Black History At Harvard

IT BECOMES necessary to be quite literal when reality threatens the figurative perception of your ideals. Your eyes that are focused on the shadows in the dark must accustom themselves to the light of day. Squinting is natural before you become wide-eyed. Things clear up considerably and your vision becomes prescience. This is historical awakening, a process that has many forms. It is an awakening into time, identity, meaning and destiny. It is a process that leads one to define the new days.

The black experience in America '71 is that of historical awakening. Black Studies is one form that this process throws on for a fitting. The history of the black peoples allows for many awakenings: we can cast our gaze on specific events and time periods out of the totality of our existence and relate to them holistically; we can take our souls into the past and walk through the "hallowed halls of Harvard" and out of them into the U. S. A. of the late nineteenth century, as Martin R. Delany, William Monroe Trotter, or W. E. B. DuBois. In our old selves we will meet some of the same ghostly notions in white that haunt our lives today. Squinting is natural at first, but soon we see, and when we return to America '71, Harvard and any place else we be, we can see some similarities.

Some instances. The first reference to the first black man to be a serious prospect for admission to Harvard College. Beverly Williams, is in relation to his pecuniary circumstances. Beverly Williams, had he not died of tuberculosis, and wanted to attend Harvard College, could not have afforded to. Many black men, Emmanuel Sallavou, Robert H. Terrell, and Richard T. Greener to name a few, have had financial difficulties. This is true today. Problems of financial aid are a great concern among black students and may be the strongest tradition of black men at Harvard. Dealing with racism is another tradition of black men at Harvard. The first black men to confront racism at Harvard were Martin R. Delany, Daniel Laing, and Issac Snowden, the first three black men who were admitted to the university, in 1850. These men were not allowed to continue their education at the Harvard Medical School after some white students protested their presence in lectures. Theodore Greener, according to some speculators, gained his initial experiences in diplomacy (he was consul at Bombay and Vladivostok) by dealing with the Southerners racial prejudices at Harvard in a diplomatic way, so as to keep from losing the respect of Northerners. Black men found and still find some kindness and very much racism at Harvard.

We are of course very interested in the lives of black men after they leave Harvard. We find that the graduates of the late nineteenth century (1870-1900) generally either worked in the government or became radicals, black educators or professionals in the black community. Many of the political directions that blacks are considering today were advocated by black men of the nineteenth century. Our understanding of the forces and conditions which generated or frustrated these directions are crucial, since many are still operative. One thing was quite clear in the nineteenth century and W. E. B. DuBois predicted that it would be clearer in the twentieth century, that is, "the problem of the color line."

There is more to be said, but much more that needs to be done. Black history gives us some ideas about what to do, such as Archibald H. Grimke's Right on the Seaffold, Wrong on the Throne, a sketch of Denmark Vesey's life. Check out the exhibit, Black Students at Harvard 1847-1900, on display at Widener Library. You will find it literally revealing.