THE ROUTE TO DIVERSITY

John Suter ’70 was deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement while an undergraduate. Among other activities, he was a volunteer with two Wesleyan efforts, the Mississippi Summer Project and the Belzoni (Mississippi) partnership. From Wesleyan, he helped organize and coordinate the march on Selma, Alabama, in 1965. After serving for nine years as executive director of the New York Folklore Society in Ithaca, New York, he is about to begin coordinating a documentation planning project, under the auspices of the New York State Archives, that focuses on the Latino communities, the mental health system, and the environmental movement in New York State.

In 1962, when I was 15, I left my suburban enclave in Fairfield, Connecticut, to join an American Friends Service Committee work camp in inner-city Philadelphia. As we worked with folks in a poor black neighborhood, terracing their sloping back yards so rain wouldn’t drain into their houses, I came up against some of the realities of racism, politics, and economic oppression.

A year later, after reading a lot and hearing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, I entered Wesleyan with the realization that guilt, disillusionment, and righteous indignation would change nothing in a world that needed changing. I joined a tutoring program for African-American school children in the winter, and when the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project was announced that spring in the chapel, I was ready.

June 21, 1964: I am writing from the recently established office of the Council of Federated Organizations in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Seven of us arrived by chartered bus at 6:30 a.m. today from Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, where we had completed a week of orientation and training for the Mississippi Summer Project. So begins a series of weekly letters I sent to the local Fairfield paper. On the bus, just before we entered Mississippi, we had learned of the disappearance a few days earlier of our coworkers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

June 22: Today, some of our training came in handy. Another worker and I began canvassing a neighborhood at about 10:30 a.m. We talked to four people, none of whom are willing to take the risk of going to the courthouse to register. As we came out of the fourth house, a white police car stopped and Chief of Police Ben Collins summoned us to the car. After taunting us with insults, he said, "Boy, get in the car. We're going to the station." 'Are we under arrest?' I asked. "Get in," he said again. 'Are we under arrest?' At this point he opened the door and started to get out, brandishing his billy club. We got in." After a couple of hours of interrogation and threats in the city and county jails and a few hours in a sweltering cell, we were released uncharged. Collins was notorious nationally for his brutality; he was the subject of a David Halberstam article in The New York Times (July 13, 1964), so our release unharmed was a hopeful sign.

The pattern of continuous and sometimes intense harassment of civil rights workers in Clarksdale continued throughout the summer, without physical violence. But two black youths were arrested and severely beaten over a period of several days for a minor traffic violation. We all feared what might happen after we left and the spotlight of the northern press was off Mississippi. So when we returned home, many of us worked to raise funds for the project and keep national attention focused there.

Back at Wesleyan in 1965, Bill Dietz '66 and I drove a donated station wagon and trailer full of donated clothing and supplies to Belzoni, Mississippi, as part of the NAACP-sponsored Middletown-Belzoni partnership. We returned with three black civil rights workers from Belzoni who could speak first-hand to the Wesleyan and Middletown communities about life and struggle in Mississippi.

Three years later, after a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia, I returned to the United States on the night of August 28, 1968. On the television set in my tiny Washington hotel room I watched in dismay the police riots at the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Welcome home! Is it possible, I wondered, to achieve- not simply work for- social, political, and economic justice without reverting to dehumanizing violence?

I returned to Wesleyan in 1969 and discovered the World Music Program, which launched me on a thirty-year exploration of the arts and cultural exchange as approaches to humane social change.
 

 The Takeover of Fisk Hall

The occupation of Fisk Hall became the kind of lightning-rod event against which other historic moments are measured. Bob Kirkpatrick commented, "It shook people badly, but it was part of the learning curve of the University."

On February 17, 1969, the AAS presented a petition requesting that the administration suspend all normal University activities on Friday, February 21, "in reverence to El Hajj Malik Shabazz Malcolm X . . . to observe his death," and announced a memorial service on Friday afternoon in the chapel. President Etherington was away from the campus, so the petition was referred to Academic Vice President and Provost Robert Rosenbaum.

On Tuesday, February 18, Rosenbaum and University Chaplain Rev. Allan Burry delivered a response, stating that it did not seem appropriate to suspend University activities, but that "members of the community are, of course, free to follow the dictates of their consciences in deciding whether they will pursue normal schedules on that day."

The AAS remained firm and responded with a request that, at a minimum, all classes be canceled on Friday.

On Wednesday, the Provost called a meeting of the Educational Policy Committee. Professor Richard Vann, reporting for the EPC, explained that, in the course of its deliberations, "the attitude of the Committee changed from one of annoyance at the manner and timing of the request to one of far greater sympathy and understanding." The EPC recommended that the faculty cancel classes on Friday.

In reporting to the faculty on Thursday (as stated in the minutes), Vann "emphasized the straightforwardness of their request, pointing out that, while it had provoked an encounter, it would not be called a confrontation, that their request should not be considered a threat. He further stated that the Committee felt that leaving the choice of canceling classes to the conscience of the individual faculty member would be evidence, in the eyes of the AAS, of Wesleyan, the white bourgeois institution; that Wesleyan as an institution should vote the cancellation; that to the black students, the symbolic gesture of our acceptance would be of great importance."

In the prolonged discussion that followed, opposing attitudes were expressed, eloquently and at length. Eventually, the recommendation to cancel classes was defeated by a vote of 60-47.

At the urging of Provost Rosenbaum, a second motion was prepared to be communicated to the AAS by the EPC. The motion expressed sympathy for the AAS request, adding, "Although it has not seen fit to require the cancellation of all classes on that day, it reminds its members of their individual prerogative to cancel their classes as they will, and it expects that many will choose to do so on this memorial occasion."

After some discussion, the motion was accepted.

Beckham and Vann, both known to be supporters of the black students' agenda, arranged to meet with the leadership of the AAS, where they delivered the written statement of this decision.

  At 4 a.m. on February 21, a number of black students occupied Fisk Hall.

 Alford Young describes the membership of the AAS as essentially divided into two clearly defined camps, a more moderate group, which engineered the takeover, and a more militant faction, which had wanted to take over North College, but was dissuaded.

  The more militant faction had assembled at the Afro-American House on Washington Terrace and reached Fisk Hall first, knocking in the door. The more moderate group, which had gathered at the Beckhams'house on Miles Avenue, arrived later.

"Cup" Moody, the visionary but mercurial founder of the TOPS group, then with Community Action of Greater Middletown, joined the occupiers for most of the day. When he heard sirens coming down High Street, Moody ripped off the leg of a table and guarded the door to protect the students from what he feared might be a police invasion.

No invasion, police or otherwise, took place; for a takeover, the event was extremely civilized. Regular occupants of the building were allowed in to remove any belongings or materials they might need. Otherwise, only blacks could enter. Randy Miller '70 (later an assistant dean of admission at Wesleyan), Dwight Greene, and Beckham made sure all the offices were locked, and from the outset it was clear that the occupiers were determined there would be no vandalism. Other than one broken window and one broken table leg, no damage was reported.

 Beckham was the only faculty member in Fisk during the entire occupation, but he calculated that 100 percent of the black adults affiliated with the University and about 80 percent of the black students spent some time in the building that day.

 Spectators gathered outside and across the street throughout the day. For their edification, Miller, a student employee in the Language Lab, used the lab's equipment to broadcast music and the speeches of Malcolm X and of black professor of history and theologian Vincent Harding out of a second-floor window.

  Students occupying the building issued a statement:

"In occupying Fisk Hall we seek to dramatically expose the University's infidelity to its professed goals and to question the sincerity of its commitment to meaningful change. We blaspheme and decry that education which is consonant with one cultural frame of reference to the exclusion of all others."

 They also used the occasion to formulate a set of demands, which they issued later from the Black House. These demands included: the establishment of a cultural center for black students, where intellectual, social, and cultural events could be held and which would have an academic component; educational programs, including black studies for credit; an exchange program with Atlanta University; an African-American residence for all black undergraduates; an increase in the number of black students; more involvement with the admissions staff; a reexamination of financial aid criteria; a change in the grading system (more pass-fail); the recruitment of more black faculty, and the employment of more members of Middletown's black community.

 Beckham recalled that he knew he was taking a risk staying in Fisk Hall that day. "But I was at work, in the building where my office was. I was working on Wesleyan's behalf, using my master key to make sure that all the offices were secure, and so on."

  "My position as teacher, administrator, and alumnus enabled me to interpret the black students to my white colleagues, and it provided space for me to interpret Wesleyan to some of the black students; that is, with a group that maintained close contact with me."

 "I was grateful to Dwight Greene and Randy Miller because their political thinking was very shrewd and subtle. They were engaged in a really serious struggle with people who wanted to be more revolutionary, more militant."

"Ed Sanders ['69] was the one person whose position was very, very difficult because he was the nominal leader of the entire group, so he was the one called upon to do some very subtle mediating between those two factions- and probably among more factions than I was even aware of."

 President Etherington had returned the night before, and at 2 p.m. he wrote a memo to faculty urging them to cancel classes for the remainder of the day and to attend the memorial service for Malcolm X in the chapel.

"All of us can, and should," he wrote, "readily acknowledge many failures to understand and meet the needs of black students at Wesleyan. The fact that this failure is widespread in universities and in American society does not lessen our own responsibility."

"We hope to work with black students to improve education at Wesleyan for all students. There can be no more fundamental calling for the University than the process of self-criticism which, in turn, gives promise of helping all of society to redress wrongs and to embrace meaningful reform."

 Etherington then negotiated with the occupiers, telling them that if they left the building by 4 p.m., he would regard the incident as an "educational experience."

 The situation had created a dilemma for him, because only a few weeks before students and some faculty members had succeeded in blocking the access of other students to visiting CIA and Air Force recruiters. Etherington had vowed to maintain an open campus, stating that every student had a right to examine job opportunities, whatever they were. "Then Fisk Hall happened and I was stymied, because that was just as bad," he recalled. "I understood the anger, but you can't block access to classrooms."

"However, black students made their point dramatically but peacefully and responded to a reasonable request from the president on a timely basis. I felt we had to treat that as an educational matter. Given what happened on other campuses, this was possibly one of Wesleyanâs finest hours. Not the happiest, but we could have had a riot on the campus that day."

 On March 14, Etherington sent a seven-page memo to the AAS, responding to each of its itemized demands and requests, and urging prompt discussions of details. He put special emphasis on the proposal for a cultural institute: "In particular, we have been impressed by the concept of an institute which will provide a location for meaningful examination of intellectual and cultural questions of importance to black students, but also of importance to all students and faculty members." With regard to the request for added educational programs, the memo read, ". . . we consider the outline submitted to be a promising basis for further discussion."

 Less than a month later, on April 8, the faculty took up a proposal for an Afro-American Institute, which they approved the next day at a special meeting.

 Etherington's strategy was, in Beckham's opinion, "a brilliant Wesleyan moment. For a lot of people, diversity means numbers. At Wesleyan, diversity was transformed into an educational resource. The defining act was not the takeover of Fisk Hall but the encounter afterward. Since then, diversity at Wesleyan has meant education."

 In his response, Etherington gently moved the students "away from confrontation and from the most outrageous and not do-able demands," Beckham said. "It channeled their energy toward the one demand the institution could handle--the black studies program."

 In September of 1969, the African-American Institute acquired a home in the former John Wesley House at the corner of High and Washington Streets; the building was rechristened the Malcolm X House. Ed Sanders '69, now a newly-minted alumnus, became a co-director of the AAI with Samuel Allen, a faculty member from the Tuskegee Institute. Faye Boulware, mother of Bill Boulware '71, took over as director in 1971.

The institute drew its intellectual inspiration from the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta, Ga., which had been created by Vincent Harding, a historian affiliated with the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. The committee and others at Wesleyan planning for the University's Afro-American Institute consulted with the Institute of the Black World, with Etherington and some black students traveling there. They developed a program that would send Wesleyan students to Atlanta for a semester and sought advice on setting up their own events and courses on black history and culture. Eventually, they realized that while Wesleyan had the desire and wherewithal for an educational program, it lacked faculty to teach in the program, whereas the Institute of the Black World had both instructors and program in place. The solution was to direct a portion of the AAI budget to the Institute of the Black World, which allowed scholars to fly to Connecticut once a week to teach in the AAI. Regular, adjunct, and visiting members of the Wesleyan faculty, coming from the traditional curricula, also taught in the program. Much of the work was self-directed study on the part of the students.

 At about this same time, the undergraduate society Ujamaa was established, focusing on a wide range of black African nationalism and culture. Ujamaa, variously translated from Swahili to mean "family" or "cooperative work and economics," from the beginning extended membership beyond the campus to the wider black community. The Malcolm X House became a true center, housing Ujamaa, the AAI, and a residence for black students.