Central Tennessee College pictured in 1895.*

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An African Methodist College in Nashville.

BY T.A. DUNLAP.

For a long time this matter has agitated my mind in so much that it has brought me to the place where I cannot help writing upon the subject, “An African Methodist College in Nashville.”

Fisk University is doing her work with success. Central Tennessee College is doing a noble work for the Negro race in his country, while Roger Williams has done much for this grand race.

Fisk University [and] Roger Williams College had their hundreds during the last session, while Central Tennessee College had 613 enrolled during the year, the largest number in the history of the college.

There were over 1500 students attending these three institutes this year, and if there had been an African Methodist college here, I really think there would have been 600 or 700 more added to that number.

Brethren of the grand old A.M.E. church, we must have an African Methodist college in the city of Nashville. Who says we shall not? Who says we ought not? Well, I guess nobody has got the cheek to say we shall not or ought not.

Fisk University has built a theological seminary, Central Tennessee college is talking of building one, and we (the A.M.E. church) boast of our grand old church, saying that it is the church, do not own one foot of university or college ground in this place, the seat of education. Open your mouths wide, brethren, and let us hear you talk on this subject. Don’t all speak at once, and you who don’t know what to say, don’t speak at all. Like Rev. G.H. Burk thinks, we need no more bishops at present; we can use the money to purchase property and build an African Methodist college in Nashville. Yes, come on brethren, let us hear from you, as about 700 young men and ladies would be in school every winter, if we had an African Methodist college here. I would like to hear bishops, elders and laymen speak.

202 So. College St., Nashville, Tenn.

— From The Christian Recorder, August 13, 1891

*In 1900 Central Tennessee was renamed Walden University, and in 1925 it folded, leaving only its medical department intact. Today Meharry Medical College is one of the nations largest producers of African American nurses and physicians.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Newly-confirmed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

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The U.S. Senate has confirmed Sonia Sotomayor as the newest justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was confirmed by a margin of 68 to 31.

The 55 year-old Sotomayor is the first Puerto Rican, the first Latina, and the first Woman of color to serve on the high court. She also becomes the 111th justice overall, and only the third woman to hold this powerful lifelong appointment.

Like the other women of color appointed by President Obama, Justice Sotomayor has a stellar record of academic and professional achievement. Raised in a housing project in the South Bronx, she holds a B.A. from Princeton University (summa cum laude, 1976) and a law degree from Yale University, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She worked as an assistant D.A. in New York City before moving into private practice. In 1991 she was nominated to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush. She was confirmed in 1992.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Black students a Boston College in the mid-1970s.

(Source: Boston College Magazine)

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Black students at Boston College in 2008.

(Source: Boston College Magazine)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in 1985. Princeton was just the first milestone on her journey, from a 1-bedroom apartment on the South Side of Chicago to the White House.

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During the last two weeks, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has become one of the nation’s most talked-about first-generation college grads. Here are 10 more Black first-generation college graduates whose successes are both an inspiration and a confirmation that you don’t have to be born into privilege to have a powerful impact on the community, the nation, and the world:

1. Gloria Watkins — Better known by her pen name, bell hooks, she is one of the most prominent feminist scholars of the last 30 years. Raised by her mother (who worked as a maid) and her father (who worked as a janitor) to value hard work and education, hooks holds a B.A. from Stanford University (1973), an M.A. form the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
2. Oprah Winfrey — This talk show host, philanthropist, media mogul, and the world’s first Black woman billionaire is a graduate of Tennessee State University (1976), where she majored in Speech and Drama. Raised by her grandmother, a farmer in rural Mississippi, and her father, a Nashville-based barber, Winfrey skipped two grades in grammar school and went on to earn a full scholarship to Tennessee State.
3. Joycelyn Elders — The first African American appointed as the U.S. Surgeon General, this daughter of sharecroppers earned a B.S. in biology from Philander Smith College (1952) and an M.D. from the University of Arkansas Medical School. The oldest of eight children born to Curtis and Haller Elders, who were cotton farmers in southwestern Arkansas, Elders was the sole Black stduent in her class at the University of Arkansas Medical School and was required to eat in a separate dining hall from the white students in her cohort.
4. Ruth J. Simmons — The first African American to be president of an Ivy League institution (Brown University) and a 2002 Newsweek Woman of the Year, Simmons graduated from Dillard University (1967). The daughter of a farmer and factory worker father and a stay-at-home mom, she holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University (Romance Languages and Literatures).
5. Edward P. Jones — Winner of the The PEN/Hemingway Award for Lost in The City and the Pulitzer, National Book Critics Circle Award and Lannan Literary Award for The Known World, and the recipient of a MacArthur “genius”grant, Jones holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross and an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia. Although she could not read herself, his mother strongly encouraged her son’s love of books, believing deeply in the importance of education.
6. Andre Leon Talley — The American editor-at-large for Vogue magazine, Talley is one of the most influential figures in the fashion industry. Raised by his grandmother, a North Carolina domestic servant, he earned his bachelor’s degree at North Carolina Central University and an M.A. in French Studies from Brown University.
7. Toni Morrison — Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature, Morrison holds a B.A. from Howard University (1953, English) and an M.A. from Cornell University (1955, English). For an earlier blogpost on Morrison, follow this link.
8. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) — The first leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Ture earned his Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Howard University (1964). The Trinidadian-born child of a cab driver and a housekeeper, Carmichael was the co-author (with George Hamilton) of the landmark nationalist manifesto, Black Power.
9. Denzel Washington — One of two African American men to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, Washington holds a B.A. in Drama and Journalism from Fordham University (1977). The child of a beauty parlor owner and a minister,  he has won 2 Oscars, two Golden Globe Awards, and 12 NAACP Image Awards.
10. Michelle Obama — Former Vice President of Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center and the current First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University (1985) and a law degree from Harvard. The daughter of a city pump operator and Democratic precinct captain father and a stay-at-home mom, First Lady Obama was raised in a 1-bedroom apartment on the South Side of Chicago.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

William Sanders Scarborough (1852 – 1926) was the first Black scholar to openly challenge Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of industrial education, arguing in essays and other media that African Americans were as capable as white people of high achievement in the liberal arts. Scarborough was the first African American member of the Modern Language Association, and only the third Black member of the American Philological Association. He was also the author of a widely used and influential textbook, First Lessons in Greek. First published in 1881, this this introductory classics text was adopted by a number of institutions, including Yale University. The profile below was published in the nation’s most widely circulated Black periodical of the period, The Christian Recorder.

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From The Christian Recorder Magazine, November 25, 1886

PROF. W.S. SCARBOROUGH, LL.D. —– ONE OF THE RIPEST SCHOLARS OF THE RACE – AN INTERESTING SKETCH OF AN EMINENT CLASSICAL SCHOLAR AND PHILOLOGIST – HIS LABORS IN THE SCHOOLS AND THE DOMAIN OF POLITICS. —–

Prof. William S. Scarborough, the distinguished subject of this sketch, was born in Macon, Ga., February 16, 1852. His parents were Jeremiah and Frances Scarborough, natives of that city. A brother and sister died quite young, leaving him the sole surviving child, and on October 29, 1883, his father also died. From an early age books were his greatest delight. He evinced such a desire for learning that, though it was then a law in Georgia that any negro caught with a spelling book in his hand should receive severe punishment, and the white man who taught a negro should pay a heavy fine or go to the penitentiary, he was sent to a private school ostensibly to play; but with his book concealed he spent half the time in school. When eight years of age he could read fluently and write well. Young Scarborough was a great favorite among his white playmates who, strange to say, often assisted him in his lessons. He continued in this cladestine way to attend undisturbed some one of the few private schools up to the close of the war, when he was placed under the instruction of a Miss Kidd from the North. He remained under her tutelage until the American Missionary Association opened its schools in that city and then, passing through the different grades thus established, he finished at the Lewis High School in 1869. With this preparation, with studious habits, with fixedness of purpose remarkable in a lad of seventeen years, he entered Atlanta University to prepare for Yale College. Here he spent two years, the sole member of his class, reaching high standing in Greek, Latin and mathematics. In 1871 he graduated from the preparatory department of Atlanta University and the following September decided to go to Oberlin College. His preparation in Greek and Latin was thorough and extensive, beyond the requirements for matriculation. Having held high rank throughout his course he graduated in 1875 from the department of philosophy and the arts, with the degree of A.B. – the only colored member of his class.

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bell hooks is ranked #4 on the list of the most cited Black scholars in the humanities.

bell hooks (b. 1952)

(Source: S9.com Biographical Dictionary)

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At no time in my years as a student did I march in a graduation ceremony. I was not proud to hold degrees from institutions where I had been constantly scorned and shamed. I wanted to forget these experiences, to erase them from my consciousness. Like a prisoner set free, I did not want to remember my years on the inside. When I finished my doctorate, I felt too much uncertainty about who I had become. Uncertain about whether I had managed to make it through without giving up the best of myself, the best of the values I had been raised to believe in-hard work, honesty, and respect for everyone no matter their class-I finished my education with my allegiance to the working class intact. Even so, I had planted my feet on the path leading in the direction of class privilege. There would always be contradictions to face. There would always be confrontations around the issue of class. I would always have to reexamine where I stand.

–bell hooks, from “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 17, 2000)

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Biographical Notes: Gloria Watkins (known professionally by her pen name, “bell hooks”), holds a B.A. from Stanford University (1973), an M.A. form the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. One of the most prolific and influential feminist scholars of the last 30 years, she has written and published more than 20 books and numerous articles related to Black feminism, cultural studies, and critical analysis.

Hooks has taught at University of California-Santa Cruz, Yale University, Oberlin College, and City College of New York. To read a more detailed biography of bell hooks, follow this link.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

…or A Tale of Two Sources.

President Barack Obama as a college freshman.

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By now, anyone in the blogosphere who is interested in the circumstances surrounding Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s arrest is probably familiar with two official sources on the matter. One is the police report, released early last week, and the other is the transcript of Lucia Whalen’s 911 call to the Cambridge Police.

The 911 transcript makes clear that at the time that she called, Lucia Whalen was unsure of 1)whether or not a crime was being committed and 2)what the ethnicity of the two possible burglars actually was. I am among many bloggers who are now revisiting the case and as well as the role and motivation of the caller.

The Lucia Whalen who made the 911 call seemed the reluctant witness, pressed into involvement by her sympathy for a concerned elderly neighbor on Gates’s block. This Whalen is quite different from the one described in the police report, which says that she was waiting in front of the house in question, cell phone in hand, and that she reported seeing two Black men with backpacks, one of whom had used his shoulder to force entry.

Rob Kuznia of the Hispanic Business Report explains:

The release of the 911 transcript in last week’s explosively controversial arrest of an African American Harvard professor has raised questions about the police officer’s official report documenting his arrest of Henry Louis Gates outside Gate’s own home.

In his police report, Sgt. James Crowley wrote that the 911 caller told him she’d seen “what appeared to be two black males with backpacks” trying to pry open the locked front door of the home. But in the 911 transcript the caller, Lucia Whalen — who was calling on behalf of an elderly woman — didn’t mention race until asked about it by the dispatcher, and then only said that one of the men might be Hispanic.

On Monday, Whalen’s attorney, Wendy Murphy, publicly stated that her client never told Crowley that the men were black.

“She never used the word black and never said the word backpacks to anyone,” Murphy said, according to the New York Times.

What’s more, a newly released recording of the communication between Crowley and the police dispatcher was similarly devoid of any reports of two black men. When Crowley asked about the race of the suspects, the dispatcher replied, “Unknown on the race,” but said, “one may be Hispanic,” according to The Times.

If, as Whalen’s attorney alleges, the police report literally puts words into the 911 caller’s mouth, then Sargeant Crowley may find his actions under a microscope. A beer with the President might be the last smooth patch in the road that he experiences for a very long time. Those of us who have relied on that report for an understanding of the events surrounding Gates’s arrest are now having to reconsider and retract our assertions about the callers role in this bizarre incident.

One person whose initial, off-the-cuff evaluation of this debacle might be vindicated right along with Lucia Whalen is President Obama. Many have criticized him for saying that the arresting officer(s) acted “stupidly.” If Crowley’s police report misrepresents of her client’s words on that day, as Whalen’s lawyer suggests, then President Obama was right.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Harbison Agricultural College (now Harbison Junior College) was founded in in 1886 as Ferguson Institute in Abbeville County, South Carolina.

(Source: Harbison Agricultural College Photograh Collection, University of South Carolina)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Caller: Umm, well there were two larger men, one looked kind of Hispanic, but I’m not really sure. And the other one entered and I didn’t see what he looked like at all. I just saw it from a distance and this older woman was worried, thinking someone’s breaking in someone’s house, they’ve been barging in, and she interrupted me, and that’s when I had noticed. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all, to be honest with you. So I was just calling ‘cause she was a concerned neighbor, I guess.

— Lucia Whalen to the 911 dispatcher who alerted Cambridge police to a possible burglary at the home of Henry Louis Gates (from The Boston Globe)

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With today’s release of the exact content of Lucia Whalen’s 911 call, assertions that Gates and the rest of the U.S. Black community (including our Chief Executive) have overreacted and falsely “played the race card” have reached a fever pitch. I certainly hope that that today’s revelation of the content of that call does not completely derail what might well have been a productive national dialogue around race and law enforcement in the U.S.

That said, I must acknowledge my error in casting Whalen as the catalyst in the racially fraught encounter between Gates and the Cambridge police. I regret any hurt or inconvenience that my comments may have caused Ms. Whalen. She probably did not intend to launch the tempest stirred up by her effort simply to come to the aid of an “older woman [who] was worried.”  In fact, based on the 911 transcript, two things seem to be true:

1. Lucia Whalen reserved judgement about the events that she witnessed, remaining (admirably, I would say)  non-commital about whether or not a crime was even taking place and whether or not the men who entered Gates’s house might well have been residents who were simply having trouble with their key.
2. The true instigaor of the call was an elderly female neighbor of Gates, who may or may not have been motivated by her perceptions of Black men/men of color.

The motivations of this neighbor, however, are the the subject of this blogpost. Lucia Whalen’s 911 calls suggests that she was more unsure of the race of the perceived burglars and — most importantly — less sure that an actual crime was being committed than the first week of reporting on the Gates arrest seemed to indicate. Although her description of the (I’ll call them) suspects as two larger men seems to contradict what we now know to be the reality of what she actually saw, the text of her 911 call makes clear that she was very open about being unclear about the implications of what she and the neighbor had actually seen.

Of course, some questions do remain. For example, if Lucia Whalen seemed uncertain of both the race of the possible burglars and whether or not a burglary was taking place at all, then one question remains: How one earth such a tentative report end up in the arrest of Professor Gates for what was eventually revealed to be no crime at all? This is a question that Black and non-Black people will probably answer quite differently. Like the racial divide between those who questioned the actions of Officer Crowley and Lucia Whalen and those who believed that their actions were justified, the perception of the justice or injustice of arresting Gates reflects two very different perceptions of law enforcement and the relationship of race to the policing of Black men.

This is why I say that the revelations of Ms. Whalen’s 911 call will mean everything and nothing. For those who believe that the outcry by many (not all) Black people over the events surrounding Gates’s arrest are just another example of Black peoples’ overreaction to issues related to race, then the fact that Whalen seems not to have initially identified the race of her assailants will mean everything. For Black people (and others) who feel that the arrest on the grounds of his home of an African American man who did not commit a crime simply underscores the problematic role that racism plays in interactions between Black people and the police the fact that the 911 caller did not initially name the race of the perceived burglars will mean nothing.

The reason that so many people of African descent (including Gates himself) have reacted so strongly to this encounter is because so many Black people have been accused of and even been convicted of crimes and misdemeanors that they did not commit. Some Black people have even been killed by the police for such crimes, or even in the absence of a crime. Because he is a nationally and internationally noted scholar based at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was able to quickly resolve his wrongful arrest in a relatively short time (and I do believe that it was a wrongful arrest, as is any arrest for a crime that the arrestee did not commit), and without any injury to himself or others.

It is important to note, though, that very few Black people (indeed, very few people of any ethnicity) have Gates’s name recognition, education, or influence. However tempted anyone might be to dismiss the reality of racism and racial profiling by the recent revelations surround  her  911 call, we must all understand that the strong reaction to what transpired between Lucia Whalen and the CPD, Officer Crowley and Professor Gates is a reflection of Black people’s fear of and anger about  being treated as criminals by police and by civilian witnesses, even when they have not committed a crime.

Having followed the ongoing dialogue around these incidents on my blog and in the responses to other bloggers and journalists who have written on the subject of the Gates arrest, I have to conclude that many outside of the Black community believe that race  is simply not a factor in African American encounters with law enforcement. Specifically, it seems that many outside of the African American community are unaware that lurking in the back of many Black peole’s minds, in any encounter with law enforcement, is the memory of cases like those of Keith Spence, Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Lafonso Rollins, Steven Toney,  Paula Gray, and too many others to include here.

Most officers do not, of course, set out to deliberately abuse, injure, unfairly arrest, or kill Black people; and it may seem unfair for Black people to assume that any officer who approaches them is doing so because of racism. To an African American who finds himself or herself questioned by the police for a crime he or she did not commit (or in the absence of any crime at all), the motives of that officer are almost necessarily suspect.

Once could say that this is the mess that racism has wrought, and not just past racism, either. Arrests, imprisonments, convictions, and even shootings of Black people for crimes they did not commit continue to happen today. Lucia Whalen, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Office Crowley are learning now that their actions on that fateful afternoon did not happen in a vacuum. Rather, the actions of each of those three players in this controversial and problematic case took place against the backdrop a cultural, political, and historical matrix that clearly demonstrates that African Americans are under greater suspicion that their white counterparts.

Neither Gates, nor Crowley, nor Whalen created this larger environment of distrust; but each is now most certainly — and probably painfully — aware of its inescapable control.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

First-generation college graduate bell hooks (b. 1952) has gone on to become one of the post influential feminist scholars of our time.

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The ’80s and ’90s saw colleges across the country designating dorm space — a floor, a wing or, in some cases, an entire building — as race-/ethnicity-based theme housing. Some students welcomed these options as opportunities for building connections with others with similar heritage. Others saw race-specific housing as modern-day segregation. Nevertheless, race-based theme housing is now a feature on many college campuses.

One of the main arguments that colleges give in support of race-specific housing is that it decreased the isolation that many students of color feel on majority white campuses. In the 21st century we are hearing much the same concern from administrators about students from economically marginalized backgrounds, especially those who are the first in their family to attend college. According to the Pell Foundation, only 11% of entering first-generation students will ultimately graduate from college, and isolation and the feeling of being an outsider are two key factors in this high attrition rate.

Yesteday’s New York Times included an article (by Dana Jennings) about one very unique effort to apply the ethnic/race-based theme house approach to the question of economical and social class. The University of Cincinnati has created the Gen-1 Theme House for first generation incoming students. According to Program Coordinator Judith Mause, the Gen-1 Theme house is designed to be “an anchor as the students learn to navigate the university and to be their own advocates.”

Gen-1 house has the potential to  feel like a home away from home. For first year students in their late teens, just leaving the supervision of their parents and grandparents, Gen-1 house certainly has some of the rules of home. Students who choose this housing option must sign a contract agreeing to a strict code of behavior. There must be “no alcohol or overnight visitors, midnight curfew on weeknights and 3 a.m. on weekends.”

If Gen-1 house can increase the graduation rate for first generation college entrants, than I hope (and expect) to see other institutions adopt the same approach. Still, Gen-1 house does have the same drawbacks identity-based theme housing (from race to gender to religion). When I think back on my own college experience, I cherish the memories of making strong bonds with other Black students. But I also learned immense amounts from — and built close and lasting friendships with — students whose life experiences were far different from mine, in terms of class and race, religion and geographic region, and too many other characteristics to name here.

But then again,  maybe it’s hard to take pleasure in the diversity of experiences and backgrounds on your campus when the things that so many of the other students share — a seemingly inherent sense of entitlement to all of the opportunities that the university has to offer and the complete absence of doubt about whether or not they are “college material” — just reinforces your own feelings of uncertainty and isolation.

To read more about U Cincinnati’s Gen-1 Theme House, follow any of the LINKS in this post.

Posted by Ajuan Mance