A Housing Hubbub

Harvard's relatively enlightened tradition was blemished during the dormitory crisis of the early 1920s, when President Lowell brought the issue of racism to a head by refusing to allow a Black student to live in the freshman dormitories.

Black alumni expressed outrage at the administration's discriminatory actions. The noted journalist and first Black man elected to Phi Beta Kappa, W. Monroe Trotter '95 accused Lowell of "making Harvard turn from democracy and freedom to race oppression, prejudice and hypocrisy."

Raymond Pace Alexander, a noted Harvard Law School graduate and a president of the National Bar Association, called Lowell's actions "a departure from the great Harvard tradition of fairness and justice to all, irrespective of race or color." Lowell's actions were ironic: Blacks had already lived in the freshman dormitories between 1917 and 1920.

The administration reversed itself in 1923, with a unanimous vote by the Board of Overseers allowing Blacks to reside in the dormitories provided that "men of white and the colored races shall not be compelled to live and eat together."

The racial situation in the United States remained "a sore burden to the entire nation" as Harvard moved into its fourth century, wrote Ralph J. Bunche. Bunche, who held both an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard in government, was the first Black recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. An eminent diplomat and organizer of the United Nations, Bunche taught briefly in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences during the early 1950s and later served as a Harvard Overseer between 1959 and 1965.

Since the late 1960s, Harvard has experienced remarkable growth in its Black undergraduate community. After a period of confrontation during the civil rights movement, an Afro-American Studies Department was established in 1969, and the size of the Black student body began to increase--and still supports almost a dozen Afro-American organizations on campus. Since the 1970s, Blacks have also held prominent leadership positions in campus administration, including Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Rev. Peter J. Gomes, who is the minister of Memorial Church.

However, the situation of Blacks at Harvard today is sometimes difficult and complex to ascertain, says Sollors, referring to the results of a recent senior thesis examining Black student identity at Harvard.

"In the post civil-rights and post-segregationist environment, there is less a driving force and more a search for collective cohesion and identity among Blacks," says the chairman of the Afro-Am Department.

Sollors, who edited the book with Thomas A. Underwood and Caldwell Titcomb, adds that his department has received many other essays and uncovered new sources relating to Black experiences at Harvard. Although he calls a second edition both possible and desirable, there are no plans yet for another volume. Copies of Varieties of Black Experience at Harvard are available free of charge at the Department of Afro-American Studies offices on Dunster St.