Melvin Tolson

Oral History Interview with Melvin Tolson Interview Conducted by Jerry Gill March 2, 2009 O-STATE Stories Oral History Project Special Collections & University Archives Edmon Low Library ● Oklahoma State University © 2008 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library Interview History Interviewer: Jerry Gill Transcriber: Samantha Siebert Editors: Latasha Wilson, Mary Larson The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Project Detail The purpose of O-STATE Stories Oral History Project is to gather and preserve memories revolving around Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (OAMC) and Oklahoma State University (OSU). This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on October 5, 2006. Legal Status Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Melvin Tolson is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on March 2, 2009. 2 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library About Melvin Tolson… Dr. Melvin B. Tolson Jr. was born in 1923 and grew up in an intellectually gifted family. His father, Melvin B. Tolson Sr., was an internationally recognized and acclaimed educator, author, poet, and philosopher. His two brothers earned doctorates, his sister received two master's degrees, and later in life his mother received her master’s degree from OSU. Dr. Tolson remembers that, “Our table discussions, our discussions, were about ideas, political and social currents in the world.” He grew up in Marshall, Texas, where his father was on the faculty at Wiley College. The elder Tolson started and coached the nationally acclaimed debate program at the college that was featured in the movie The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington as Tolson’s father. The younger Dr. Tolson, who debated under his father, graduated from Wiley College in 1942 and received a second bachelor’s degree at Gammon Theological Seminary in 1946. He was hired at Prairie View A&M College as assistant chaplain and professor of English, but in 1949 Tolson felt that it was time to work on a master’s degree. Oklahoma State University was located near Langston University, where his father was then a faculty member, and because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling the previous year integrating higher education in Oklahoma, he could consider attending OSU. Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, who had been the plaintiff in that suit, had been a student at Langston, where Tolson’s father had taught and mentored her. He also actively supported her cause and raised money to help pay for legal fees in her court battle to gain admission into the University of Oklahoma Law School. In the fall of 1949, Tolson began work on his master’s degree in French, and he recalls that five students commuted from Langston at that time, including two women. By the second semester only he and Phail Wynn were still enrolled, and they both graduated in May 1950, becoming the first two African American graduates of Oklahoma State University. Tolson remembers being treated well by his classmates and teachers and remarks that there “never were any words of aspersion, racial words, racial expressions, nothing.” He and Phail were not involved in student activities, and Tolson explained that, “we went to school, went to class and came back to Langston.” He downplays the historical significance of his and Phail’s being the first black graduates of OSU and modestly gives Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher the credit for integrating higher education in Oklahoma and making their enrollment at OSU possible. Following completion of his master’s degree, Tolson returned to his faculty position at Prairie View College. In 1955, he received a Fulbright Fellowship and spent 1955-56 studying at the University of Paris, the Sorbonne. He received the Advanced Diploma in Contemporary Literature, then returned to Prairie View until 1959. In 1959, he took another leave of absence to pursue doctoral studies in French at the University of Oklahoma, and in 1961 he accepted a teaching position there. He received his PhD in 1964. He later became 3 one of the first tenured black faculty members at OU. Tolson completed his long and distinguished academic career at the University and received numerous awards and recognitions for teaching excellence and service, including an award of appreciation from the Black Student Association, a Lifetime Excellence Award, and recognition as a Regents Professor. Dr. Melvin Tolson Jr. retired in 1992 and still resides in Norman, where he continues his studies in the history of the black diaspora on the eastern coast of Africa to Islamic countries. He remains today, as he has been throughout his academic career, a quiet scholar and modest trailblazer who has made significant contributions to both scholarship and racial equality in higher education. 4 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library Melvin Tolson Oral History Interview Interviewed by Jerry Gill March 2, 2009 Norman, Oklahoma Gill My name is Jerry Gill, and today is March 2, 2009. I’m visiting with Dr. Melvin Tolson in his home in Norman, Oklahoma. This interview is part of the O-State Stories Project for the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program of the OSU library. Dr. Tolson, I appreciate you taking time to visit with us today. Tolson Thank you. Gill To start off, could you share a little about your early life—about where you grew up, a little bit about your family? Tolson I was born in my mother’s home in Charlottesville, Virginia, in June of 1923 while my father had come down that summer to Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, where he was going to be a teacher of English. My mother brought me down that fall to Marshall, and I grew up there. As I said, my father taught at Wiley College, and Wiley was right across the street and down the street from elementary and high schools, so it was a school atmosphere in which one found it very easy to go to school. Another thing is that although Marshall was a small town of approximately 10,000 or 12,000 people, there were three colleges— small colleges, of course—in that town. Wiley was what was at that time a Methodist Episcopal—now it’s United Methodist supported. There was another college, Bishop College, which was supported by the Baptist Church. And there was a white college, East Texas College, a state college, which is still there. Bishop College moved to Dallas in the fifties and finally went out of existence, but Wiley and East Texas State are still in Marshall, Texas. The high school, which I attended, was right across the street from Wiley College. Since integration, the high school has ceased to exist and its buildings are now a part of Wiley College. So it was quite an atmosphere to grow up in, a small town with three colleges. 5 Gill Sounds like a really educational environment for you. Tolson Yes. And so I finished Wiley in 1942. I taught in a rural elementary school for one year. In Wiley I had majored in philosophy and English. I taught in this rural school one year, and after that I went to what was then Gammon Theological Seminary, which was supported by the Methodist Episcopal church. It is no longer in existence. It is now incorporated into the Interdenominational Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, but I finished there. I was going to be either a professor of philosophy or a chaplain in the armed forces. Gill What did you major in at Gammon College? Tolson No, no. Gammon was a theological seminary, so there was a generalized curriculum in philosophy and theology. You did not major in—it wasn’t like a regular college where one majors in science or arts or things of that sort. Everyone took the same general courses. So when I came out of Gammon, I got a job as assistant chaplain and professor of English at Prairie View A&M College, which is close to Houston, Texas. At Prairie View I was asked, because I had had a course in French, I was asked to teach a course in French one semester and I consented. I enjoyed it so much that I asked for other courses, and gradually my emphasis changed from English to French. In 1949, I decided that it was time to get my master’s degree, and 1949 was also the year that Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher had succeeded in having the courts integrate the school systems in Oklahoma. Gill What was her name again? Tolson Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher. She was a student of my father’s at Langston University. I failed to mention that my father left Wiley in 1947 and came to Langston University. She was a student of his, and he mentored her. She is historically important as the woman who brought the suit that Attorney Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP succeeded in winning before the supreme court to integrate the schools. So that year of 1949, five of us went and enrolled in what was then Oklahoma A&M. There were two women and three men, and we commuted from Langston, where we all lived. At the end of the first semester, one of the men and the two women decided that they did not wish to continue, so for the second semester, only Phail Wynn and myself continued, and we finished the course and got our degrees in May. Gill May of 1950? Tolson Yes. 6 Gill Fall of 1949 to Spring… Tolson To May of 1950, yes. Gill Did you major in French there? Tolson My major there was French with an English minor.

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