could and should lead, but we believed we would be more respected if the image of our organization was strong by patriarchal standards because its men were visible and in charge. The Seven Sisters ignored or downplayed frictions with male classmates and camouflaged our strengths. We perceived public leadership as a zero-sum game not to be played at the expense of black men. At Swarthmore, our solution to the dilemma was not unique. The Seven Sisters and a Brother led as a group composed primarily of women who supported black men as the more visible representatives of our community.
Not Just Student Issues
Signs of political progress emerged with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and, three years later, the election of black mayors in Cleveland, Ohio and Gary, Indiana and the appointment of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967, but there was much more to be done. As the first chairman of SASS, Sam Shepherd, put it:
Black people look forward beyond the Civil Rights Act and the black professionals and see that 47.4 percent of black people and 59.6 percent of black children are classified as poverty-stricken. They see that the few who have made it are unable or unconcerned with doing anything about the others, and that they either deny or superficially affirm the racial aspect of themselves.6
Although SASS would be best known for demanding a black studies program, a black cultural center, and a greater number of black students and faculty, we did not limit our work to student-centered concerns. One of our earliest actions was to speak out about the lack of respect afforded to the College’s black employees. We were struck by the absence of black supervisors among the College’s blue-collar workers. It mirrored the previously uncontested absence of blacks on the faculty and in white-collar and administrative positions. The beautifully manicured rolling lawns of the campus looked much like idyllic representations of Southern plantations where those who tended the lawns, cleaned the buildings, and prepared the meals were all black and all dressed in service workers’ uniforms. All of their supervisors were white.
We realized that many of the black workers were underemployed. They worked in jobs that didn’t reflect their capabilities or the roles they played as parents, family members, caregivers, religious and civic workers, and leaders in the communities in which they lived. No matter how well they did their jobs or how senior they were in age, they were called by their first names while their white supervisors were “Mrs.” and “Mr.” Even Harold Hoffman, a particularly capable and distinguished black man on the custodial staff, was thoughtlessly called “Harold.” He was polished and responsible and everyone, white and black, looked up to him, though not enough to respectfully call him Mr. Hoffman. We asked him and his co-workers what their last names were and spread the word to other black students, insisting that the black workers be addressed accordingly. We had been taught by our families that the “help” were due respect, just like our parents and our church ladies and elders. Eventually we got the administration to add last names to their badges and to call them “Mr.” and “Mrs.” just like their white supervisors. We agitated successfully for Mr. Harold Hoffman to become the first black employee to be made a supervisor. Like Mr. Hoffman, several of our parents were blue-collar workers. If we had been born at a slightly different time or place, we could have been working beside those employees who maintained our splendid campus rather than enjoying the fruits of their labor.
More Than Friends
At Swarthmore, maids changed our bed linens each week. We enjoyed meals that were far superior to the cafeteria fare most college students complain about, and we dined in the magnificent chalet-like Sharples Dining Hall. As we entered Sharples, we off-loaded our heavy books, book bags, sweaters and coats onto unsupervised racks in the lobby. The New York and Boston women among us found this especially remarkable. Big city girls never left their pocketbooks unattended. We quickly adjusted to the unspoken norm that, no matter how long we lingered over our meals and conversations, when we finally left the dining hall, we would find our belongings safe and undisturbed. Swarthmore was a trusting place where students were regularly allowed to borrow college vehicles for personal use. We made good use of that resource as well.
Yet Swarthmore lacked the comforts of home. At home, no matter what challenges school might bring, we each returned to families and friends. The foods we ate at home reflected our rich African American and Caribbean culinary cultures. We danced our own dances to the beat of rhythm and blues and calypso. Our local black barbershops and hair salons were specialists in disguising our natural hair to approximate European standards of beauty. We attended churches where worship was more social than the solitude of the Swarthmore Friends Meeting House. On campus, we had to create our own community of friends.
Aundrea, Bridget, Jannette, and Myra entered Swarthmore in fall 1966 and quickly bonded with each other in the dormitory. They were soon befriended by Joyce, who was already in her junior year, Joyce’s official “Little Sister,” Marilyn H., and her sophomore classmate, Marilyn A. Harold, who was Joyce’s and Marilyn A.’s fellow math major, became a brother to the seven women. The four classmates cooked home-style comfort foods in the dormitory kitchen and, especially after holidays, shared “care packages” of homemade baked goods and other treats. When we all gathered for meals in the dining hall, we talked about the issues of the day amongst ourselves and with the other black students who gravitated to our table. After breaking bread together, we often continued the fellowship by singing spirituals together despite the consternation it caused among some of our white classmates.
More than friends, the eight of us felt like comrades in arms. We spent a lot of time together with little distinction between our social and political activities. We studied together, supporting each other academically even when we were studying different subjects in different majors. In the self-taught black studies course we designed for ourselves, we diligently fulfilled our responsibilities to do the course work well to make it a meaningful experience for each other. We traveled together to attend black studies courses at other colleges, black activist meetings in Philadelphia, New York, and on other college campuses, and to see black performers in Philadelphia. We planned and executed a host of events to bring black artists and speakers to the campus. We went together to nearby Chester to tutor younger students and attend church, and to Philadelphia to take African dance lessons. Those who could sew even set up an assembly line with sewing machines brought from home and made dashikis for all of the black male students so that they could be properly dressed for a Black History Week dinner that we had organized. By the time SASS was ready to challenge the College by occupying the admissions office, we had already engaged in many successful ventures together. In so doing, we created our own community and proved the power of collaboration.
Black Is Beautiful
When we started college, we were not that different from most “Negroes,” who had been taught to be ashamed of their own physical features and embarrassed by their African heritage. The high school yearbook photos we provided for the Cygnet, Swarthmore’s freshman directory, were remarkably similar. We looked as much as possible like our white peers—women with straightened hair and men with hair cut low. By the time we formed SASS, we thought and looked differently. In photographs taken in our final college years, we are wearing our natural hair. Some of us even went beyond the eventually stylish afro, and created elaborate West African-style hairdos like neat grids with a puff of natural hair in each section. Adding to the permanence of our transformation, most of us went into town to have our ears pierced so we could wear a variety of traditional and ethnic-inspired earrings to accompany our newly natural hair and African-style dresses. More than simple fashion statements, our choices were self-conscious, political assertions that “black is beautiful” and that we were proud to be connected to Africa.
Blackness became a desirable quality in the 1960s. Africa and Africans—leaders of newly independent countries, public intellectuals, and fellow students—provided positive points of reference. They were political, cultural, and aesthetic role models. We identified ourselves as part of the African Diaspora, “Afro” Americans. “Black is beautiful” was our American parallel
