How Affirmative Action Took Hold at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Author(S): Jerome Karabel Reviewed Work(S): Source: the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No
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The JBHE Foundation How Affirmative Action Took Hold at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Author(s): Jerome Karabel Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 48 (Summer, 2005), pp. 58-77 Published by: The JBHE Foundation Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25073246 . Accessed: 10/01/2012 18:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The JBHE Foundation is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. http://www.jstor.org How Affirmative Action Took Hold at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Jerome Karabel Editor's Note: From 1960 to 1970 the three most prestigious academic institutions in the United States underwent a profound transformation from relative indifference to the plight of African Americans to a strong commitment to include blacks as full and equal participants in their institutions. AS THE ADMISSIONS committees of Harvard, then 26 years old. Speaking before a large crowd at the Yale, and Princeton convened in the spring of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King brilliantly captured the 1960 to select the next freshman class, a wave of mood of his flock: "And you know, my friends, there comes a protests led by students from black colleges swept across the time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron South. On February 1, four black students from North feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, all of them people get tired of being thrown across the abyss of humili wearing a jacket and tie, sat down at the whites-only lunch ation where they experience the bleakness of nagging ? counter of a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, despair... We are here we are here because we are tired now ... we are ? and asked to be served. When they were denied service, they And determined here inMontgomery to refused to leave, using a sit-in tactic that had work and fight until justice runs down like water, already been deployed in more than a dozen and righteousness like a mighty stream." By the cities since 1957. Returning the next day, they time the struggle inMontgomery was finally won were joined by 23 classmates; by the weekend, on December 21,1956, King had become a figure the A&T football team had joined the protest, of national stature. insisting on their right to be served. Within six As the struggle for civil rights intensified in the weeks, sit-ins led by students had spread to every late 1950s, it became increasingly clear that racial southern state except Mississippi. By April, a problems threatened to imdemiine the position of conference was called by Ella Baker, the acting the United States in the cold war. Soviet propa Martin Luther King Jr. executive director of the Southern Christian took in "There comes a time when ganda special delight publicizing every Leadership Conference (SCLC), to bring the people get tired of being embarrassing incident, and Governor Orval by the iron student activists together. Out of this meeting trampled " Faubus' use of theNational Guard in Little Rock, feet of oppression. emerged an organization that would do much to i Arkansas, to keep black children out of school was shape the decade: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating especially useful in its efforts to portray the United Committee (SNCC). States as a citadel of racial oppression. The international sit a The sit-in movement emerged six years after the Supreme uation was central backdrop to the growing debate over the Court's historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision race question; even Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that declared segregated schools unconstitutional, but its (Princeton '08), though hardly a liberal, recognized the harm roots may be traced to the tradition of direct action that that chscrimination was causing U.S. foreign relations and began in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, urged support for civil rights legislation. Senator Jacob when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus. A black Javits of New York summarized the situation clearly: "The boycott of Montgomery's bus system was organized in the great contest between freedom and communism is over the following days, led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., approximately 1..2 billion largely Negro and Oriental popu lation who the areas of the Far Jerome Karabel is a professor of sociology at the University of California occupy underdeveloped East, at new Berkeley. This article is adapted from his book, The Chosen: The theMiddle East, and Africa. One of the greatest arguments Hidden History of Admission, Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. used by the Communist conspirators against our leadership Copyright ? 2005 by Jerome Karabel. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. of the free world with these peoples has been that if they fol 58SUMMER 2005 HOW AFFIRMATIVEACTION TOOKHOLD AT HARVARD, YALE,AND PRINCETON low the cause of freedom, they too will be subjected to seg cies with reference to Negroes. We shall continue to expect regation which it is charged that we tolerate within certain them to meet the same standards required of other appli areas of the United States; federal civil rights legislation is cants." the best answer. The people are, therefore, watching with the That same spring, the case of a black applicant from a large most pronounced concern our present international struggle industrial city in the East revealed what the "same standard" on civil rights." InAugust 1957, the Eisenhower administra principle meant in practice. A young African American had tion finally passed a civil rights bill, its provisions watered applied toYale; he was number one in his class of 500, car down by powerful southern members of Congress. Another ried a straight-A average since the seventh grade, was the civil rights bill followed in 1960, but it too fell far short of a varsity quarterback, captain of the number two basketball serious commitment to transform America's racial order. team in the state, and the school's first black president of the The men who ran Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were, of Student Council. He had compiled this record in the face of course, aware of these developments. But as of 1960, the extremely adverse circumstances; according to the alumni ? struggle for civil rights had not led them to see why they interviewer, "His parents are almost illiterate his father an should alter their admissions practices to include more unemployed invalid and his mother a laundry worker." blacks. All three institutions were, after all, formally com Moreover, the Admissions Office, which placed great " mitted to the principle of nondiscrimination, and at least at emphasis on evidence of "character and "leadership," was Harvard and Yale, a modest number of African Americans aware that he had so impressed members of his own com had graduated over the years. munity that "the area's leading Negroes are guaranteeing As a result, blacks were barely visible on campus, consti five hundred dollars a year towards his college expenses." tuting just 15 of the more than 3,000 students who entered But the young man had not done well on his College Boards, ? Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in 1960. Harvard, which long averaging only 488 on the SAT. Yale which at the time " had enjoyed a reputation for nondiscrimination, enrolled the was very concerned about picking the "right boy among ? ? most blacks 9 in a class of 1,212 freshmen. Yale, which black applicants to ensure graduation concluded that he prided itself on its tradition of openness, enrolled 5 black stu was too great a risk to warrant acceptance. His rejection, an dents out of a freshman class of 1,000. And Princeton, which admissions officer said regretfully, was "part of the price we had not enrolled its first black student until 1945 and was pay for our academic standards." still considered by far the least hospitable of the Big Three, had a African American in its freshman class of only single "In 1960 blacks were barely visible on these campuses, 826 students. constituting just 15 of the more than 3,000 students who A decade all three institutions had been " later, radically entered Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. transformed. Over 280 African Americans were part of the ? freshman class 83 at Yale, 103 at Princeton, and 98 at Yet even at Yale the atmosphere in the early 1960s had Harvard. No change in the history of these tradition-bound changed from that of just a short time earlier. For one thing, ? institutions save, perhaps, the admission of women to the nation had a dynamic new president in John Fitzgerald ? ? Yale and Princeton in 1969 had ever taken place so rap Kennedy a man who had presented himself during the idly. How and why this radical transformation occurred is presidential campaign as an advocate of civil rights and, inextricably intertwined with the racial politics of the once in office, moved quickly to sign an executive order decade. establishing the Presidential Commission on Equal Opportunity. For another, the struggle of the civil rights Yale: From to Affirmative Action Neutrality movement had continued, sometimes advancing and some In the spring of 1960, Dean of Admissions Arthur Howe Jr.