other
196 Ibid, 20. 140 student affairs professionals. The role played specifically by the dean of men and the dean of women in the development of student affairs at the college, modeled the administration’s expectation of students related to their training for race leadership. Specifically, the support that college administrators rendered to the war effort taught students the importance of promoting change through participation within American social institutions. In addition, the modernization effort that Fisk’s student affairs deans brought to the governance of student life at the school had as its aim providing programs that furthered the development of students as race leaders. In both regards, under Johnson’s leadership, school staff anticipated the need to better prepare students for the new professional opportunities existing for Blacks in the post war era. While the veil of
Jim Crow was being torn, students were being prepared to take on leadership in the fight for integration.
At the start of his presidency, Johnson inherited a campus that was in the midst of transitioning itself out of Fisk’s support of the war in its final years. Under Jone’s administration of Fisk, while the college moved toward the development of a more organized student affairs program and student organization structured around gender, the war reconfigured the organization of student affairs on campus in the years between 1942-1945. During these years,
Fisk student affairs was directly shaped and consumed by the college’s support of America’s participation in WWII in two specific ways.
First, during the years of the WWII, Fisk in many respects was a predominantly female college in that men were largely absent from the campus because of participation in the war effort. Specifically, during the years of the war between 1940 and 1945 more female than male students enrolled in the college. The ratio of female to male students during the years of 1940 to 141
1945 was almost 3 to 1.197 What this specifically meant for female students is that they had access to greater leadership opportunities that was previously closed to them because of their gender. During these years, Fisk women served on the general council of the Fisk Student
Government association and predominantly comprised the leadership in organizations that were traditionally occupied by Fisk men. For example, during this time period, women students were the main leaders who controlled leadership in the schools newspaper --The Fisk Herald. In addition, because Fisk was a majority female campus during these years and because of the opportunities for employment in war industries, female students were allowed to major in non- traditional fields in math and the sciences.
After the war and at the start of Johnson’s tenure as President, the college transitioned into developing a distinctive student culture that coincided with the transformation of Fisk’s academic program. Like the academic program, the student program went through significant changes under Johnson’s leadership. Johnson specifically partnered with Fisk deans to develop a student affairs program that supported his goal of preparing students for leadership in a society where the end of Jim Crow was being pushed and where students were encouraged to prepare for new professional opportunities as a result of integration. Towards this end, the student affairs program at Fisk underwent a major overhaul in order to develop a student culture that promoted more autonomy among students and a new model of communication and interaction between students and student affairs professionals.
Related to the organization of the student personnel program, during the 1950’s it was restructured for consistency to parallel the restructuring of the academic program of the college.
At the time, the academic program of the college was restructured and recreated to include both a lower division of college studies known as the Basic College and the upper division of college
197 Fisk University Catalog, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1945-1950. 142 education known as the Division of Higher Studies. To parallel the emphasis on the development of smaller “colleges” by curriculum within the overall academic program, the
Student Personnel Program starting in 1951-1952 was reorganized and led by a two-person team
-- a man and a woman who “were named Deans of Students with coordinate functions and responsibilities,” whose primary goal was to both separately and collaboratively manage a student development program for male students and a student development program for female students. In addition, the revised Student Personnel Program was also assisted and managed by
“sixteen faculty counselors who served as counselor to freshmen and sophomore.” During the junior and senior years students reported to academic counselors in their specific courses of study.198 Outside of the classroom and within the dorms, student social lives were managed by
Residence Hall directors who enforced the rules for men and women student’s published in the
Student Code Book. This academic side of the Student Personnel program worked to insure the academic success of all students at every class level.
Throughout this restructuring of the student personnel program at Fisk, gender expectations, as in previous decades, unfairly allowed men more autonomy than that of Fisk women. In his yearly report Dean Georg W. Goodman, the dean of men at the college asserted,
“while practically all of our major problems covering discipline, scholastic attitude and social behavior, stem from the close association of sexes, where women predominate in numbers but not in democratic social privileges.”199 To be sure, the rules governing the lives of Fisk women
198 Ruth Brett, “The Student Personnel Program,” 1951-1952, Box 21, Folder 8, Charles S. Johnson Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
199 Dean George W. Goodman, “Partial student Personnel Report, April 1952, Box 20, Folder 8, Charles S. Johnson Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 1.
143 throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s largely paralleled the rules and expectations that governed the lives of Fisk women in the late 1920’s and throughout the 1930’s.
However, reflecting the need to promote limited autonomy and self-direction among Fisk women, there were a few exceptions to the rules governing the lives of women students. First, senior class women had more autonomy than first and second year women in that they had more free and unstructured time to do as they pleased including going to the theater. Second, while marriages were outlawed, if a Fisk woman had the permission of her parents, she was allowed to live on her own with her husband off campus. A third major exception that was allowed was that students were allowed to have more dances on campus in college buildings provided that the parties ended by midnight. While these rules were exceptions, for the most part, the rules surrounding women’s dress, riding in cars, relationships with men and where they could or could not go were under the governance of the same rules that existed at Fisk since the 1920’s.200
However, while most of the stringent rule remained at Fisk through the mid 50’s, the greatest area of women’s autonomy could be found in the increased opportunities for student self-direction through the larger number of organizations opened to women students. New organizations that opened to Fisk women throughout the 50’s included the drama team, the debate team and the addition of two sororities at Fisk including Delta Sigma Theta and Alpha
Kappa Alpha sorority. These activities were in addition to the literary societies and Women’s
Senate that historically served as organizations where Black women could look to perform leadership. In addition, related to opportunities for greater autonomy and self-direction, some mature and upper class students were allowed to live in all-female cottage-styled houses where
200 Fisk Student Code Book, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1950-1956;
144 they were allowed take lessons in housekeeping and cooking. This was one of Fisk’s modernization program initiatives for women students.201
Finally, the most modern change that the dean of men and dean of women brought to the administration of student affairs under Johnson’s administration of Fisk was the model of communication that personnel staff adopted in relating to students. Throughout the 1950’s, the personnel department adopted a model of democratic education for improved relations with students. In reflecting a shift to a more democratic model of interacting with students, George
W. Goodman --Fisk’s dean of men throughout the 1950’s—reminded his colleagues in one of his speeches that previous models of interacting with students involved a “perpetual contest with administration and faculty on one side and students on the other.”202 This in turn created an antagonism among students over the administration’s governance of the student code which kept students and staff from effectively working together to improve the higher education experience students at the school. However, on the other hand, for personnel staff in the 1950’s, the democratic model of interacting with students had as its major emphasis “developing poise, intelligent leadership and good citizenship,” among Fisk students through an awareness that they are capable of self-direction and assistance in decisions that impact their lives as students and their development as race leaders.203
Related to this, Goodman asserts that “all students who enter the portal of institutions of higher learning are to be respected as individuals who are thoroughly capable of accepting responsibilities.” Further he asserts that these, “young men and women will grow by exercising
201 Fisk University Catalog, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1950-1956; Fisk University Student Code Book, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1950-1956;
202 Dean George W. Goodman, “Democratic Education for Student on A college Level,” Not Dated, Box 21, Folder 6, Charles S. Johnson Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN, 4.
203 Ibid.
145 commensurate authority.” As a result, the democratic model of engagement with students adopted by personnel staff promoted student independence, self-government, decision making and collaboration with adults. As such, this democratic model of engagement with students nicely fitted Jonson’s belief in integration as a goal through the collaborative relations of Black professionals with people of other racial and economic backgrounds in the promotion of racial justice. For Goodman, it was imperative that colleges and universities grant students “greater inclusion in policy making, interpretation and enforcement,” if college administrators were to model what Black leaders should expect as a goal of integration -- namely the opportunity for full political participation and the opportunity to shape decisions impacting the lives of Black people.204 Under Johnson’s administration, the student personnel department attempted to accomplish this very goal by developing strategic committees with students related to governance in academic and social affairs.
The Contradictions of Student Engagement in the 1950’s: Apathy or Self-Determination
While changes were made to both the administration of academic and student affairs with the goal of preparing students for leadership in the post war society, Fisk students responded to their socialization for moderate race leadership differently. Throughout the mid 1940’s and early
1950’s, student culture reflected both engagement with racial justice issues and a general attitude of apathy in which students cares were directed more towards the general concerns of student life rather than a concern for activism. The articles and editorials published in the Fisk Forum reflected this range of student engagement.
Between the 1945 and 1950, students at Fisk had the option of participating in a range of social activities that showed the college’s support of student’s leadership development through
204 Dean George W. Goodman, “Democratic Education for Student on A college Level,” 2/ 146 participation in co-curricular organizations.205 Student government options included the
Women’s Senate, the Men’s Senate and the Student-Faculty Council. Music organizations included the University Choir, Jubilee Music and the Fisk University Orchestra. Students could write for the school’s Herald and Clarion magazine. There were also literary societies specifically organized for Fisk women students. Other options for student participation in social organizations and leadership development included participation in the college’s Black Greek system and Fisk’s Dramatics Society.
By the end of WWII, student life at the school was not only preoccupied with Fiskite participation in student government, Greek life and other student organizations. Influenced by the self-determination and activism of students across the country, Fiskites undertook their own antiwar organizing and interracial coalitions in partnerships with other students throughout the
South. For example, students from both Fisk and Meharry College helped to organize an interracial peace conference with other Southern students on April 15, 1945 at The University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The conferenced was convened by students of both historically
Black and predominantly white colleges. In addition, the conference was dedicated to the
“principles of democracy and world peace upheld by the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
At the conference students discussed ideas related to peace and world democracy and used their meeting time to choose a “president and executive secretary of what they expected would become a permanent interracial organization of college students working towards the interest of democracy, justice, and peace.”206
205 Fisk University Catalog, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1945-1950.
206 “Southern Students Organize Interracial Conference,” Norfolk, VA Journey and Guide, 28 April 1945, 1.
147
At the conference, a Fiskite -- Charles Procter -- was elected as president of the newly- formed Conference of Southern Students. Student organizing such as this evidenced Fisk students’ response to the war effort through self-determined collaborative organizing. In addition, this form of student organizing, on the one hand, evidenced student’s acceptance of the administration’s model of moderate racial politics in that they saw the utility in building interracial alliances with other students. However, students’ participation in the peace conference at The University of North Carolina revealed their support of movements that promoted peace and justice for all people including the eradication of Jim Crow throughout the
U.S. South.
In addition to opportunities for anti-war organizing, by 1946 some Fisk students were socialized for the work of race-relations by supporting campaigns for peace and social justice as a result of student affairs programing at Fisk. Toward the end of the war, student affairs programming at the college included lectures and conferences which broadened students’ understanding of the war and global affairs. Many of these lectures and conferences were organized by the Fisk University Race Relations Institute. For example, the Institute sponsored a talk by “Haitian Journalist, lawyer, teacher and special representative of the Department of
Public Instruction, from Haiti, who spoke “on trends in the education of the masses in Haiti.”207
In Mr. Clover’s talk, students learned that the big task facing Haiti was “the ignorance of the masses.”208
Finally, this particular talk took place as a part of the annual Festival of Music and Fine
Arts. During the festival, students were also invited to a talk titled, “Culture Contacts in Puerto
Rico,” in which the speaker emphasized that the “Caribbean chain of islands, and each island
207 “Haitian Lawyer Speaker at Fisk Intercultural Seminar,” Afro-American, 19 May 1945,1.
208 Ibid. 148 separately, is an ideal laboratory for fundamental racial and cultural research.” Through participation in intercultural seminars such as these, students learned about the impact of discrimination and poverty on Blacks in other countries and as a result were able to link the social struggles impacting Blacks in the U.S. to those of impacting Blacks throughout the diaspora. They also learned how African descended people racially interacted with other races in geographic contexts other than the U.S.
Also, while students were being exposed to a range of intercultural seminars, some students were able to bridge gaps between their exposure to social justice lectures and conferences on campus to anti-segregation campaigns off campus in the mid to late forties. Fisk students who objected to segregated public and recreational facilities in downtown Nashville tried to get their fellow Fiskites to join with them in protesting segregated businesses in
Nashville. In an opinion peace on segregated movies one student wrote “that there are many who feel that no member of the human race should actually pay and be humiliated by other members of the human race.” Presenting another side of the issue, the author also wrote in the same editorial that, “there are many who feel that if one wants to see a movie badly enough, and considers the picture to be good enough, he should stand the little inconvenience caused by having to walk down the side alley,” to enter the segregated theatre.209
This difference of opinion, supported the reality that the self-determination of some
Fiskites against Jim Crow was countered by others students’ lack of concern with direct activism. These students chose instead to avoid the Jim Crow social scene and focus more on building their own social activities within the Fisk environment. For example, in response to the editorial on segregated movies another student asserted, “while advocating boycotts of movies, it
209 “That’s the Situation: Segregated Movies,” The Fisk Forum, 18 February 1949, 2.
149 would be nice if something could be done on campus to give students more to do in the line of recreation.”210
Yet even while some Fisk students did not support the self-determination of their peers, a few Fiskites continued to organize student workshops and organizations to raise awareness of the need to challenge Jim Crow. By the end of 1949, students had organized a student chapter of the
NAACP and organized a few membership drives among the Fisk student body.211 They also organized workshops designed to lead Fisk students in a discussion of the effectiveness of the university in preparing students for leadership. At a panel titled “Fisk Investigated,” a student panelist asserted, “higher education has been investigated and talked about in many circles, but seldom by students. This is a student slant on whether university education is really preparing us for actual life: whether universities are aware of their responsibility, particularly Negro universities in the South.”212 As a result, these sporadic efforts that some student undertook in countering the political apathy of their Fisk peers evidenced an ongoing critique of the social purposes of a Fisk education -- to socialize students to be primarily middle class professionals who were producers and consumers of Black culture or to produced Black alumni who in addition to being members of the Black middle class, concerned themselves with the social challenges encountered by all Blacks regardless of class and educational background.
To be sure, throughout the 50’s, student self-determination and political apathy existed side by side as student culture became, outside of academics, the center of the Black student experience at the college. While there were no significant changes to the types of student organizations that existed on campus throughout the early and mid-50’s, certain student
210 “That’s the Situation: More Recreational Facilities,” The Fisk Forum, 18 February 1949, 2.
211 Geddes Jones, “Join The NAACP Today,” The Fisk Forum, 7 October 1949, 3.
212 “Fisk Investigated,” The Fisk Forum, 4 March 1949, 1. 150 organizations became more predominate among the Fisk student body. Every, issue of the Fisk
Forum was concerned with the social activities of Black Greek organizations and the yearly
Miss. Fisk campaign. Between 1950 and 1956, publishers of the Fisk Forum oversaw the publication of articles and editorials written on Black Greek life related to their social activities, discipline issues, and pledge campaigns.213 Like fraternity and sorority life at the college, the yearly Miss Fisk campaigns were a dominant theme appearing in the Fisk Forum between the late 40’s and early 50’s more so than at any other moment previously chronicled in the history of its publication. The number of articles appearing throughout the publication suggests that students were genuinely interested in the background of the next Miss Fisk. Mostly, the articles and editorials provided pictures and background descriptions of the Miss Fisk candidates.214
While these articles and others evidence the important role of student culture at Fisk throughout the 1950’s, sporadic articles and editorials related to students lack of support for programs sponsored by the International Student Center evidence the enduring political apathy among Fisk students toward the end of Johnson’s presidency. Throughout the 1950’s, it served as a hub for the intellectual and politically inspired work of self-determined Fiskites who were committed to increasing the political awareness of students and encouraging them to support social justice and race relations work. In this regard, the International Student Center developed a range of programs. The International Student Center -- or the ISC as it was colloquially referred to by students -- sponsored international and domestic foreign films about Black life
213 “Greek Letter Organizations Reinstated: Fraternities and Sororities Have Been Made to See Responsibility in Second Suspension To Date,” Fisk Forum, 5 May , 1950, 1; “Fraternities Choose Sweethearts For 1950,” Fisk Forum, 27 October , 1950; “Local AKA’s and Omega’s Are Tops on Talent Show,” Fisk Forum, 29 March 1953, 1;
214 “Students Elect Gwendolyn Gregory Miss Fisk,” Fisk Forum, 19 October, 1951, 1; Houstonian Elected Miss Fisk, Fisk Forum, 10 November, 1950, 1; “Where are the Other Miss Fisks,” Fisk Forum, 10 November, 1950; Do You Want a Miss Fisk: Students, Alumni Divided on Council Action to Abolish Fisk’s Campus Queen, Fisk Forum, 3 March, 1956, 1.
151 throughout the diaspora, jazz hours featuring local artists, student forums with seminars and discussions organized around race relations topics and lecturers by noted Black intellectuals and artists like Langston Hughes.215
Clearly, the articles and the editorials published in the Fisk Forum in the years immediately after the war and through the fifties reflect two predominant interests among the
Fisk student body. On the one hand some students were more concerned about equality, social justice and politics whereas other were more concerned with the realities of student life including its academic and social dimension. The improvements made under Johnson’s administration in both the development of academic affairs and student affairs supported this duality. Some Fisk students were able use their academic experiences as a foundation for the basis of their self- determination in matters of race relations and social justice. They were able to use their academic understanding of equality in promoting awareness about Black people’s struggle against Jim Crow and their fight for social justice.
Also, the modernization of student affairs and the development of more activities for Fisk students meant that Fiskites sustained a vibrant student culture through their participation in all that student life at Fisk had to offer them. Yet, even while student culture was vibrant at Fisk during the 1950’s, students matured as respectable leaders in that participating in Greek life, literary, musical organizations and serving as writers for student publications, gave them experiences outside of the classroom where they could strengthen important skills that would be useful to them as young professionals in their work beyond the Fisk campus. Student activities provided Fiskites the opportunities to develop pride in Black culture and experience in organizing, speaking, writing, and performing.
215 “Langston Hughes Appears Here,” Fisk Forum, 14 November 1953, 1. “What’s The Matter with Fisk Students?” Fisk Forum, 30 October 1953, 1; “Are You Missing Them, Too?,” Fisk Forum, 27 November 1953., 4; “We Miss Too Many Opportunities,” Fisk Forum, 9 April 1954, 2; 152
Further, the duality of engagement existing among Fisk’s student body under Johnson’s administration both supported and contradicted the model of moderate racial politics espoused by
Johnson’s administration. In some respects, students were apathetic about issues surrounding social justice but were influenced by the college’s goal of socializing students for Black middle class culture. Students’ affinity to supporting Black social organizations during their college years -- especially Black fraternities and sororities -- became the social organizations through which alumni served their communities in their post-collegiate lives. Furthermore, the relationships that students created with Black social organizations as undergraduates, as a result, later became the organizations that played an important role in contributing to the decline of Jim
Crow.
Also, the self-determination that some students exhibited during Johnson’s administration showed that while on the one hand students accepted Johnson’s model of moderate racial politics, politically inclined students tried to advance Black social progress through strategic self- determined endeavors. Students’ self-determination as it related to the promotion of social justice awareness among the Fisk student body included indicting editorials published in the Fisk
Forum contradicting student apathy; support of controversial films, lectures and discussions at the International Student Center; and the organization of student panels that exposed students to the relationship between a Fisk education and the call to serve the Black community through the advocating of equal justice for African Americans. These self-determined responses among Fisk students both contradicted and added to Johnson’s emphasis on promoting Black social progress through the training of students for professional careers.
Overall, as the 1950’s came to an end, the duality of student apathy and student self- determination magnified as more Fisk students became active in civil rights organizing. Further, 153 increased student activism of the late fifties and early sixties would pose a direct challenge to the moderate racial politics of Charles Johnson. In the aftermath of Johnson’s death, Fisk administrators were challenged to rethink the project of educating students to advance Black social progress through the training of students for professional leadership. Fiskites in the late fifties and sixties, while concerned with desegregation and integration, looked to direct non- violent political organizing as the strategy toward which they navigated African American social progress. In so doing, they confronted the apathy of some of their peers and the initial cautiousness and moderate racial politics of Fisk presidents of the late 50’s and 60’s in supporting student participation in civil disobedience. As a result, the self-determination of a few students would also pose a direct challenge to the governance of student life at the college as more and more students became radicalized and brought their civil disobedience to Fisk’s campus in the form of Black Power.
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CHAPTER 5: FISKITES, CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK POWER: ACTIVISM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF STUDENT LEADERSHIP AT FISK, 1957-1970
Introduction
On the morning of April 19, 1960, after weeks of participating in nonviolent demonstrations to desegregate lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Diane Nash found herself standing on the steps of the Nashville city courthouse. She stood before more than one thousand people who had just completed a silent march. Standing with Mayor Ben West, she was acutely aware of the need to get the mayor to take a definitive stance on the issue of segregated lunch counters in the city. Also, “she found that she was tired of all the wasted words and tired of
West behaving like a politician instead of a human being.” Nash grew weary of hearing his, “I- integrated-the-airport-lunchroom-for-you speech,” as his answer to the problem of segregation in
Nashville. Resolutely, “she asked Ben West to use the prestige of his office to end racial segregation.” And in response to Nash, he declared, “I appeal to all citizens to end discrimination, to have no bigotry, no bias, and no hatred.” Further prodding the Mayor along,
Nash asked “Do you mean that to include lunch counters?” Mayor West then asserted to Nash,
“I stopped segregation seven years ago at the airport when I first took office, and there has been no trouble there since.” Nash concluded her dialogue with Mayor West by asking, “Then Mayor, do you recommend that the lunch counters be desegregated?” In her dialogue she cornered the
Mayor into saying “yes” to the end of lunch counter discrimination in the city.216
Nash’s successful attempt in getting the Mayor to end lunch counter desegregation in the city exemplified the model of Civil Rights leadership toward which students activists at Fisk and others colleges in Nashville made claim. The activism of Nash and other student activists was a
216 For an overview of Diane Nash’s participation in the local Civil Rights movement in Nashville, TN, see David Halberstam, The Children (New York: Random House, 1998), 233-234.
155 critique of the enduring apathy among Fisk students from the 1950’s. In addition, the demonstrating and organizing of student activists critiqued the moderate approach to race leadership and race relations upheld by administrators during President Johnson’s tenure. Unlike
Fisk administrators in the 1950’s, Nash did not believe that Black students were to be only scholars who led change in their communities through their professional careers. Her history of participation in the Civil Rights movement suggests that she believed that students at Black colleges were called to support movements for social justice which aimed to improve the lives of all Black people. As such, Nash represented a model of race leadership that had as its primary objective dismantling the remnants of Jim Crow while pushing for racial integration. Thus, her activism stood outside the norms of historic expectations of leadership for women students that prevailed at Fisk prior to 1960.
In addition, Nash, like other Black college students, attempted to bridge the gap between her college experiences at Fisk and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the sixties and seventies. At the heart of the Fisk students’ motivations for participating in movement demonstrations was the ongoing critique by students of the relationship between their college, models of race leadership and social equality for Black people. In addition, their protests were concerned with questioning, changing and transforming the policies and procedures governing the design of coeducation and the philosophy of education at Fisk. Finally, students wanted to transform the institutions enduring commitment to educating students for leadership that did not have as its end goal the complete dismantling of Jim Crow and a push toward full integration of
Blacks into American society. Through their activism in both the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, students made claims to a higher education program that would equip them to advance social progress in their communities. In this way, they wanted their education to prepare 156 them for relevant leadership. This chapter chronicles how ideals of respectable leadership and the politics of respectability changed at Fisk during the 1960’s through 1970 as some students became actively involved in the Civil Rights and Black Power demonstrations on and off of
Fisk’s campus.
Toward this end, Fisk students negotiated the politics of respectability at Fisk in order to develop a model of race leadership that was linked to the Black struggle for civil equality by engaging in activism within the Nashville community, nationally and on the Fisk campus. For example, Fiskites --through on campus and off campus organizing and collaboration, participated in the student sit-ins of the 1960’s, the Freedom Rides and the economic boycotts in the early sixties in downtown Nashville. In addition, the student rights and Black Power protests campaigns at Fisk throughout the mid-60s’s and 70’s culminated in student activists organizing the “Week of Reckoning” at the school. The “Week of Reckoning” was a weeklong boycott of classes in which they organized workshops that attempted to provide Fisk students with a curriculum that was more “Black” focused and relevant to the socialization of Black students for race leadership. Because of the Civil Rights and Black Power inspired self-determination of student activists, Fisk University presidents Stephen Junius Wright and James Lawson and their administrators shifted the administration’s model of educating students for race leadership in the revolutions of the sixties and the seventies. As a result, their model of race leadership for students was much more progressive than that upheld by administrators under Johnson’s administration in the early fifties.
Through their activism, students modeled leadership in struggles for civil rights and a more relevant education at Fisk through non-violent political agitation of the 1960’s and the
Black Power-inspired demonstrations of the 1970’s. As an alternative to the moderate model of 157 race leadership of the late forties and fifties, the civil rights model of race leadership espoused by
Fisk student activists combined the ideals of equal rights and Black Power. In making claim to the civil rights model of leadership, students called upon the school to educate students to address the needs of the Black community as African American made claims to their rights through civil disobedience. In so doing, students developed a model of race leadership that relied upon a more radical form of self-determination. This radical self-determination performed among Fisk student activists in the demonstrations of the sixties and seventies was much more organized and political than their activism of the 1940’s and 1950’s. In addition, student activists wanted their school to educate them for professional work and leadership in the movement. As such, by the end of Johnson’s tenure as President of Fisk in 1956, students no longer bought into the integration via assimilation ideals of the Johnson administration.
As such, Fisk student activism directly transformed the expectation of leadership that college administrators held for their students in service to the Black community. The early participation of Fisk students in the Civil Rights movement redefined the how Fisk presidents and administrators socialized students for race leadership throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Fisk presidents shifted from a moderate to progressive stance in their management of the
University and students’ participation in the Civil Rights movement. Specifically, President
Johnson’s 1950’s moderate politics of race relations and ideal of preparing students for race leadership through professional work gave way to the more progressive approach towards student socialization for leadership espoused by President William Junius Wright and President
James Lawson throughout the 60’s and early 70’s.
By the late 1950’s, Fisk shifted from an institution that educated students for race leadership through assimilation into American society via the training of students for 158 professional work to an institution that socialized students for race leadership through political agitation. Fisk presidents of the 1960’s and 1970’s were much more progressive in their approach to the socialization of students for race leadership. To be sure, the participation of students in the Civil Rights and Black Power protests of the 1960’s and 1970’s forced both
President Stephen Junius Wright and President Lawson to rethink the critical relation between the philosophy of higher education and race leadership at Black colleges and the preparation of
Black students for life and leadership in the changing social culture of the 60’s. Thus both
President Wright and President Lawson supported the training of students for race leadership through integration that was not based on assimilation but was based on full social equality.
However, President Wright and President Lawson differed in how and to what degree they supported Black students claim to a model of respectable race leadership that advocated full civil equality. As such, their liberal approach toward educating students for race leadership was achieved through different means. Specifically, whereas President Wright accepted student’s desire to attack Jim Crow, President Lawson was much more committed to educating students for race leadership while keeping Fisk stable. Thus he believed that change could happen at Fisk without alienating the institution’s philanthropists. In this way President Lawson was more progressive than Johnson but less liberal than President Wright. 217
Finally, student activism transformed gender expectations related to student leadership at
Fisk as both male and female Fiskites rose to important leadership roles in the local and national movement. As a result, norms policing gender behaviors were redefined and led to a loosening of the conservative boundaries that shaped acceptable behaviors associated with student leadership. What this meant in particular for Black women is that their activism in the late
217 The history of the leadership of Fisk University presidents is outlined at length in L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents, 1875-1975, (Nashville, TN: Hemphill’s Creative Printing Inc., 1989).
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1960’s and 1970’s allowed them to occupy leadership roles and exhibit behaviors both on and off campus that were not deemed outside of the boundaries of respectable norms and behaviors toward which Black colleges women students were held accountable. The socialization of Black students for race leadership in the 1960’s and 1970’s --though similar to the 1920’s-- differed in that Black women students had more autonomy and flexibility in performing race leadership beyond prescriptive roles. Diane Nash’s successful attempt at getting Mayor West to publically state his opposition to segregated lunch counters represented a model of leadership that was now acceptable for a Fisk woman.
Black Colleges as Movement Centers and the Importance of Fisk University
Black student activists attempted to transform the politics of race and gender relations at
Fisk and other historically Black colleges for two reasons. First, they wanted Black colleges to play an active role in the Civil Rights movement. Second, they wanted their schools to better prepare students for movement leadership. This meant that they had to find and build bridges between activism in the local and national Civil Rights movement and their activism on campus.
As student activists, they played an important and significant role in transforming the politics of respectable race leadership at Fisk and in the development of leadership in the Civil Rights movement. Further, their activism and leadership positioned the college as an important theatre of activism in the Movement both on and off the campus of Fisk.
In chronicling the history of the Civil Rights movement, historians and sociologists have documented at length the role played by Black student activists in local and national struggles of the movement. Specifically, scholars have analyzed the contributions of notable student activists like John Lewis, Stokley Carmichael, and Diane Nash in key civil rights demonstration including 160 the student sit-in movement, the Freedom Rides, protests and the voting registration campaigns associated with Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964. However, while scholars agree that student activists played important and essential roles in the development of the Civil rights and
Black Power movements, few scholars have critically analyzed the relationship between these student activists in the movement and the contributions of Black colleges as important spaces of activism and producers of movement leadership.218 According to historian Joy Williamson, “the problem with the existing research is that social movement studies merely mention that Black colleges were movement centers and do not provide an in-depth treatment of the college campus as an organized site, and higher educational history relegates Black students and Black colleges to the margins of the story of student activism and the American university.”219
As a result, scholars documenting the contributions of student activists to the dissent of the 1960’s have failed to analyze these colleges as central theatres of the Civil Rights movement or what scholar Aldon D. Morris has described as a movement center that is a “social organization within the community of a subordinate group, which mobilizes, organizes, and coordinates collective action aimed at attaining the common ends of that subordinated community.”220 Thus, while demonstrations that were connected to local civil rights struggles did draw on leadership from Black college students and at times influenced demonstrations on
Black college campuses, the history and scholarship of the Civil Rights movement, for the most
218 For additional information on Black student activism in the Civil Rights movement, see William Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995).
219 Williamson, Joy Ann. Radicalizing the Ebony Tower: Black Colleges and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi, (New York: Teachers College Press, 2008), 2.
220 Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, (New York: The Free Press, 1984), 40.
161 part, does not analyze Black colleges as “movement centers.” In addition, the scholarship does not explore the important role that these institutions played in socializing movement participants for collective action. Finally, the scholarship also does not position Black colleges as social spaces that prepared movement participants for respectable leadership. However, more recent historical case studies of Black colleges and student activism in the Civil Rights movement have attempted to illuminate the reasons behind scholarly inattention to Black colleges as movement centers.
For example, in Radicalizing the Ebony Tower: Black Colleges and the Black Freedom
Struggle in Mississippi, Joy Williamson outlines specific reasons as to why Black colleges have not been critically analyzed as movement centers in the Civil Rights movement. First,
Williamson makes the claim that these schools have not been analyzed as movement centers because scholars have extracted “students from their campus reality and analyzed them as if their identity as activists preempted or was more important than their identity as students.” This, she finds, was problematic because “students did not terminate their interest in the Black freedom struggle while on the college campus, nor did they terminate their student status when they participated in campaigns organized by other protest organizations.”221
Second, Williamson asserts that the funding status of Black college --public or private-- should not be used by scholars to predict the participation of students in the Civil Rights movement. Thus while “a college’s financial and political relationship to the state” is important,
“a structuralist argument that focuses on the private college and the public college misses the on- campus negotiation that occurred, ignores the cultural framework necessary to transform colleges
221 Joy Ann Williamson, Radicalizing the Ebony Tower, 2.
162 into movement centers, and only partially answers the question of why some campuses became movement centers while others did not.”222
Finally, related to problems in the literature concerning the participation of Black students in the Civil Rights movement, Williamson also asserts that scholars, when comparing
Black college students to other non-student participants in the movement, have exaggerated the protected status of Black students. Williamson concludes that scholars’ emphasis on the youthful and institutionally protected status of Black students and their treatment of “student participation in protest activity as a natural outgrowth of college attendance trivializes the pressure students and colleges were under not to participate and the consequences they faced in doing so.” As such, “participation was not an inevitable outcome of college attendance” because
“it was an act of will.”223
In order to challenge these problematic interpretations of the participation of Black student activists in the Civil Rights movement, it is necessary to analyze these institutions as movement centers in the Civil Rights movement. This will shed light on the most important contribution that Black colleges made to the development of the Civil Rights movement. That important contribution was the training of youth for a form respectable race leadership that was linked to movements for social justice on behalf of the community. Furthermore, scholarly attention on Black colleges as movement centers will result in histories of the Civil Rights movement that explore activism at these institutions in relation to local and national movement struggles. These studies can also complicate what historians know about how Black schools did or did not educate student for leadership. It will also give scholars an understanding of how
222 Ibid, 4.
223 Ibid, 5. 163 students responded, negotiated and /or transformed their socialization as race leaders beyond the prescriptive roles and social needs of their community.
President Stephen Junius Wright and Progressive Change at Fisk, 1957-1966
At Fisk, student activists were successful in bridging the gap between campus activism and community activism. Further, their community activism forced administrators and faculty to expand definitions of respectable race leadership for students in the 1960’s. They were able to do this primarily through their participation in the local Civil Rights movement in Nashville. By the time that Fiskites organized and participated with other students in the first round of sit-in demonstrations during the spring of 1960, the college was well on its way to becoming an important movement center. Specifically, the campus became an important meeting place for civil rights leaders to gather and strategize related to organizing at the local and national level.
In part, the institutional stability achieved at the school by the start of the sit-in movement in February of 1960 helped to strengthen the selection of the Fisk campus as an import theatre of movement organizing. President Johnson’s administration of the school was characterized by great success in the institutions academic and fiscal management. As a result, in 1956, President
Stephen Junius Wright --who served as the President from 1957-1966-- encountered the important challenge of outlining and implementing a solid program of success in Fisk’s academic, fiscal and financial affairs to continue the legacy of progress bequeathed him as a result of Johnson’s tenure.
President Wright’s prior professional and leadership experiences prepared him for the challenge of progressive leadership at Fisk. Recommended by Fisk alumnus and historian John
Hope Franklin, Dr. Wright had the credentialed background necessary for the leadership of Fisk. 164
“Born in 1910 in Dillon, South Carolina, he graduated from Hampton in 1934 and earned
graduate degrees from Howard University in 1939 and New Your University in 1943.
Professionally, he rose from a high school teacher in Maryland, to a principalship, to
director of students teaching at North Carolina College, to director of the division of
education and dean of the faculty at Hampton, to president of Bluefield State College in
West Virginia.”224
Coupled with this record of leadership in Black colleges, he also served on and held membership in numerous professional organizations committed to the success of Black colleges and its students including the “Executive Committee of the National Association of Collegiate Deans and Registrars in Negro Schools, the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for
Negroes and the Advisory Committee on Adult Education in Negro Colleges,” to name a few.225
His prior employment and leadership experiences resulted in a track record of success at
Fisk, and as in Johnson’s case, resulted in a presidency of the institution that was characterized by progressive leadership. In his book One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents, 1875-
1975, L.M. Collins describes Wrights style of presidency at Fisk as pragmatic.226 Sensing the important changes that the college needed to undergo in the years of ahead, Wright outlined a presidential administration that though programmatic, was much more progressive and liberal in his relations with faculty, staff, students and alumni. Early in his presidency Wright outlined specific goals that became important hallmarks of his career. Some of his early goals included
224 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents, 138. Also, for additional detailed information related to the background of President Stephen Junius Wright and his administrative achievements at Fisk, refer to the bio file, “President Stephen Junius Wright,” in the Fiskiana Collection in the Special Collection of the Franklin Library at Fisk University in Nashville, TN.
225 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk Presidents, 139.
226 For a complete overview of President Stephen Junius Wright’s presidency of Fisk, refer to L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk Presidents, 136-171.
165 increasing finances and the Fisk endowment, attracting quality faculty, improving university relations with alumni, and preparing students for leadership in the world.227
At the time of Wright’s presidency, the university needed to secure new sources of aid.
He accurately informed the university community that “There is a widespread belief that financial contributions to our colleges and universities by former donors will become increasingly difficult to secure.”228 Committed to increasing the Fisk endowment and the amount of aid given to the college, Wright looked to increase aid from organizations and individuals that did not require Fisk to confine itself to maintaining the status quo in Southern race relations by educating students to accept rather than challenge Jim Crow. This was in lieu of getting aid from
Boards of Education and some philanthropists who would only give money to Black colleges that abided by the social mores of Jim Crow.229 As a result, President Wright looked to organizations like the United Negro fund and Fisk alumni for financial support.230 This strategy became more and more important as some philanthropists withdrew their aid to Fisk as students became more active in the Civil Rights movements and as some philanthropists realized that in financially supporting Fisk, they were aiding “Black students in their rise to first class citizenship,” as Black students sought full equality through civil agitation.231
Also, Wright was a visionary in the administration of the academic and student affairs of the school. During his tenure, he developed an honors college at the college and in 1966 he spearheaded campaigns to build a new science hall, humanities center, library and stadium
227 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk Presidents, 144, 150.
228 President Wright’s forecast of the sources of aid to Fisk was quoted in L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk Presidents, 155.
229 Ibid., 155.
230 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk Presidents, 144, 155.
231Ibid., 155. 166 among other academic and physical improvements.232 Other academic goals included strengthening the overall academic program and the successful establishment of the Phi Beta
Kappa honor society on campus.233
In addition, his leadership in the management of student affairs was characterized by equal success. As a major goal, Wright attempted to equalize the enrollment between female and male students.234 To specifically attract male students, he set aside funds for a scholarship, started a campaign for the building of a new dorm for men, and pledged to support the continued development of athletics at Fisk.235 Further, his administration of student affairs included a successful building program throughout his presidency which included the building and dedication of the Spence Student Union, the renovation of Jubilee Hall for female students and the support of a wide variety of new student housing plans.236 He also encouraged Fisk administrators to support the development new student clubs and organizations that catered to the diverse interests of students throughout the late 1950’s and 1960’s.237
Related to the socialization of students for leadership, President Wright implemented a solid program of change and innovation as a byproduct of the changing student culture at the institution. Wright inherited a student culture at the school that differed than that under
Johnson’s administration. Unlike the student culture at Fisk in the early to mid-fifties, the nonviolent direct activism of a small cadre of students in the late 50’s and early 60’s shifted
232 Ibid, 156-158.
233 Ibid., 163.
234 Ibid., 164.
235 Ibid., 147, 164.
236 Ibid., 148, 149, 155, 159.
237 Ibid., 159.
167 attitudes toward race relations among students from apparent apathy to a concern for participation in the struggle for Black social and civil equality. Thus, the president entered a
Fisk community in 1956 that was fairly stable academically but whose student culture was changing as a result of student activism in local civil rights struggles.
The shift in student culture at Fisk from one characterized by apparent apathy to one characterized by radically self-determined engagement in the demonstrations of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements was directly tied to student demographics at Fisk. Since the 1920’s as the student population began to increase, the university’s developed a student body national in scope. Throughout the 1960’s, Fisk continued to enroll students from across the country including sizeable numbers of students from major urban centers including Atlanta, Chicago and
New York City.238 These students brought with them an awareness of the discrimination and inequality impacting African American life in their local home cities and communities. As they experienced life on campus and were exposed to the entrenched segregation in the surrounding
Nashville community, they experienced a disjuncture between their world on campus and the reality of Black life off of campus. For activists like Diane Nash from Chicago, and John Lewis from Georgia, this spurred a desire to bridge the gap between their higher education and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement.
Nash and Lewis were students who enrolled at Fisk in the late 1950’s and represented a student body that was less apathetic than their peers of the early fifties. Inspired by an awareness of both local and national civil rights organizing, students enrolled at the school in the late
1950’s and early 1960’s sought to engage themselves more fully in the local movement in
238Detailed information on the geographic backgrounds of Fisk students are included in the Fisk University Catalogs. Specifically see Fisk University, Fisk University Annual Catalog, (Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1957-1970).
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Nashville. They wanted to satisfy their desire to make their education relevant to the social issues impacting African Americans locally and nationally. Through their activism, student activists at the college posed a major challenge to the apathy existing amongst the school’s student body, which was a legacy of the 1950’s, while shaping the model of leadership espoused by the administration.
President Wright was fully prepared to navigate the dual challenge of keeping Fisk stable while addressing student’s demands for a more relevant education that would prepare them for life and leadership in the revolution of the 1960’s. Wright navigated this challenge first and foremost by being progressive rather than conservative in his attitudes towards student activism.
According to Angeline Butler, a student activist at Fisk during the 1960-1961 academic year,
Wright was the “first president in the South to support the students, on the very first day of
[their] arrests,” and he “rode all night long from Tuskegee Institute where he was at a meeting,” to get back to campus to help those students who had been arrested for participating in the sit- ins.239 By Butler’s standards, Wright’s actions evidenced his progressive support of the beliefs of student activists and the civil rights model of race leadership that they performed. Coupled with his pragmatic beliefs and awareness that the institution had to change with the social climate of the 1960’s, Wright’s approach to student dissent gelled nicely with the desire of activists to bridge the gap between their socialization for race leadership and their desire to challenge the racial inequality experienced by Blacks in Nashville.
Fisk Student Leadership in the Local and National Civil Rights Movement 1957-1963 The early organizing of student activists at Fisk resulted in a direct challenge to the discrimination experienced by African Americans locally in Nashville and across the country.
239 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson, tape recording, 21 March 2005, Civil Rights Oral History Project of the Nashville Public Library, Nashville Tennessee.
169
Secondly, their activism shifted the relationship of the university to the local civil rights movements. Third, student dissent also transformed the socialization of students for race leadership at the college. Finally, their activism positioned the university as an important theatre in the civil rights movement both locally and nationally.
The activism of Fisk students centered Nashville, Tennessee as an important theater in the Civil Rights movement and the national student sit-in demonstrations of the 1960’s. The
Nashville movement is significant in that many of the student activists who arose to local leadership in civil demonstrations in the community went on to hold top organizing positions in important movement organizations including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) and the Freedom Riders. As a result there was an overlap between organizing in the
Nashville movement and organizing in the national civil rights movements. David Halberstam’s history, titled The Children, which is an overview of the local and national campaigns of participants in the movement, chronicles the activism of select Fisk students through important civil demonstrations. Student activists from Fisk who became important leaders in the movement at the national level included Diane Nash, John Lewis, and James Bevel. As evidenced in Halberstam’s chronology, these students and others participated in important movement campaigns across the country. They attended the 1961 student organizing meeting of the SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina. They participated in the Freedom Rides which was an integrated group of Black and white activists who traveled across the South to challenge segregated public transportation in select Southern cities. And finally they participated in
Freedom Summer which was a voting rights campaign designed to get Blacks registered to vote in Mississippi during the summer of 1961.240
240See David Halberstam’s The Children for a history of Fisk students’ participation in the national Civil Rights movement. 170
As a result, there was also a direct tie between national activism and activism on the Fisk campus. The Fisk campus became an important space of organizing. Fisk students who were activists in the movement were in direct communication with other movement centers around the country. For example, hours after the sit-in movement began in Greensboro, North Carolina,
James Lawson, a minister who trained students in non-violence, received a phone call from someone in the movement in Greensboro asking him what he was going to do in Nashville to support the sit-in actions of the Greensboro students. Unlike the Greensboro movement, Fisk students had already trained with Lawson in the principles of nonviolence and were organized to sit-in whenever the opportunity arose. In comparison to the Greensboro movement, the
Nashville movement
had already had up to three hundred people who knew what nonviolence was,
who had gone down at some point, testing the stores and the reactions of the
community, and bringing that back to the workshops. So we had a base.
Greensboro didn’t have an organization. …241
Thus the Fisk campus was linked into both the sit-in movement from the community level through involvement in nonviolent workshops and the national level in that they were tied into to other sit-in movements around the country. Further, the Fisk campus became locally an important meeting place of student activists and community leaders related to the organizing and training of activists for civil demonstrations in segregated Nashville in that students and community leaders met on campus to plan their demonstrations. 242 As such, the Fisk campus
241 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson. 242 Ibid.
171 was a movement center, according to Aldon Morris’s definition of movement centers, in that it provided the space for organizers to work with multiple constituents groups in the movement.243
Related to the sin-in movement in Nashville, Fisk students who participated in the early demonstrations, specifically the organized sit-in boycotts of segregated lunch counters and movie theatres were trained in the principles of nonviolent protests by James Lawson. The early workshops organized by Jim Lawson first introduced Fisk students to nonviolent practice. In training young people in Nashville in nonviolence protest strategy, Lawson had two revelations.
First, he was “absolutely convinced that what had happened in Montgomery was not a fluke, that it was the first step in a long enduring process which would inevitably force ….the American people to make a larger commitment to justice on the issue of race,” through nonviolent strategy.244 Second, he was “confident from his own studies that the possibilities of using
Ghandhian techniques in the American South were almost limitless.”245 In addition, since
“Nashville was a city which was a major magnet for Black college students at a time when their frustration was beginning to smolder,” he was sure he could find young people who would be
“eager to find some movement to which they could belong.”246 With these firm beliefs, Lawson introduced hundreds of students, including a good number from Fisk, to the principles of nonviolent protest.
For students activists like Diane Nash, John Lewis, James Bevel, Marion Berry, and
Angeline Butler, nonviolent protest was the only way they knew how to become active in the movement in order to make direct social change. Angeline Butler asserts, “Nonviolence, that
243 Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 40.
244 David Halberstam, The Children, 27.
245Ibid.
246 Ibid.
172 was our code of behavior, and not everybody was nonviolent, you know, though they respected the code of behavior. There were some people that didn’t believe in nonviolence among us, but they accepted that as the code of behavior.”247 Nonviolence was not only a tactic; it was a principle that shaped the behaviors of Fisk students in their performance of the civil rights model of race leadership. In being nonviolent, they respectfully challenged lunch counter segregation in the city and as a result they experienced physical violence at the hands white aggressors.
Fisk students also received supplemental training in the work of race relations and nonviolence from race leaders who visited the campus under the aegis of the Race Relations
Institute. The Race Relations Institute was founded as a research program geared towards both the researching of best practices in the area of race relations and the training leaders to be knowledge practitioners of effective race relations. As quoted in Katrina Sanders history of the program, the major goal of the institute were to orient “actual and potential community leaders to the problems, processes, and methods of implementing better intergroup relations…the participants learn to evaluate techniques and strategies for advancing the cause of civil rights and equal opportunities for all Americans.”248 The Race Relations Institute brought intellectuals, scholars and race leaders to the Fisk campus—all of whom influenced the ideologies of Fisk students. In reflecting on his interaction with white people in the movement, student activist
James Bevel stated in an interview that the Race Relations Institute “was one place where people came. And these were mostly intellectuals from colleges, perhaps professional schools like law schools and that sort of thing, where they would discuss the legal issues and that sort of thing,
247 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson.
248 Katrina M. Sanders, “Intelligent and Effective Direction”: The Fisk University Race Relations Institute and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1944-1969, (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005), 39.
173 related to race.”249 Whether Fisk student activists were exposed to the task of improving race relations in workshops organized by Lawson or by listening to speakers invited by the Race
Relations Institute, they believed in the importance of fighting for civil equality for Blacks throughout the South and in the importance of laying the Jim Crow racial order of the South to rest.
Beyond these workshops, Fisk students were developed as leaders through their participation in events and lecture series organized by the International Center. The International
Student Center was both an intellectual and social space that allowed domestic and international students to socialize and discuss important domestic and global affairs. As a result, the
International Student Center became a smaller movement center on the Fisk campus for student activists as they met other students in the movement from Fisk and other colleges as they learned about race relations and struggles for equal rights and social justice on a global level. For
Angeline Butler, the International Student Center was the place where she met fellow student activists including James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and John Lewis. At the International Center she would watch films with them on Third World countries and talk about the racial politics of those countries. In an interview discussing her interactions with other student activists she stated
We used to go to all those discussions because we were interested, you know. We
were interested in what anybody could tell us about something that we didn’t
know, especially people living in a different place and different countries, and
we’d never been able to go to any of those places. You know, at the time that I
went to Fisk, television was new to us.250
249 James Bevel, interview by K. G. Bennett, tape recording, 17 January 2003, Civil Rights Oral History Project of the Nashville Public Library, Nashville Tennessee.
250 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson. 174
Collectively, the workshops by Lawson, the Race Relations Institute and student activity programs such as the International Student Center each played a role in shaping the civil rights consciousness of the early Fisk student activists and their preparation for activism in the student sit-ins.
The student sit-in movement in Nashville was as important as the student sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina. Although the student sit-in demonstrations in
Greensboro has received ample scholarly attention in the literature, historians have yet to fully document the impact of the Nashville student demonstrations on the national movement-- especially as it relates to the radicalization of student activists in Nashville and their promotion to national leadership.251 For many Fisk students, the sit-in movement was their early launch into the movement in Nashville. They were not alone. In addition to Fisk, other students participated in Lawson’s nonviolent workshops and subsequently became the core leadership of the sit-in demonstrations. Reflecting on the training of this core group, John Lewis a student activist and graduate of Fisk, “When school began that fall semester of ’59, it became clear that word of our Tuesday night gatherings had spread. A year earlier we rarely had ten people in that room. Now there were often more than twenty, Black and white alike, women as well as men, students from Fisk and Vanderbilt, Tennessee State, Meharry Medical School, and American
Baptist College.”252
Among the Fisk student activists participating in the sit-ins, Angelina Butler, Diane Nash and John Lewis were a part of the early organizing efforts. Fisk student activists would meet
251 See William Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
252 John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 91.
175 early in the morning or late at night with James Lawson and other leaders to strategize nonviolent tactics for the continuing demonstrations. Students would enter lunch counters in downtown Nashville in groups of four or five. Often they were refused service. Some of the men were beaten by white customers. On numerous occasions students were arrested. However, organizers replaced arrested students with additional rounds of sit-in volunteers who were eventually arrested themselves. As the sit-in demonstrations continued for weeks and months, large numbers of students were arrested such that the jails and Nashville could not contain them.253
Student leadership in the sit-in movement included both male and female students.
Leadership decisions were made through a consensus model which meant that the general consensus of everyone decided important decisions. As a result, the consensus model provided equal opportunity for leadership development in the movement and allowed women students to have a voice in the logistics of the sit-in demonstrations. According to Butler, “everybody’s voice was valuable” and no one voice was singled out as being more important.254
It was through this consensus model that Diane Nash was able to influence the direction of the Nashville sit-ins and other demonstrations. Lewis has written, “She soon emerged as the leader in [the] group, which was an extraordinary thing, considering the role of women in society at that time,” and that the “role of women in the movement was not much different.”255
Described by many of her peers in the movement as an attractive woman, neither Nash’s looks
253 See John Lewis Waling with the Wind; David Halbertam The Children; Also, the following interviews of Fisk student activists chronicle the logistics of the sit-in movement: James Bevel, interview by K. G. Bennett; Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson; Peggy Alexander Latson, interview by Angela Blackman, tape recording, 4-5 December 2006, Civil Rights Oral History Project of the Nashville Public Library, Nashville Tennessee.
254 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson.
255 John Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 92.
176 nor her ability to pass for being white took away from the seriousness towards which she approached her participation the local and national movement. Of Nash’s role in the movement,
Lewis concludes, “She was dead serious about what we were doing each week, very calm, very deliberate, always straightforward and sincere. As time passed, she came to be seen more as our sister than as an object of our lust.”256 Along with John Lewis and other key sit-in organizers she shared the leadership role of chair of the central committee for the sit-ins.
Through the consensus model of leadership upheld by student activists in the boycott demonstrations, a participant’s gender did not impact their ability to hold leadership roles. The goal of racial equality in public restaurants was much more important than the practice of keeping women from leadership in key positions in different movements across the country. As a result, the civil rights model of leadership espoused by Fisk student activists emphasized equality not only as a goal itself but as a leadership principle in the organization of demonstrations. In addition, the emphasis on consensus and equality, in the performance of leadership in the movement made it easier for Nash to move beyond the “cliché at that time that was that middle-class mothers sent their daughter to Fisk so they could meet and marry a doctor from Meharry.”257 In addition, Nash was able to also move beyond the conservatism of the Fisk population. Although, according to Butler, Fisk gave “the best education that a Black woman could get in the country,” and being that the Fisk woman “was the most sought-after person,”
Nash did not see the institution as a finishing school. Instead, Nash saw her collegiate education at Fisk, her experiences in its integrated community and her interactions with a diversity of intellectual people as her training ground for effective race leadership. Thus, instead of using her
256 Ibid.
257 Ibid.
177 looks and the socialization by her grandmother to behave respectfully to do well by marrying a doctor, she used her gentile behavior and stunning looks to advance the movement.
The aforementioned success of the boycott of Nashville’s segregated lunch counters was made possible as a result of two factors. First, the demonstrations were successful because of the status of the sit-in participants. The primary participants in the movement were students and not members of the local Black community. As a result, they could afford to participate fully in the sit-in demonstrations with the only consequence being the disapproval of their parents and doing poorly in their studies. Because they did not work or own businesses in Nashville, they did not suffer economic sanctions. This was unlike the Black adults who may have wanted to engage in the sit-ins but could not do so because of their economic ties to the Jim Crow power structure in the city.
Secondly, demonstrations by the students were successful because of support from
Nashville’s Black community. Support of students participating in the movement varied. For the most part, the local Black community supported the brave and valiant efforts of the students.
They raised funds --often through collections in churches-- to both provide food for student activists and other essentials during their imprisonment. Community members also used donations and their home mortgages as collateral for bailing students out of jail. In addition, a local lawyer, Alexander Looby, provided direct support to student activists by representing them in the courts. Prominent Black leaders also provided economic support for students in order to bail out those student activists who were arrested and jailed. For example, Dr. Matthew Walker, who was President of Meharry Medical College during the spring of 1960, raised $500,000 in order to pay the $500.00 bond for the nearly 100 students who were arrested as a result of 178 participating in one of sit-ins.258 Finally, Black churches and local ministers played important roles in supporting striking students by providing moral support and by encouraging their congregants to boycott the stores through their refusal to shop. “At Black churches, the ministers would get up and ask members of their congregation to stand if they had refused to shop in the downtown area. More often than not the entire congregation would stand up. By the beginning of March, the boycott was believed to be around 98 percent effective.259 This support from the multiple constituents helped the success of the boycotts.
Students experienced mixed support from their parents. Some parents supported the participation of their children in the sit-in movement while others did not. Regardless of their support, many parents were concerned about the impact that participation in the sit-in demonstrations would have on the college studies of students who were activists. In response to this very valid concern, Fisk administrators, following the lead of President Wright, strongly supporting the student activists who had been jailed. Wright did not expel any of the Fisk students for their organizing. Instead, after some Fisk students had been released from jail after one of the sit-in demonstrations, he “called everybody together at Fisk, and he totally supported
[the students] because he saw it as a moment in history that needed applauding, and that this would mean a great thing for our future.”260 After calling everyone together in the campus chapel, Wright, “wholeheartedly endorsed what they were doing.” Lewis writes, that his support
“was a big step. Up to that point Dr. Wright had been cautious, as anyone in his position might be. He had to answer to a board of trustees. He had parents calling from all over the country
258 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson.
259 David Halberstam, The Children, 178.
260 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson.
179 complaining about the trouble their sons and daughters were getting into, children they had trusted him to take care off.”261 In supporting the students, he adopted the student’s model of race leadership which called for the use of self-determination in achieving equal rights for
Blacks. Thus in his speech in the chapel, Wright drew “not just racial lines,” but also
“generational lines with [the] race – lines that separated the older, conservative Black from their offspring.”262 In addition, in understanding that the younger generation was saying, “you can be with us and come or you can be left behind, but we are moving on,” Wright chose to allow Fisk to follow their student activists in the struggle for Black equality in Nashville and throughout the nation.263 For Wright, it seemed the heart of the matter was
Not how to stop their efforts but rather to find better alternative ways to end
segregation in the public eating places of the city as we have at the airport. After
all, these are fine young citizens who….have been exposed, all their lives, to the
teachings of the great American scriptures of democracy, freedom and equality,
and no literate person should be surprised that they reflect these teaching in their
conduct.”264
On the other hand, white Nashville responded to the student sit-in movement in different ways. In addition to the direct response of incarcerating Fisk students, acts of violence against
Black Nashville represented the white response to the sit-in movement and everything that the sit-in movement represented—the end of Jim Crow segregation and the beginning of integration in Nashville. One of the most memorable examples of white violence in response to the sit-in
261 John Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 109.
262 Ibid.
263 Ibid.
264L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk Presidents, 153.
180 demonstrations was the bombing of Alexander Looby’s home. Looby’s home was primarily bombed because of his support of student activists.
Instead of scaring Looby and the student activists, the bombing galvanized the students and Nashville’s Black civil rights leaders. Together they organized a silent march to the court house steps downtown in order to both bring attention to segregation in Nashville and to force the mayor to take a stand on the question of segregation in the city once and for all. The vigil drew participants from both the higher education community throughout Nashville and the all segments of the Black community. About the vigil, Lewis concludes, “by noon, nearly two thousand students, faculty and townspeople had gathered at Tennessee State to march on city hall. I had never seen anything like the scene as moved toward city hall that day. The nation had never seen anything like it. This was the first such mass march in the history of America, the first civil rights assault on such a large scale. People kept coming and coming….I’m certain the number was closer to five thousand.265
While the organizing of the Silent Vigil was done in collaboration, certain leaders, specifically Diane Nash, rose to the fore. In remembrances and documentation of this important moment in the history of the local movement in Nashville, historians have accurately credited
Nash with the honor of pushing the mayor to say all the words everyone on the street wanted to hear -- that he supported the end of segregated lunch counters.266 However, the model of consensus and equality among the activists in the Nashville movement could have positioned any of the student leaders on the steps with the mayor on that historic day. Butler asserts,
265 John Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 115.
266 See David Halberstam, The Children, 233-234 and John Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 115.
181
Everybody tries to single [Nash] out, but in that Movement you really couldn’t
single out anyone, because you got to remember that the statement that Diane read
that day was the one that we dreamt up. Now, she may have added a few words
when she asked the Mayor, okay? But she didn’t create anything really there
herself. And that’s how we were. That happened to be Diane that day. It could
have been Lafayette, or me, or Catherine Burks, or it could have been Eleanor or
Peggy Alexander, you know? 267
Even so, on the morning after the silent vigil, local newspapers, plastered their front pages with pictures of Diane Nash on the steps of city speaking with Mayor Ben West. In her brief conversation, Nash used her oratorical skills to get the Mayor to declare that the lunch counters in Nashville should be desegregated. In getting the Mayor to take a stance against segregated lunch counters, Nash became the face of the Silent Vigil immortalized on the front cover of local newspapers.
Fisk Women Activists, Gender and Student Leadership in the Movement
Nash also became a symbol of the contributions of Black women’s student activism in the national civil rights movement. As a result, the symbolism of her activism positioned Black colleges as important cultural spaces where ideologies of gendered leadership were formed and transformed. At that time, the activism of Black students, particularly that of Black women, went against the politics of respectful behaviors upheld by their schools. Protesting students did not represent the image of the respectable man and or woman toward which the schools socialized their students to aspire. Thus, the participation of both male and female Black student activists necessitated a transformation of ideologies of womanhood and manhood at historically
267 Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson.
182
Black institutions because the struggle for equitable civil rights was predicated upon the participation of both male and female activists as the student movement has shown.268 Student activists attempted to not only protest inequality and challenge conservatism, but also attempted to challenge the Victorian ideologies of gender that dictated what Black students could and could not do in performing race leadership.
Related to the contribution of Black women to the Civil Rights movements, scholars have begun to critically analyze Black women’s organizing the varied forms of tactics they used in the movement. In particular, over the last twenty years, historians of Black women have published numerous secondary sources, autobiographies and organizational histories documenting the activism of Black women and their organizations.269 These scholars, in attempting to uncover the untold truths about Black women’s participation in the Civil Rights movement have described women activists as trailblazers, torchbearers and bridge builders. According to historians Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Rouse and Barbara Woods, Black women activists were
“trailblazers” in that they were “women whose heroic acts initiated specific events” and
“torchbearers” in that many of them “continue to carry on the struggle for reform” through their varied acts of activism.270 In a similar vein, in chronicling the participation of Black women in key Civil Rights movement organizations -- including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee -- sociologist Belinda Robnett described Black women’s activist contributions
268 For example, see the following related to gender, Black leadership and the Civil Rights Movement: Vickie L. Crawford, Jacqueline A. Rouse and Barbara Woods, Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), viii; Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long?: African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 9; Steve Estes, Am I A Man: Race, Manhood and the Civil Rights Movement. (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005.)
269 Ibid.
270 Vickie L. Crawford, Jacqueline A. Rouse and Barbara Woods, Women in the Civil Rights Movement, viii.
183 through the framework of bridge-building. Bridge builders were Black women in the Civil
Rights movement who carved out leadership positions for themselves based on “their community work or extraordinary activism within the movement.” Thorough their activism, bridge leaders
“were able to cross the boundaries between the public life of a movement organization and the private spheres of adherents and potential constituents.”271
So too, in recent years, influenced by the engagement of Black women scholars with gender studies as a scholarly approach to analyzing the Civil Rights movement, some historians have begun the process of linking the study of Black men’s participation in the Civil Rights movement to the performance of masculinity. For example, Steve Estes, I am a Man: Race,
Manhood and the Civil Rights Movement, on Black men’s ascension to leadership in a variety of
Civil Rights organizations, analyzes Black men’s activism as a performance of their masculinity and a self-determined representation of themselves as men.272
In a similar vein, future historians must look at the contributions of student activists through the lens of gender. This represents an important gap in the literature. While most studies on the history of Black student activists and their relationship to Black colleges do not employ a gender analysis of student activists --including Joy Williamsons Radicalizing the
Ebony Tower: Black Colleges and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi— recent histories of the activism of Black women students from Spelman College suggest a turn in the historiography on gender, Black students activists and the movement. Specifically, Harry G.
Lefever’s Undaunted by the Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement 1957-1967, represents one of the first works in this vein. In writing a history of the local Civil Rights movement from the perspective of female student activists, Lefever pushes the historiography to
271 Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long?: African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights,19.
272 Steve Estes, Am A Man: Race, Manhood and the Civil Rights Movement. 184 analyze student activists as gendered participants in the movement. In doing so, Lefever discusses the impact that conservatism had on Spelman women and their participation as movement leaders in Atlanta and traces the lives of key activists from Spelman and their role in the movement while attempting to analyze how gender shaped the experiences of Spelman women. In this vein, Undaunted by the Fight makes important contributions to the historiography on Black colleges and their relationship to the Civil Rights movement. In addition, it posits that the activism of Spelman women critically challenged respectable expectations about what a Spelman woman could do and be.
Similarly, the activism of Fisk women in the movement represented a critique by Black students of the conservatism at their colleges. This critique is evidenced in the activism of select
Fisk women --including first Diane Nash and later Nikki Giovanni-- and was manifested through their ascension to important leadership positions.
As a leader, Nash believed that education should prepare students to be change agents.
As a result, while she supported desegregation and integration, Diane Nash wanted transformation in the race relations and power relations between Black and white Americans. As such, Nash represented more than the politics of respectable leadership associated with integration. She embodied a model of Civil Rights leadership that used civil agitations for transformation. In addition, Diane Nash’s previous and subsequent activism opened the door for other Fisk women to participate in civil rights demonstrations. Fisk women, even as late as
1963, were expected to exhibit behaviors becoming of a Fisk woman. Engaging in protest and demonstrating was not considered respectable. In performing civil rights respectability that promoted transformation and not only integration, Nash posed a direct challenge to gender conventions associated with Black female students. 185
Also, Diane Nash’s activism evidences the social equality approach that Fisk students adopted in organizing their participation in movement struggles. First, her participation as a
Black woman in the Nashville civil rights movement challenged respectable definitions of Black womanhood at Fisk in which Black women were to be trained and socialized for middle class professions closely connected to the home. Second, her political activism challenged Fisk interpretations of the role that Black women were to play beyond Fisk’s campus. Fisk women were to be isolated on the Fisk campus--protected from Jim Crow Nashville. Nash stood against this. She and the student activists wanted their colleges to encourage students not only engage in social services to Black communities but to engage in political agitation as well. In addition, she challenged the emphasis of enforcing the ideal of setting an example for the race by establishing restrictive rules for students, especially women students. Her participation first within the
Nashville sit-in movement and her subsequent activism on campus redefined traditional expectations of the type of service—associated with volunteerism, the church, the maternal—that
Black women students were encouraged to engage. The female civil rights activist who provided a militant style of leadership for both male as well as female students was different than the older model of women leaders developed through their participation in sororities.
Even as Fisk activists emerged on the national scene of the Civil Rights movement, Nash continued to redefine gender conventions and expectations in her performance of leadership.
She led a core of Fisk student activists in other important movement campaigns.
Beyond participation in the student sit-in movement in Nashville, Fisk students also participated in the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Rides were organized by an interracial grouping of students and civil rights leaders through the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Using nonviolent protest strategies, the Freedom Rides were groups of interracial students and civil rights leaders 186 who traveled across the country on integrated buses in order to challenge the practice of segregation in public interstate busing. Federal legislation, as a result of Montgomery Bus
Boycott, ruled segregation in public transportation to be illegal. The Freedom Rides were designed to force communities throughout the South to desegregate public transportation thus honoring this mandate. And after the first Freedom Ride was stalled because of the threat of violence, Diane Nash and John Lewis called upon Fisk students in Nashville and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to complete the remainder of the first freedom ride that had not reached its destination. In so doing, Fisk student activists from Nashville shifted from local activism to national activism through their willingness to participate in the Freedom Rides.
While the leadership of the Nashville Freedom Ride movement was a collaborative venture, gender played an important role in dictating the specific roles of men and women leaders in the organizing of the Freedom Rides. Again, Diane Nash emerged as an important leader. Nash was considered by her peers to be an important strategist. “When Diane Nash heard the news on the radio about Anniston that Sunday, she had the exact reaction that John Lewis did: If they permitted the Klan to stop the Freedom Rides, the would be sending the wrong signals to their enemies—if you want to stop the Movement, all you have to do is resort to violence. She and her colleagues were riding nothing less than the force of history, she believed; they were going to go forward because they could not afford to go backward.”273 Thus, in going forward, unlike the very upfront and visible role she played in the Silent Vigil, Nash became the central behind-the-scenes organizer for the Freedom Rides. As such she was only one of a few
Freedom Ride participants who actually did not ride the Freedom buses across the country.
Instead, as a true “bridge builder” and “torch bearer,” she stayed behind in Nashville and helped to organize the logistics of the Freedom Rides.
273 David Halberstam, The Children, 269. 187
After both participating within and organizing the Freedom rides, the core of Fisk student activists brought the movement to the Fisk campus. President Wright’s liberal approach toward the activism of Fisk students off campus made it easier for student activists to bring the local movement in Nashville to the campus of Fisk. By the mid 1960’s, the activism on campus increased resulting in numerous demonstrations in which students expressed their opinions on varying causes. While the earlier generation of student activists who participated in the local and national movement had either graduated from the institution prior to the fall 1965 or entered their senior during that fall semester, a new generation of students had emerged at the college who desired to participate in the national and international fight for social justice and students rights from the location of their campus. As a result of their organizing at Fisk in the mid 1960’s, students developed a movement in which they saw direct connections between their claim to equitable student rights for themselves and their peers and their support of social justice and civil rights struggles nationally and internationally.
First, throughout the mid to late sixties, students openly expressed their views on a number of issues that became catalysts for the various demonstrations on campus. Related to the enforcement of the gendered code of conduct at Fisk and the regulations that outlined what Fisk women could and could not do, some Fisk women wrote letters to the editor of the Fisk Forum – the student newspaper of Fisk. One student in particular used a study of women’s education at leading colleges across the country to critique the restrictions placed on women students at Fisk.
The author, Karen Griner, posited that on some campuses “such rules as dressing for class in skirts, campusing [being confined to one’s dorm room for select hours every day], prohibition of sale of cigarettes in student union, campus pregnancy polices, senior curfew, suspensions for sexual violations, no liquor in rooms even under 21, members of the opposites sex not being 188 allowed in the bedrooms of coed dorms, and Freshmen study hours [were] outmoded and ridiculous.”274 In citing this report in her editorial, Griner asked the Fisk student body if similar restrictions placed upon the female Fiskite were also outdated. She used the study of women’s education at other colleges to make the point that restrictions on women at Fisk should be reevaluated.
Secondly, during December of 1967, there were numerous articles in the Fisk Forum that expressed students’ views on the war in Vietnam. Some students asked their fellow Fiskites to consider if it was fair for Americans to fight for freedom abroad but not at home? One student asserted that the first desegregated fighting units were in Vietnam not anywhere else. Another student summed up the general argument of the student editorials by writing, “Why is it, then, so difficult for American to come to grips with the issue and do something about the image of democracy it projects, not merely in the form of camouflaging the accurate image of a more pleasing one (for after all this technique was soon found out fairly quickly); but in making
American what she wants to be? What the Civil Rights Movement is trying to make her?”275 In these editorials, students expressed their concerns over contradictions in the United States participation in wars for freedom abroad but not attending to those struggles for justice at home.
Also, in that same month, more than 99.1% of all Fiskites went on a fast for freedom to protest the Vietnam War. This fast for freedom took place in the aftermath Rev. Andy Young’s visit to Fisk in his role as Executive Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on December 15, 1965. During his speech young provoked thoughts among the student body that encouraged their already existing plans to go on a Freedom Fast. To the young Fisk students, he spoke of the “Seeming lack of interest and responsible leadership in Watts and
274 Karen Griner, “Women’s Restrictions,” Fisk Forum, 13 January 1967, 2.
275 “Editorials: Student Interest in the Vietnam War,” Fisk Forum, 15, December 1965, 1. 189
Selma; and the lack of deep concern for Vietnam.” He also pointed out that “the voting rights bill, unless it is understood by the people in areas like Selma and Watts, will be useless, for it is essentially a weaker statement than the fifteenth amendment.”276
As students undertook their Fast for Freedom, some did so with the awareness that they were challenging the enduring legacy of the spirit of apathy among the Fisk student body while also contradicting the “Fisk Myth” related to students concern for important affairs. In reporting on the fast, Noah Griffin commented to his fellow Fiskites that, “E. Franklin Frazier turned over in his grave last week as the ‘Fisk Black Bourgeoisie’ supported the ‘Fast for Freedom’ by a margin of 99.1%.” And in so doing
This beyond a shadow of a doubt dispelled the theory of the apathetic Fisk student
whose joy in life comes from wallowing the mire of the status quo. Fisk students
are constantly categorized as the epitome of the do-nothingist; yet, when an issue
of National concerned emerged, they met the challenge with an overwhelming
support…I think it’s time the stereotype was re-evaluated.277
To be sure, it was not easy transforming the stereotype of an apathetic student culture of the college. As Fisk students engaged in leadership throughout the mid 1960’s, some Fisk students questioned the leadership of their peers on campus. While it can be assumed that the majority of Fisk students did not actively support activist causes through demonstrations or letters of protest and dissent published in the Fisk newspaper, there was the general impression among some Fisk students that all Fisk students should be engaging in some type of leadership or social consciousness in response to the revolutions of the 1960’s. Student writers who published editorials in the Fisk student newspaper for example, asked, the entire student body “Are we the
276 “Andy Young…Speak, Provoke Comment,” Fisk Forum, 15 December 1965, 2.
277 Noah Griffen, “99.1% Fiskites Fast For Freedom!,” Fisk Forum, 15 December 1965, 2. 190 talented tenth?” The anonymous writer of this article asserted that while Fisk students seemed to be navigating their education they didn’t seem to link their education to being agents of change in promoting social progress within the context of the Black community.278 The writer alluded to an apparent culture of apathy among some Fisk students. Other student writers also expressed this sentiment in asserting that something had to be wrong with Fisk students because they seemed so apathetic caring less about the major social issue impacting their nation and the world and instead cared more about partying and pledging a fraternity or sorority.279
The campaign against student apathy also was reflected in the desire of some students to encourage their peers to challenge the portrayal of Blacks in the books that Fiskites purchased for themselves and in the books that they were required to use by faculty in their course work.
This questioning of the representation of Blacks in culture and literature was spurred as a result of a major conference held at Fisk, which had as its central purposes the discussion of the Negro in American literature. This March, 1966 conference explored questions of “Negritude, capitalism and the Negro image,” and was a byproduct of a small and orderly protest against a workshop organized by John O. Killens, which focused on the negative portrayal of the “Negro” in American literature. In response to their dissent, a national writer’s workshop was organized at Fisk that explored negritude, capitalism and the problematic image of African Americans in literature.280
In a summary of the article, a writer for the Forum concluded that “Negro and white authors demonstrated with outstanding examples of how the white authors’ image of the Negro
278 “Are We the Talented Tenth?,” Fisk Forum, 30 April 2012.
279Ibid.
280“Writers Cry Out,” Fisk Forum, 30 April 1966, pg. 2.
191 as a stupid, filthy subhuman, helped create the American Negro in a myth that became a reality to white Anglo Saxon protestant America as well as to many Negroes.”281 At the conference, participants vowed to take different actions to transform the image of the “Negro” in American culture. Participants discussed the importance of” opening up educational televisions to more
Negro artists; publishing more works by Negro authors; and establishing centers for culture exposure, especially to Negro children.”282
In response to the participation of Fisk students in the conference, it was reported that few Fisk students attended the conference because of “inertia and emphasis on other activities such as parties due to the outlook of the Black bourgeoisie.” However, one student, Helen G.
Quigless, moved beyond “inertia,” and complained to her Fisk peers about their in attendance at such an important conference.
It was not surprising to me, but they were surprised. They naturally expected to
see [you]…since it took place here. Don’t kid yourself. BOOKS AFFECT
PEOPLE. The writers who were here this weekend are precious people. There
are not many in our society who are willing to ACT. They are the ones who dare
act. What was discussed at the conference will affect your very identity. You’ve
got to think about things. How can you afford not to care? How can you afford
cheap dime-store candy fraternity balls when in the long run you will be starving
for lack of meat….Fisk community, what are you going to do with education if
you don’t apply it?283
281 Ibid.
282Ibid.
283 “Editorials: Writers Conference,” Fisk Forum, April 30 1966. 192
However, while the editorials of these Fisk students evidence their perception of a culture of apathy among some Fisk students, it is important to recall the various demonstrations and letters of protests written by Fisk students throughout the 1960’s. Thus a culture of apathy and radical student organizing existed at Fisk. What this suggests about the student movement at
Fisk in the late 1960’s is that not all students were actively involved in the Fisk student movement. And not everyone subscribed to the Civil Rights model of race leadership toward which specific segments of the Fisk student body claimed as an alternative model of race leadership.
Also, while apathy did exist among the student body, it was increasingly challenged by the demands posed by students who wanted to intervene in the administration of academic and social affairs at the school. First, on April 13, 1966, students, “in an attempt by the students of
Fisk University to resolve numerous serious grievances, the ad hoc committee met with Dr.
Lawson. Dr. Lawson had just been elected vice-president of Fisk and was charged by President
Wright to manage all administrative affairs of the college while he focused on the building Fisk’s endowment. Students presented a range of concerns to Dr. Lawson including extended curfews for women students, optional chapel attendance, making regular class attendance a responsibility of the student, a reevaluation of the food choices of the cafeteria, measures for judicial reform, changes to the counseling system and finally allowing women students the option of asking their parents’ permission to ride and cars with men while a student at Fisk.284 The more radical students at Fisk, in addition to being concerned about freedom struggles abroad and at home, were also concerned with students rights at Fisk. Collectively, the issues towards which they expressed concern in the Fisk Forum, constituted the student movement at Fisk.
284 “Meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee with Dr. James Lawson, Fisk Forum, 16 March, 1966, 3. 193
The student movement on campus was a byproduct of President Wright’s liberal approach to student organizing and the model of race leadership that both President Wright and the earlier generation of Fisk student activists had embodied. The varied demonstrations and opinions expressed by some Fisk students affirmed their commitment to a more self-determined model of race leadership for students in the late sixties. As a result, when President Wright called the Fisk community together to announce his resignation, many students reacted by organizing a petition refusing to accept his resignation. Collins asserts that, “The entire student body at Fisk
University had received the news of President S. J. Wright’s resignation with dismay, concern, and general unhappiness.”285 For the more radical and less apathetic student leaders at Fisk,
President Wright, as a leader transformed by student activis, was their source of support for change at Fisk including the radicalization of the student body.
Despite the dismay that the more radical students at Fisk felt over President Wright’s departure from the University, they continued their activism throughout James Lawson’s tenure as president of Fisk. President Lawson became president of the school in 1967. The self- determined activism of the more radical students at the school shifted from not only a claim for students rights on campus and civil rights for all Blacks throughout the nation, but a call for
Black control of Black institutions including Fisk as a byproduct of Black Power ideology.
Specifically, this shift to a more determined model of race leadership within the Fisk campus manifested itself in the establishment of the Fisk chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee and the Black Power movement at Fisk. In so doing, as students stressed the importance of student control in the affairs at Fisk, they continually redefined expectations about gendered leadership at Fisk throughout the early 70’s.
285 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk Presidents, 136. 194
Related to gendered leadership on the Fisk campus, Nikki Giovanni played an important role in the student movement at Fisk in the late 1960’s. Nikki Giovanni and her experiences as a student activist in the late 60’s, like those of Nash, challenged apathy at the school while also radically altering expectations related to gender and leadership at the school. For starters,
Giovanni’s “misbehavior” at Fisk can be seen as a critique of the enduring model of conservatism and racial politics at Fisk. Giovanni’s student conduct and attitude did not fit those of a traditionally defined Fisk woman. For example, in 1963, she was put on social probation at
Fisk for violating the student curfew. In response, the dean of women told her that social probation meant she could not go home for Thanksgiving to visit her grandparents but she hitched a ride and went anyway. Nikki returned the Monday after Thanksgiving and told the dean of women that she had contempt for the campus rules. In February of the following year, the same dean expelled her for violating her probation. As a result, Giovanni’s grandmother traveled to Nashville to meet with the dean and wrote a letter of protest but to no avail.
Subsequently, Giovanni went to the see the president and was readmitted. In the fall of 1964,
Fisk had hired a new dean of women who reviewed Giovanni’s situation and eliminated the materials about probation from her file. During her last year at Fisk, Giovanni successfully reestablished the Fisk chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which had been forbidden from operating on campus, began participating in a writer’s workshop of John O.
Killens’ and edited a student literary journal.286
Related to the re-emergence of the Fisk chapter of SNCC on campus, in 1967, during her last year at Fisk, Nikki Giovanni successfully led a protest of 200 students and succeeded in getting the Fisk administration to finally recognize the Fisk chapter of SNCC as an official
286 Virginia C. Fowler, ed., Conversations with Nikki Giovanni (Jackson, Mississippi: The University Press of Mississippi, 1992), ; Nikki Giovanni, interview by Perzavia Praylow, March 24, 2010, Blacksburg, VA.
195 student organization.287 Giovanni and her peers participating in strike were most concerned with encouraging administrators to respond to the shift in consciousness among young Blacks across the nation from an ideology of civil rights to Black Power.288
Giovanni’s leadership at Fisk symbolized the shift from an emphasis on civil equality and improved students’ rights to Black Power self-determination. Her backlash against rules at the school was a direct challenge to the legacy of conservatism at the institution. Beyond fighting restrictions on her status as a female student, she also used the rhetoric of Black Power to challenge the lack of student control in the affairs at Fisk. She stated in an editorial that “there will never be a Black revolution on a Negro college campus; the campus is not structured like that. But we can begin to present a new way of looking at ourselves.” She asserts that “we have to know enough to realize that changing the colors isn’t all that’s necessary…getting rid of all the white secretaries…getting rid of all the white teachers, though many of them should go, won’t make this a Black campus…even getting a Negro Board of Trustees won’t do it unless we change many of the ideas of many of the Negroes.” For Giovanni, making Fisk a Black campus meant transforming the way people thought in order to change people’s behaviors.
By the end of the 1960’s, Fisk had gone through important ideological changes in both in its administration and within its student culture. In the midst of these changes, students inspired by Black Power ideology attempted to change the actions of administrators at Fisk by changing their ideologies of leadership and philosophy of education at the school. This is seen most notably in the election of President Lawson as President of Fisk in 1967. In March of 1967
287Ibid.
288 Nikki Giovanni, interview by Perzavia Praylow; Yolande Giovanni, “Editorial Comment,” Fisk Forum, 13 January 1967, 4.
196 students campaigned against Lawson as president. The support that students had for President
Wright was not extended to President Lawson. This was due in part to the fact that students did not support Lawson’s stance on Fisk affairs or the model of race leadership that Lawson espoused. Students’ early contempt for Lawson’s presidency was a sign that the administration of Fisk was weak; by the end of the 1960’s there was a disconnection between Fisk students and administrators.289
Under Lawson’s presidency students experienced a disjuncture between Lawson’s approach towards the socialization of students for race leadership including his governance of student culture and their perception of how the university should respond to their needs and concerns. The concerns that Fisk students had in the late 1960’s were the same concerns that their peers at Fisk had in the 1920’s and in the demonstrations that students took part in on and off campus between 1960 and 1963.290 Students in the late 1960’s, like before, found themselves critiquing Fisk’s ability to prepare them for race leadership.
The disconnection between Lawson and Fisk student leaders resulted in two different views of the management of student affairs and student culture at Fisk. By the late 1960’s, Fisk students were moving away from a belief in the benefits of integration as a demand. In addition the desire for social and political transformation that earlier Fisk activists espoused gave way to an emphasis on Black Power and Black ownership in the administration of student affairs at Fisk and within the development of student culture. This shift toward Black Power and Black ownership resulted first in sporadic editorial challenges to the Fisk student code as students
289“Lawson Reveals Changing Face of Fisk: Future Plans Disclosed,” Fisk Forum, 3 March 1967, 1; “Dr. Lawson Chosen as President,” Fisk Forum 3 November 1967, 1; “Open Letter to President Lawson,” Fisk Forum, 29 March 1968; “Lawson Becomes 8th President of Fisk,” Fisk Forum, 8 October 1968, 2.
290 “Fisk Revolution,” Fisk Forum, 11 October 1968, 8.
197 attempted assert what they believed were respectable regulations for student culture at Fisk.
Editorials from the Fisk student newspaper expressed discontent with existing Fisk student policies. 291 These editorials were followed up with letters from other students who believed that in order to transform Fisk student culture to be one more in line with Black pride, Fisk students had to promote a Black aesthetic on campus.292
During the fall semester of 1968, student activists renegotiated their model of respectable race leadership at Fisk yet again as they expressed their continuing discontent with the governance of academic and students’ affairs at Fisk. In addition, the more conservative approach that President Lawson took in governing Fisk affairs to keep the institution afloat did not mesh well with students desire to bring about monumental changes at Fisk even if those changes would threaten the philanthropic support of Fisk from its white benefactors. Fisk students attempted to do this through the rhetoric of Black Power.293
By the late 1960’s, across the country Black students on historically Black and predominantly white college and university campuses used the rhetoric of Black Power to make their college campuses Black. Through their petitions, takeover of academic buildings and other forms of protests; students attempted to transform how their institutions responded to the Black aesthetic, Black pride, and Black control over their own institutions. At Fisk, this meant that
Black students were primarily concerned with wanting a Black curriculum to be instituted at the school. They wanted more Black faculty and staff to be hired. They wanted Black students to
291 “Standards for Fisk Students,” Fisk Forum, 17 November 1967, 2; “Revision of Student Regulations,” Fisk Forum, 17 November 1967, 2.
292 “Wash and Wear,” Fisk Forum, 8 December 81967, 3; “Black Power,” Fisk Forum, 11 October 1968, 3-4; “Constructive Black Power,” 11 October 1968, 8; “The Only Light Left in the World is Blackness, Fisk Forum, 11 October 1968 1.; “The Liberation School,” Fisk Forum, 17 November 1967, 1.
293 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents, 179-180.
198 have a greater say and more control in the governance of the college. In addition, they wanted
Fisk to socialize its students to be leaders of the race who were aware of the history and culture of Black peoples throughout the world.
The emergence of Black Power on campus at Fisk was heavily influenced by Black
Power ideology within American culture. At Fisk, the earliest emergence of Black Power first manifested in a chapel sermon by Rev. Albert Cleage in which he stated that “Fisk as a colored university must become Black.” Some of the radical Fisk students saw this as a clarion call to
Black students and as a result it inspired some students to take action. These students, under the banner of Black Power, attempted to take over the Fisk campus. Also the influence of Black
Power emerged on the Fisk campus through the granting of Black mayors with honoring degrees at Fisk’s commencement on June 3, 1968.294
By far the greatest influence of Black Power ideology on the Fisk campus was evidenced by the activism undertaken by some Fisk students in their efforts to make Fisk a Black university. Students occupied selected buildings on the Fisk campuses in December of 1968.295
In addition to wanting to transform their college to make it more “Black,” students Black Power organizing was fueled by their contempt for decisions made by President Lawson related to some
Fisk students. Students were upset with Lawson, for example for expelling students who could not pay for tuition during the spring 1970 semester. They were also upset with the president because he fired Dr. Paul L. Puryear who was director of the Black community project—an
294 Ibid., 179.
295 Ibid., 180-181.
199 important research project started between Fisk and the Black community during the years of
Johnson’s administration.296
Fisk students articulated their desire to make Fisk a Black university in other ways as well.297 They alienated Fisk’s philanthropists by mailing letters to them stating that Fisk did not need the support of money from white people. As a result, they alienated Fisk benefactors by making claims to Black Power.298 Students also set Livingstone Hall on fire.299
President Lawson’s response to Black Power inspired activism of Fisk students was not as nearly liberal as President Wright’s response to the activism of Fisk students during their demonstrations in downtown Nashville against segregated public facilities. When students began to organize under the rubric of Black Power, President Lawson’s response was that given the fact that Fisk was experiencing financial challenges, it was his responsibility and that of the board and the administrators to steer Fisk on an even keel. However, Lawson did attempt to concede to some of the demands raised by Black students. He allowed and supported their efforts in organizing an week of alternative educational workshop that was dubbed “The Week of
Reckoning.” He also attempted to work with students local Blacks to “organize programs so that
Fisk could serve the Black community.”300
In addition to attempting to address specific areas of student concerns from the Black
Power protests, President Lawson also attempted to address better communication with students.
Within a year after the student protest of 1968-1969, Lawson reported improved communication
296 Ibid., 181.
297 Ibid., 183.
298 Ibid.
299 Ibid.
300 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents, 185-186.
200 with students.301 In addition, as a direct response to students’ protests, Lawson attempted to engage in liberal but not radical reform efforts.302 To be sure, students did not leave it up to
President Lawson and other administrators to develop a plan of reform for Fisk that included additional input from the student body about issues that they perceived were issues of great need.
For example, they developed a student petition to get the general opinions about Fisk students regarding areas of improvement and needs at Fisk.303 The byproduct of more collaboration among President Lawson, Fisk administrators, and students, resulted in, for example, the completion of the first coed dorms at Fisk in 1972.304
Yet even with some of the improvement that President Lawson did attempt to implement, perceptions of his Presidency were very unfavorable as students and even some faculty lost faith in his ability to lead Fisk. Among the Fisk community there was increasing disinterest in
Lawson’s leadership.305 Negative perceptions were only heightened by President Lawson’s mistake in demolishing one of the most historic buildings on the Fisk campus. When Lawson approved the demolition of Heritage house, alumni further pulled away from support of Lawson.
In addition, many questioned his ability to get private and public support of Fisk.306 As such, in many ways Lawson’s presidency of Fisk was described as a Greek tragedy primarily because of a loss of philanthropy, ongoing student dissent of the late 1960’s and the burning of Livingstone
301 Ibid., 187.
302 Ibid., 187-188.
303 Ibid., 188.
304 Ibid., 188.
305 Ibid., 189-190.
306 Ibid., 188.
201
Hall by Fisk students.307 In the end of his presidency, many people honored Lawson as a friend but not as a President of Fisk.”308 Also, in the final months of his tenure as President of Fisk,
Lawson thought it best to take a leave of absence.309 During his time away from campus, Fisk’s
Board of Trustees and other administrators thought it best if Lawson resign his post as President.
Thus the Board of Trustees asked for his resignation.310
While it can be assumed that some of the more radical students believed that Lawson was not effective in governing Fisk to prepare students for leadership in the revolutions of the 1950’s and 1960’s, it can be argued that Fiskites were just at the beginning of their efforts to make Fisk a Black University. In the years immediately following their Black Power demonstrations on campus, Fisk student actively worked with the administration in implementing some of their demands. The early 70’s at Fisk was a time of ideological change as the Race Relations Institute became more established, as the curriculum offered more courses on the Black experiences and as students exercised a greater say in the affairs of the institution. While it is debatable if Fisk ever did become a “Black University,” the self-determination of Fisk student activists throughout the 1960’s and early 1970’s, in particular, and throughout the institution’s history in general, evidence their ongoing struggle to make sure that the college socialized students for relevant leadership. As a result, Fisk students continued to be at the center of transforming the politics of respectable race leadership and ideologies of education at Fisk.
307 Ibid., 184.
308Ibid., 190.
309 Ibid., 195.
310 Ibid., 197.
202
CHAPTER 6: ALUMNI ‘EVER ON THE ALTAR’: FISKITE LEADERSHIP AND THE LEGACY OF RACE-UPLIFT
Introduction
Since President William Junius Wright’s resignation --largely in response to critiques about his poor fiscal management of the college-- Fisk’s financial decline over the last 40 years has challenge its development as a baby “Ivy” among Black colleges. Throughout the last few decades, university officials and the Board of Trustees have sought creative ways to raise the financial capital needed to keep the university afloat. Most recently Fisk’s Board of Trustee and current President Hazel O’Leary -- a 1952 alumnus -- have succeeded in selling half ownership of the colleges’ Alfred Stieglitz Collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in in
Bentonville, Arizona.311
The Alfred Stieglitz collection was bequeathed to Fisk University by Georgia O’Keefe -- the widow of Alfred Stieglitz -- to the college more than 60 years ago.312 The Crystal Bridges
Art Museum paid the university $30 million dollars for its half ownership of the collection. In addition to acquiring 50 percent ownership of the collection, the Alfred Stieglitz Collection will rotate half the year between the Crystal Bridges Art Museum and the Carl Van Vechten Gallery at Fisk University. President O’Leary and the trustees had hoped that income from the sale of the Stieglitz would jump start Fisk’s new capital campaign and would also provide a financial solution to its immediate fiscal challenges. However, the local court in Nashville, Tennessee ruled that the college could only acquire $10 million of the sale. The remainder $20 million that the college received from the sale would be placed in a restricted endowment. In addition, the
311Jennifer Brooks, “Fisk Art Ruling Upsets Both Sides,” The Tennessean, 4 November 2010; “Fisk Files New Plan for Art Collection,” The Tennessean, 9 October, 2010;
312For additional information on the visit the following website of the Fisk University Galleries: http://www.fisk.edu/campuslife/FiskUniversityGalleries/Collections.aspx.
203 interest of the endowment would be used to underwrite the continued preservation of the
Stieglitz collection.313
The successful sell of 50 percent of the ownership of the Stieglitz collection solicited a negative responses from Fisk alumni. Writing on behalf of Fisk alumni from the 50’s, 60’s and
70’s, Lucius T. Outlaw wrote a letter to the Fisk faculty, alumni and the Board of Trustees protesting the sell. In the same letter he also requested the resignation of President Hazel
O’Leary for poor management of Fisk’s fiscal affairs and for an inability to best represent the interests of the college. An alumnus of the Fisk class of 1967, Outlaw also claimed that O’Leary had failed to
lead to completion and implementation the development of a capital campaign
sufficiently ambitious to rekindle faith in and enthusiasm for a reinvigorated Fisk
University that, once again, becomes a powerful magnet attracting and retaining
the most accomplished and promising faculty, students, support staff, and
administrators who, with the support of the Board of Trustees and thoughtful
alums, continues to forge an unquestionable legacy as one of our nation's very
finest residential undergraduate educational and academic communities.314
These indictments were not favorably received by the Fisk Board of Trustees. In response to every indictment, the Board of Trustees stood firmly behind what they believed to be President
O’Leary’s successful administration of the college. The trustees asserted that the selling of
313 Jennifer Brooks, “Fisk Trustees Back O'Leary, Support follows Alumni’s Call for President to Quit,” 11 November, 2010.November 11, 2010.
314 Mr. Lucius T. Outlaw to Dr. Linda Coleman Brown and Mr. Robert W. Norton, 15 October 2010, Digital News Archives, The Tennessean, Nashville, TN.
204 partial ownership of the Stieglitz was not being used to rescue Fisk from financial ruin.315 They also corrected Outlaw’s claim that O’Leary had not led Fisk in the strategic development and implementation of a capital campaign citing the $26 million that the institution had raised over the last six years under her leadership. Clearly the trustees and the seventeen alumni who circulated the letter disagreed sharply over the administrations’ motivation behind the management and sell of partial ownership of the Stieglitz collection.
Regardless of the motivations behind Fisk’s sell of partial ownership in the Stieglitz collection, its success in doing so highlights two important influences on the institution’s primary goal of preparing its students for leadership. Specifically, the arrangement with the Crystal
Bridges Art Museum highlights both the ongoing influence of the college’s financial problems and the active involvement of alumni in influencing the development of higher education at the college. On numerous occasions throughout its history, the college’s financial development and alumni interventions in the affairs of the school have led to major changes in its administration.
The impacts of Fisk’s financial woes on the colleges overall development is nothing new.
Historically the college has struggled throughout the twentieth century to stay afloat. The schools financial struggles first became an issue under President Fayette McKenzie’s administration. This had two major administrative results on the college. To start with, for the first time in its history, a president of the college sought major support from leading industrialists and corporations throughout the early twenties in order to generate alternative fiscal support.
The result of these fiscal endeavors was the brief development of industrial education at the college as a condition for receipt of funds from industrialists. However, Fisk never became a
315 Dr. Linda Coleman Brown and Mr. Robert W. Norton to Mr. Lucius T. Outlaw, 12 November 2010, Digital News Archives, The Tennessean, Nashville, TN. 205 predominantly industrial college and stayed true to its mission as a liberal arts college because alumni, including W.E.B Du Bois, vehemently objected.
In addition, a second result of Fisk’s financial woes under McKenzie’s administrative tenure was that every president’s governance of the school since then has been consumed by fiscal challenges. In L.M. Collins very descriptive and analytical overview of the history of Fisk presidents and their administration of the college throughout twentieth century, he charts the impact of the fiscal challenges on the college’s development. Further, fiscal failure has been deemed by Collins as a major reason for the resignation of presidents of the college including
Presidents Fayette McKenzie in 1924 and James Raymond Lawson in 1975.316 Throughout,
Collins also argued that Fisk’s financial challenges impeded its effective progress overall and more specifically as it related to improvements in the upkeep and development of the school’s physical structures and development of its academic curriculum. However, as Collins points out,
Fisk’s limited capital campaigns did provide the initial funding needed to support the building of select dorms and academic buildings.317 Yet its ability to sufficiently grow the school’s endowment from capital campaigns and other financial endeavors was never really a success.
President O’Leary’s honest admission of the school’s current fiscal state supports this reality. In explaining to the Nashville Court how partial sell of the ownership of the Stieglitz collection was in favor of the need to both properly preserve the collection and to use the value of the collection to help Fisk dig itself out of its financial woes, she “testified that Fisk's discretionary endowment has been emptied, every building on campus is mortgaged and the school runs a $2 million
316 L.M. Collins Fisk University: One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents.
317Ibid.
206 annual deficit.”318 Cleary, President O’Leary, much like the predecessors before her, tried to come up with creative solutions to the financial challenges that impeded the Fisk’s ability to best financially support its goal of educating students for leadership in their community and in the world.
The partial sale of the Stieglitz collection can also be viewed through the lens of alumni response. The call for O’Leary’s resignation by Outlaw and the other alumni evidenced the legacy of self-determination that historically existed among Fisk alumni. Fisk alumni have always played a role in uplifting the race by making sure that the institution was doing its best to socialize students for the work of race-uplift. In critiquing and evaluating Fisk, alumni have used self-determination to make sure that the institution lived up to its mission of preparing its students for relevant leadership.
By far, a history of the important role that Fisk alumni played in the development of the college would not be complete without an acknowledgment of the contributions made by W.E.B.
Du Bois. Since his graduation from Fisk during the spring of 1888, Du Bois was a frequent visitor to the college. He was frequently invited to speak at Fisk’s annual commencement including his daughter’s commencement in the spring of 1924. In the years leading up to the
Fisk student strike of 1924 and 1925, Du Bois’ opinion of his Alma Mata grew increasingly critical. In addition, in response to the grievances of the students --entrenched rules, paternalism, excessive punishment, limited student activities-- Du Bois organized alumni across the country.319
Du Bois organizing was designed to force the trustees of the college to improve the conditions on campus for students. Working with other alumni, Du Bois established specific
318 Jennifer Brooks, “Fisk Art Ruling Upsets Both Sides.”
319 Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents, 262-269. 207 goals for the Campaign for a Greater Fisk. First, the Campaign for a Great Fisk was a systematic evaluation of the reasons behind the Fisk student strike of 1924-1925. Second, the
Campaign for a Great Fisk strategically evaluated McKenzie’s management of Fisk’s financial affairs. Third, the Campaign for a Greater Fisk was designed to increase alumni support of the institution. Through their work with the Campaign for a Greater Fisk, under the guidance of Du
Bois, alumni called for the resignation of President Fayette McKenzie who was president of the school from 1915-1924. Through a critical evaluation process, Du Bois concluded that both students and alumni had lost faith in the ability of McKenzie and the Board of Trustees in leading the institution in the great work started by its missionary founders geared towards the training of students for social leadership. The critiques of Black alumni waged against the college coupled with those of the Black community in Nashville, who felt that the college was alienated from local working class Blacks, were important factors leading to the resignation of the president.320
After the resignation of President McKenzie, Fisk alumni continued their diligent vigil over the administration of Fisk’s affairs. Throughout the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, during the presidency of Thomas Jones, they again waged critiques against the affairs of the institution.
Alumni were primarily concerned with the college’s problematic fiscal condition and the claims that the college supported of practices of racial segregation involving Fisk students on and off campus.321 Related to this latter point, alumni were especially concerned with the expulsion of
Ishmael Flory in 1931 because he published indicting articles that revealed that college administrators allowed racial segregation at different events on campus and allowed students to frequent segregated restaurants, theatres and other public facilities in downtown, Nashville.
320 Ibid.
321 L.M. Collins, One Hundred Years of Fisk University Presidents. 208
After Jones’ resignation, alumni took the lead in evaluating the future election of Fisk’s first
Black president – Dr. Charles S. Johnson who was president of the college from 1946 to 1956.322
Also, as Fisk men and women increasingly participated in local and nation organizing of the
Civil Rights and Black Power movement, alumni provided moral and financial support to striking students. At the height of student’s participation in the Civil Rights and Black Power movement through organized dissent on the Fisk campus during the sixties, alumni showed their greatest support of student activists by critiquing President Raymond Lawson’s lack of support given to striking students and his administration’s slow progress in supporting the institutionalization of Black Studies at the college.
In all of these instances -- including the recent call for President O’Leary’s resignation -- alumni have not relied solely on administrators to ensure that the college designed a relevant education for students. Alumni, through their individual and collective self-determination have intervened in the affairs of the college to ensure that the school best equipped students with the necessary skills they needed for leadership in the Black community and the professions. In the past, their interventions have revolved around issues of alumni relations with the administration and trustees, student discontent and Fisk’s fiscal management. Over the past few decades, alumni have continued to support Fisk in these vital areas of support through affiliation and volunteer efforts within Fisk’s official alumni chapters in Chicago and Atlanta. In addition, through their collective efforts, alumni members of the Fisk Chicago Club and the Fisk Atlanta
Club have organized major admissions and fundraising campaigns to help increase enrollment numbers in the college and to endow scholarships for current and future students. Specific admissions programs have included partnering with the admissions office of the college to organize weekend admissions programs in order to introduce Fisk to current high schools
322 Ibid. 209 students in inner cities throughout the country. Both alumni clubs have also chartered busses and taken students of all ages to visit Fisk during its yearly commencement and homecoming weekend. Alumni have also held different fundraising events including luncheons and ticketed speaking engagements with pioneering African American leaders.323 In all these instances, instead of critiquing the challenges encountered by the school, alumni have sought creative solutions to Fisk’s fiscal and enrollment struggles, among other challenges. Improving Fisk has been and still remains their primary goal. Working in tandem with students and university officials, alumni have played their role in helping the college to become the important educational institution that it is today.
Today Fisk is a top private liberal arts institution recognized by national rankings of both liberal arts and Historically Black Colleges. The college is nationally ranked for its physics, natural science and health science programs.324 As of 2010, the college was ranked 4th by the
U.S. New and World Report among the top Historically Black Colleges and it ranks in the top
77th percentile of all U.S. colleges and universities receiving federal science and engineering research grants. In response to national recognition in these areas, the school has gone through a strategic visioning process where it will target its recruitment of future students in disciplines related to science and business. In trying to carve out its unique niche among Black higher education and position itself as a top choice for highly motivated African American youth throughout the country, the current tagline of Fisk is “Cultivating Scholars and Leaders One by
One.” 325 This motto ties directly into the revised mission of the institution, which is to “produce
323 Gina Davis, interview by Perzavia Praylow, 5 June 2010, Chicago, IL.
324 Fisk University, Strategic Plan to Transform and Sustain Fisk University: 2009-2013, Nashville, TN: April 15, 2013, 1.
325 Ibid., 3.
210 graduates from diverse backgrounds,” and to use a “curriculum grounded in the liberal arts . . . and the discovery and advancement of knowledge through research in the natural and social sciences, business and the humanities,” in order to prepare those graduates for “success as scholars and leaders with global perspective.”326
With its current success and refocused curriculum, important aspects of the mission of the college have remained the same while others have changed. The one constant factor that remains true about Fisk’s training of students for leadership is that the liberal arts remain an important tenet of the Fisk education. This is an important point even with its push towards building its science and technical program to give the college a competing edge. Finally, one major characteristic that differs in its current success and mission is that the college does not only have as its main focus educating students to be leaders of the Black race but to be leaders of the world.
Yet even while the current model of student leadership at Fisk is to educate students for global leadership through an enhanced curriculum that is increasingly becoming more and more scientific and technical, its legacy of educating students for race-uplift through leadership in the
Black community and the professions through a solid liberal arts curriculum, exists among the activism and professional leadership of the school’s alumni -- both living and deceased -- who have made important contributions in business, medicine, law, politics, the humanities, the social sciences and the arts.
326 Ibid. 211
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archival Collections
Dean Calliver Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
Fisk University Catalogs, Nashville, TN: Fisk University Publications, 1915-1970.
Fisk Student Code Book, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
Fiskiana Bio and Event Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN
The Papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1980-1981.
President Fayette McKenzie Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
President Thomas E. Jones 1-71 Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
President Charles S. Johnson Collection, Fisk University Special Collections, Nashville, TN.
Oral History Interviews
James Bevel, interview by K. G. Bennett, tape recording, January 17, 2003, Civil Rights Oral History Project of the Nashville Public Library, Nashville Tennessee.
Angeline Butler, interview by Rachel Lawson, tape recording, March 21, 2005, Civil Rights Oral History Project of the Nashville Public Library, Nashville Tennessee.
Nikki Giovanni, interview by Perzavia Praylow, tape recording, March 24, 2010, Blacksburg, VA.
Peggy Alexander Latson, interview by Angela Blackman, tape recording, March 6, 2006, Civil Rights Oral History Project of the Nashville Public Library, Nashville Tennessee.
Newspapers and Periodicals
Fisk Forum, “Andy Young Speak, Provokes Comment,” December 14, 1965.
______, “Are We the Talented Tenth,” April 30, 2012.
______, “Black Power,” October 11, 1968.
______, “Constructive Black Power,” October 11,1968. 212
______, “Dr. Lawson Chosen as President,” November 3, 1967.
______, “Editorials: Student Interest in the Vietnam War,” December 15, 1965.
______, “Editorials: Writers Conference,” April 30 1966.
______, “Fisk Revolution,” October 11, 1968.
______, “Lawson Becomes 8th President of Fisk,” October 8, 1968.
______, “Lawson Reveals Changing Face of Fisk: Future Plans Disclosed,” March 3, 1967.
______, “Meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee with Dr. James Lawson, Fisk Forum, March 16,
1966.
______, “Mrs. Du Bois Coming Later,” February 6, 1970.
______, “Open Letter to President Lawson,” March 29, 1968.
______, “Revision of Student Regulations,” November 17, 1967.
______, “Standards for Fisk Students,” November 17, 1967.
______, “The Liberation School,” November 17, 1967.
______, “The Only Light Left in the World is Blackness, October 11,1968.
______, “Wash and Wear,” December 8, 1967.
______, “Writers Cry Out,” April 30, 1966.
Fowler, Alpha Jeanne. “Mrs. Du Bois on Campus.” Fisk Forum, February 5, 1971.
Fraser, Gerald C. “Du Bois Widow Granted U.S. Visa,” New York Times August 16, 1970.
Griner, Karen. “Women’s Restrictions.” Fisk Forum, January 13, 1967.
Giovanni, Yolande. “Editorial Comment.” Fisk Forum, January 13,1967.
Jet, “Urges Visa for Du Bois Widow on House Floor,” August 27, 1970.
213
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215
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Dissertation and Theses
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Perkins, Linda. “Fanny Jackson Coppin and the Institute for Colored Youth, 1837-1902.” Ph.D. Diss, University of Illinois, 1978. 217
Phillips, Ollie. “Higher Education for Negro Women in Alabama.” Master’s Thesis, Fisk University, 1939,
Wright, Stephanie. “Education and Changing Social Identities of Black Southerners.” Ph.D Diss., Rutgers University, 2004.