White in Historically Black College

Northstarmom
Wed, 08 Jun 2005 21:50:39 +0000

I think that Bob Jones may have been the last college that refused to admit black students. Seems they changed that rule just a few years ago.

"*In 1909, Woodrow Wilson, then the president of Princeton University, responded to a letter from a black man who wanted to apply for admission by writing, “I regret to say that it is altogether unsuitable for a colored man to come to Princeton.”
*And for a long time that, indeed, was the case.
*“There was a notable failure of many colleges not to enroll significant numbers of blacks until World War II,” said William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 until 1988, in an interview for the video “Looking Back: Reflections of Black Princeton Alumni,” which was prepared for Princeton University’s 250th anniversary celebration in the 1996-97 school year.
**Blacks were actively discouraged from coming to Princeton until 1942, when The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, campaigned for minority enrollment. It was not until 1947 that the first black received a diploma from Princeton. " http://www.pacpubserver.com/new/news/3-27-00/blackstudies.html

"Charlie L. Yates graduated in 1958, one of six honors graduates in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech that year. The only African American in his class of 911 undergraduates, he was the first of his race to graduate from Virginia Tech.

In fact, nowhere in the former Confederacy did a black undergraduate spend four years at a historically white institution and earn a bachelor’s degree before Yates did."http://www.vtmagazine.vt.edu/fall97/feature1.html

U of Mississippi, 1962

Haverford’s first black graduate, 1951

Bryn Mawr: late 1920s

Middlebury 1823 (according to Journal of Blacks in Higher Ed, where much of the figures I cite come from: http://www.jbhe.com/features/38_leading_colleges.html

Davidson voted to desegregate in 1961
Emory’s first black student, 1962
Vanderbilt, 1953
Florida State 1962

Swarthmore: "Folklore has it that the first Black student was unknowingly admitted to Swarthmore sometime before 1913, as recollected in Charles Darling’s Memoirs. A very fair skinned male was alerted that an error had been made pertaining to his admittance to the college, upon his arrival on the campus.

A similar incident occurred in 1932, as reported by Everett Lee Hunt in The Revolt of the College Intellectual. A Black student was denied admittance to Swarthmore, despite his excellent academic achievements, and was instead awarded a four year scholarship to Dartmouth College by Swarthmore; the Board of Managers felt the political timing of admitting a Black to the college was off, and this this young man would be more appropriately place at a man’s college.

“Swarthmore finally passed a resolution in 1942, which changed the admissions policy opening admission to students regardless of race, color, or creed.” http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/sass/history.html

MIT: The first black student to attend MIT appears to have been Robert Robinson Taylor, who enrolled in 1888. http://blackhistorypages.com/People/more2.html

The first Black matriculants appeared at the college in 1943,

Harvard admitted its first black student in 1865
Yale, in 1870
Dartmouth 1828

Even when blacks were admitted relatively early, in many cases, they were not allowed to live on campus. This was true at places like Harvard as well as Syracuse, where my great uncle had to sleep in a basement where the furnance was when he attended there around 1915.

Some of the blacks who got into colleges at a relatively early date were “passing” for white.