Negotiating Integration: Black Women at Barnard, 1968–1974
Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Elvita Dominique's
senior thesis in the Barnard Department of History (2004). In the
sections that precede this excerpt, Ms. Dominique discusses her primary
sources (archival research from student newspaper and magazine articles,
and interviews with black alumnae), the history of black women at
Barnard before the 1960s, the effect of Brown v. Board of
Education (1954) and the Higher Education Act (1965) on black
recruitment at Barnard, and Barnard's "Special Student" Program, a pilot
program developed in the mid-1960s to recruit underprivileged students
of any race or ethnicity that became problematically confused with black
recruitment efforts. In the sections that are presented here, Ms.
Dominique discusses the push that Barnard made in the later 1960s to
recruit black students and the consequences of this integration on the
institution and the black women themselves during the most radical
period in Barnard-Columbia history. Student activism reached a height in
1968 for local, national, and international reasons. Locally, there were
protests against Columbia University's plan to build a gym in
Morningside Park, to which local residents (largely working class and
black) would have separate and unequal access; additionally, students
were becoming increasingly radicalized by the black power and antiwar
movements. Black women at Barnard were integral to all of these debates
and used this time to advance their own goal of advocating for both
racial and gender equality, especially on campus, by forming BOSS, the
Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters. BOSS is still very much active
today; Ms. Dominique served as BOSS President in 2002–03.
Considering the Offer
Why Did They Come?
Why did they come? There are many different reasons given by black
graduates of this period to explain why they decided to study at
Barnard. Some wanted to come to New York City, some wanted to attend an
Ivy League Institution, still others were looking for a good school
close to home. However, despite these variations there is one common
theme running through all their stories and narratives—they were
coming for opportunity. Regardless of class, geographic, or ethnic
background, these women saw a Barnard education as a means to unlocking
doors and advancing in American society.
Deborah Perry from the class of 1972, who self-identified as middle
class, stated, "My parents thought, and still think, that a degree would
open up all the doors that I wanted—and I agreed with them." [1]
Similarly, Frances Sadler, a black student from a working-class
background, when asked during an interview how she came to decide to go
to college, explained, "I was a good student in elementary school and my
mother decided that education was the way for us to move up."[2] This
theme is also found in the reminiscences of Christine L. Edwards of the
class of 1973, "My parents always felt strongly that education was the
key to social mobility . . . . So, from the beginning I was taught that
I could escape the stigma of my Blackness by doing well in school."[3] In
a short autobiographical sketch of her life, Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam,
of the class of 1974, also maintains that, "Both my parents promoted
education and hard work as the way out of poverty. They felt their lives
had been adversely affected by a lack of education (neither finished
high school) and they wanted us to get ahead."[4]
These women and their families believed that acquiring the same
education as their white counterparts would also allow them to gain
access to the privileges afforded to whites. In a statement published in
the Barnard Bulletin on March 12, 1969, members of the black
students' organization explained to the general Barnard population why
they decided to attend Barnard: "We came for the same reason you
did—for an education. Black colleges are largely inadequate and
nothing more than an imitation of white-establishment colleges."[5] Here
we see that black students perceived that there existed an important
difference between an education received at a white institution and one
received at a predominantly black one. Haratia Trahan, a black graduate
of the class of 1974, remembered that Barnard's reputation as a
prestigious Ivy League institution was one of the reasons she chose the
college over the four state schools to which she had also been accepted.[6]
It is clear that black students believed that attending a white
institution would remove many of the racial and economic barriers of
American society. It was a gateway out of a poor and/or racially
marginalized community and into the mainstream of America. However, in
this attempt to use Barnard as a stepping-stone to greater opportunity
many black women found they had to develop ways in which to survive and
thrive as students at Barnard; in attempting to negotiate their space at
Barnard, they would leave an indelible mark on the college's landscape.
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