Elvita Dominique, "Negotiating Integration: Black Women at Barnard, 1968–1974"
(page 7 of 8)

The Black Floor

Integration of housing has been a contentious issue at Barnard since it matriculated its first black student. As was mentioned earlier, none of the early black graduates lived on campus. In fact, Jeanne Blackwell Hutson, class of 1932, transferred to Barnard from the University of Michigan because of a battle with that university for on-campus housing, only to find out on arriving in New York that she could not live on campus at Barnard either.[55] Interestingly, some 37 years after Hutson graduated, black students would be fighting to remove themselves from general Barnard housing.

The black floor was one of Barnard's most significant concessions. Although there was a great deal of controversy that surrounded the black floor from its inception in 1969 to its elimination in 1973, it represented the beginning of an understanding that the black students needed a space where they could feel safe and supported, and where they would feel valued as individuals and also as members of the black community. Frances Sadler claimed that in terms of the ten demands made by BOSS the black floor "was really the most salient one. We were always in trouble for staying up too late, playing our music too loud, and for sort of living a different way."[56]This sentiment was echoed in 1976 by a student discussing the significance of the black floor:

Many Black women at Barnard, because they were such a great minority, felt like oddities and white students often exhibited curiosity toward them, their habits and lifestyles, having never been exposed to Black students before. The Black women wanted to live comfortably and happily at college, not in what they felt to be a zoo atmosphere . . . with women who had a culture and style of life that they felt at ease with.[57]

As one administrator stated in 1971 in defense of the black floor, "the black floor was a place for black girls to relax in an atmosphere which many of them find hostile."[58]

The black floor is an area to which an entire thesis can be dedicated and in truth it deserves further attention and research. This paper has focused primarily on illustrating the ways in which black students changed Barnard; however, there remains a great deal to be said about the ways in which Barnard influenced the black students that matriculated here. One important part of this story would have to deal with the influence of the black floor on the experience of those students who fought for and/or lived on the floor. For many of the interviewees who lived on the floor, Seven Hewitt/Brooks/Reid was their Barnard experience. However, there are two important elements about the black floor that tell us a great deal about the changes black women had wrought at Barnard.

The first was that it represented in a way a victory for those who were involved in the BOSS protests—which was a solid indicator that black students at Barnard were beginning to be empowered and were starting to acquire a voice on campus. Christine L. Edwards also saw empowerment of black students in terms of having been able in the physical sense to claim the black floor as their own. Edwards states, "'Seven Hewitt' became a legend. The white women living in the rest of the dormitory complex were instructed (by us) to respect our self-imposed isolation—both to insure our privacy and their continued physical well-being."[59]

As was discussed previously, what comes out in these interviews is that for these women the black floor represented a space where they, as black women, felt a sense of support and value. Haratia Trahan states, "As soon as you got off on the seventh floor you were home, you saw yourself, always."[60] Barbara LaBoard and Jonette Miller also speak about the floor in terms of home, with Miller indicating that she felt the black community on the floor was like a family.[61] Christine L. Edwards expressed similar feelings in her senior essay:

My class was the first in Barnard's history to have the option to live on a dormitory floor that was "designated black." The significance of this choice is inestimable. It meant that, as a freshman on a (presumably) alien, hostile campus, I had a "place" at Barnard where I felt a true sense of belonging. Because Blacks on white campuses are conspicuously estranged from the white reality, our floor was home in a way that white students will never know.[62]

Frances Sadler and Haratia Trahan talk about the freedom to be oneself that the black floor allowed students. The discourse around the black floor, and around the existence of BOSS as well, was in many ways the beginning of Barnard moving away from seeing such things as separatist to seeing them instead as safe spaces. The black floor left an indelible mark on the Barnard campus because it forced people to question their ideas about the meaning of integration.