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Harold s. Buchanan
Experiments
Swarthmore College is a small, private, coed liberal arts institution located about 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia. The idyllic campus of more than 400 acres, shared by approximately 1,000 students during our years there, doubles as a free public arboretum complete with a creek and hiking trails through the private woods. The meticulously maintained rolling grounds and majestic stone buildings create a landscape that was the deciding factor for many of us to attend college there.
In 1864, one year before the end of the Civil War, prominent Quakers founded the College. Its founders included noted women’s rights advocate and abolitionist Lucretia Mott. One of the distinguishing features of the Quaker religion is the emphasis on individual responsibility. In examining ideas and seeking answers, everyone is free to speak until a consensus is reached.
Swarthmore College remains heavily influenced by Quaker values and traditions. Consistent with those beliefs, seeking and testing the truth is the basis for what Swarthmoreans call “academic rigor.” The Quaker quest for truth has historically extended beyond academics to social justice and led the founders to create the College as a “grand experiment” in coeducation, that is, teaching men and women together.
Quakers had a long history of fighting against slavery and participating in the Underground Railroad. When we arrived on campus in the late 1960s, we were surprised to discover that ours were the first classes with more than a handful of black students. Certainly, this socially conscious community with its long history of fighting against slavery and for the rights of blacks would not deny equal opportunity to attend their institution. It shocked us to later find out that the absence of blacks was intentional. Around 1920, concerned members of the community tried to get the College to correct its de facto exclusion of blacks. They found a qualified black student and money to pay for her education, but the president declined to admit her, citing other priorities. Later in the 1920s, the College accidently admitted a black athlete from Philadelphia. When the College discovered the error, it went into crisis mode and found a way to rescind his admission. Finally, in 1943, after years of pressure from students and others in the community, the Board of Managers determined that there was no actual policy to bar blacks and admitted the first black student. Over the next twenty years, through 1963, Swarthmore admitted fewer than thirty black students, an average of little more than one per year.
In 1964, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, the Rockefeller Foundation and other organizations gave grants to Swarthmore and other colleges, essentially paying them to find and accommodate black students. Swarthmore would not have to tap into its rich endowment for a second experiment with black admissions. It never occurred to the College that it might benefit from this endeavor even more than the blacks that they somewhat reluctantly sought to help.
Our group of seven sisters and a brother did not go to Swarthmore to change the College. Our aim was simply to get a good education and enjoy college life, but it didn’t take long for us to discover inconsistencies in the Swarthmore story. Elite colleges pride themselves on their rich heritage and time-honored traditions, and Swarthmore was no exception, priding itself on the number of Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Laureates it had produced. In the 1960s, there were other traditions, such as mandatory attendance at a weekly meeting called “Collection,” similar to an assembly in high school. Upon graduation, tradition permitted senior women to pick a rose from the Dean Bond Rose Garden. Swarthmore’s de facto policy to deny admission to black students was also a tradition and part of its heritage, but one that was wrong and contrary to the College’s espoused values.
With the catalyst of external funding, larger numbers of blacks began to arrive on campus. Our group came to Swarthmore with varying degrees of academic, social, and emotional preparation. We were all stellar students in high school. Our secondary schools were rural, urban, public, and private from Northern and Southern states and the Caribbean. Most were integrated, some only recently, and whites vastly outnumbered blacks. In the afternoons, we all went home to our families and black neighborhoods where we laughed, played, worked, and led “normal” lives. Most of us did not mix socially with white students—no sleepovers in each other’s homes, no movie dates, no camp roommates. We had occasional telephone talks about homework assignments or missing classroom notes. Even Harold, who had close social ties with white friends, retreated to the security of his black neighborhood at the end of each day. All of this made immersion in the white traditions of Swarthmore a challenge for most of us, yet the administration had not anticipated a need for resources to ease our transition into the College. In contrast, the College gave some thought to easing the transition for white students into this grand experiment in racial coeducation. Many of us discovered that our roommates had been solicited and had agreed to accept a black roommate. None of the blacks received a questionnaire asking for our consent to have a white roommate.
When the class of 1970 arrived with only half the number of black freshmen as compared to the previous year, many black students became concerned. We met with college officials who told us how difficult it was to find qualified black students and faculty. For us, it was difficult to comprehend how they could not find qualified blacks with many urban population centers such as Philadelphia, New York, Washington, DC, and Boston within a day’s drive. Our view was that with the right resolve, the College could find them.
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Ohio. It was founded in 1833 and has regularly admitted blacks since 1835, although it segregated its students from 1882-1910.8
Oberlin continued to be an important institution for African Americans for the next century. By 1900, one-third of all black professionals in the US had undergraduate degrees from Oberlin.9
Oberlin also participated in the Underground Railroad, the Abolitionist Movement, and equal rights for women, but that college went a step further in putting its beliefs into action. If Swarthmore had an actual history of educating blacks, it would not have needed to go looking for them. Instead, qualified blacks would have been attracted to the College.
Aloof Faculty
Swarthmore had no black faculty when we arrived. Under the Northern system of racism, Jim Crow laws were not necessary. Like so many Northern employers, colleges and universities could easily justify why a particular white candidate was better than a black one. Whether fully intentional or not, the only blacks on campus, other than students, were service workers. Sometime after we arrived, a black librarian appeared. Two years later, the first black professor was hired—temporarily—to replace someone on leave.
We arrived at college without much experience in engaging faculty or seeking mentors, and not many professors reached out to us. A perception among black high school students was that only low-achieving students met with teachers at lunchtime or after school to get assistance with their work. Even if they had questions on the content presented in class, high achievers would simply study harder at home on their own until they “got it.”
Few of us remember having more than short conversations with our professors while at Swarthmore. We have forgotten most of those faculty members. We rarely took advantage of faculty office hours. Fortunately, we often studied together, discussed reading assignments, and helped each other with mathematics problems and science concepts. Two of us did make significant and rewarding connections with professors who are remembered for specific and rare moments of exceptional teaching. They were the ones who inspired us to examine scholarship more critically and affirmed us, valuing our perspectives and insights.
At times, it seemed
