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

Concluding Remarks

In 1973 the black floor at Barnard was eliminated because the New York State Board of Regents declared housing based on race illegal.[63] What legacy did the pioneering women of 1968 to 1974 leave behind at Barnard? I began this project wanting to look at the ways in which the integration project at Barnard has stagnated and try to understand why. In reading Christine L. Edwards's essay "The Dilemma of the Black Student in the White University," I was struck by just how much I could identify with her experiences as a black Barnard student even though I will graduate from Barnard exactly 30 years after she did. After completing my research, however, I have learned that the integration project at Barnard has not been stagnant and in actuality the black women who have been at Barnard before me, particularly those who were here from 1968 to 1975, have been active in forcing Barnard to examine its ideas about what integration means and what is ultimately the goal of integration.

Their influence on Barnard can be found in the current Barnard mission statement, which in part reads, "Located in the cosmopolitan urban environment of New York City, and committed to diversity in its student body, faculty and staff, Barnard prepares its graduates to flourish in different cultural surroundings in an increasingly inter-connected world."[64] Here we see that Barnard takes as one of its primary goals the promotion of diversity. While the black women who were at Barnard were not the sole reason that the college began to move away from assimilation and toward the valuing of diversity, their presence and activities were very influential in promoting this shift. Their desire not to give up their identity in order to gain access and opportunity has a great deal to do with why Barnard is the school that it is today.

The school that Barnard is today is not the school it was 30 years ago. Barnard, in my opinion, is not where it needs to be. However, to say that the integration project at Barnard is stagnant is to deny the profound influence that black women have had on the shaping of this institution and their centrality to its history.

Black women have an incredibly rich history at Barnard. This project really has been the very beginning of what should be a larger socio-historical project to delve into and understand their contributions to this community.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Interviewees

Karen Butler, class of 1973 (graduated 1974)
Sylvia Farrington, class of 1975 (degree pending completion)
Rhonda Harrison, class of 1989
Mila Oden Jasey, class of 1972
Tara Jefferson, class of 1992
Barbara LaBoard, class of 1973
Delsia Marshall, class of 1978
Jonette Miller, class of 1974 (left 1973)
Frances Sadler, class of 1972
Marsha Simms, class of 1974
Haratia Trahan, class of 1974
Joyce Theobold, class of 1991
Katherine Wilcox, Barnard professor and administrator
Dara Williams, class of 1978

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Barnard College. Barnard Mission Statement (accessed 23 April 2003).

———. Different Voices: The Experiences of Women of Color at Barnard. Higher Education Opportunity Program, Spring 1997.

———. Indivisible . New York: Barnard College, 1996. Documentary on black students at Barnard.

Bogin, Linda. "Peterson Answers BOSS Draws Record Audience." Barnard Bulletin, 5 March 1969, 1.

Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters. "A Manifesto of the 'Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters.'" Barnard Bulletin, 18 December 1968, 3.

———. "BOSS Manifesto." Barnard Alumnae Magazine, Spring 1969, 8.

———. "BOSS on Racism." Barnard Bulletin, 12 March 1969.

Edwards, Christine L. "The Dilemma of the Black Student in the White University: Case in Point, My Four Years at Barnard College." Barnard College Archives.

Gilbert, David. "Crazy about Black Power: Hysteria Linked with Slogan." Barnard Bulletin, 1 December 1968, 2, 7.

Gillian, Tobi, and Joan Frances Bennett. Members of the Class Will Keep Daily Journals: The Barnard College Journals of Tobi Gillian and Joan Frances Bennett. New York: Winter House, 1970.

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Smith, Ruth. "Lawton Recommends Policy for Black Floor Be Upheld." Barnard Bulletin, 24 February 1971, 1.

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Stein, Susan. "BOSS Asks Student Body for Support." Barnard Bulletin, 12 March 1969, 1.

Summers, Dona, et al. "Barnard Curriculum Ignores Negro Culture." Barnard Bulletin, 7 February 1968.

Williams, Paulette. "Black Students: North and South." Barnard Bulletin, 17 April 1968, 3.

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———. "The Racial Integration of the Seven Sister Colleges." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 19 (Spring 1998): 104–108.

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Endnotes

1. Deborah Perry, "Because I Was Black," Barnard Alumnae Magazine, Spring 1969, 1. [Return to text]

2. Frances Sadler, interview by author, 1 June 2002.[Return to text]

3. Christine L. Edwards, "The Dilemma of the Black Student in the White University: Case in Point, My Four Years at Barnard College," Barnard College Archives, 3. [Return to text]

4. Sheila Abdus-Salaam, Sheila Abdus-Salaam, http://www.whedco.org/SHEILA.htm (accessed 6 November 2002, no longer available). [Return to text]

5. Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters, "BOSS on Racism," Barnard Bulletin, 12 March 1969. [Return to text]

6. Haratia Trahan, interview by author, July 2002. [Return to text]

7. Tobi Gillian and Joan Frances Bennett, Members of the Class Will Keep Daily Journals: The Barnard College Journals of Tobi Gillian and Joan Frances Bennett (New York: Winter House, 1970), 101. [Return to text]

8. Trahan, interview. Jonette Miller, interview by author, 4 October 2003. Barbara LaBoard, interview by author, 1 June 2002. [Return to text]

9. Marsha Simms, interview by author. [Return to text]

10. Sadler, interview. [Return to text]

11. Perry, "Because I Was Black," 1. [Return to text]

12. Jacqueline Fleming, Blacks in College (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1984), 18. [Return to text]

13. Sadler, interview. [Return to text]

14. Miller, interview. [Return to text]

15. Perry, "Because I Was Black," 1, 15. [Return to text]

16. Simms, interview. [Return to text]

17. Karen Butler, interview by author. [Return to text]

18. Sadler, interview. [Return to text]

19. Ibid. [Return to text]

20. Ibid. [Return to text]

21. Miller, interview. [Return to text]

22. Fleming, Blacks in College, 21. [Return to text]

23. James P. Pitts, "The Politicalization of Black Students: Northwestern University," Journal of Black Studies 5.3, Working Papers in the Study of Race Consciousness, Part 1 (March 1975): 283. [Return to text]

24. Richard D. Shingles, "College as a Source of Black Alienation," Journal of Black Studies 9.3 (March 1979): 267. [Return to text]

25. Felice Rosser, "Barnard's Black Women: The Calm After the Storm," Barnard Bulletin, 24 February 1976, 5. [Return to text]

26. Wayne Glasker, Black Students in the Ivory Tower: African American Student Activism at the University of Pennsylvania (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 12. [Return to text]

27. Pitts, "The Politicalization of Black Students," 284. [Return to text]

28. Paulette Williams. "Black Students: North and South," Barnard Bulletin Wednesday, 17 April 1968, 3. [Return to text]

29. Fleming, Blacks in College, 11. [Return to text]

30. Robert McCaughey, Draft of chapter 12, Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754–2004 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). [Return to text]

31. Ibid. [Return to text]

32. Gillian and Bennett, Members of the Class, 152–53. [Return to text]

33. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982). [Return to text]

34. Ibid., 51. [Return to text]

35. Ibid., 41–51. [Return to text]

36. Sadler, interview. [Return to text]

37. Andrée L. Abecassis, "Blacks at Barnard: A Survey of Policy and Events," Barnard College Alumnae Magazine, Spring 1969, 4. [Return to text]

38. Ibid. [Return to text]

39. Sadler, interview. [Return to text]

40. Ibid. [Return to text]

41. Butler, interview. [Return to text]

42. Abecassis, "Blacks at Barnard," 5. [Return to text]

43. Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters, "BOSS Manifesto," 8. [Return to text]

44. Glasker, Black Students in the Ivory Tower, 58. [Return to text]

45. Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters, "BOSS on Racism." [Return to text]

46. Glasker, Black Students in the Ivory Tower, 159. [Return to text]

47. Abecassis, "Blacks at Barnard," 7. [Return to text]

48. Martha Peterson, "Miss Peterson Replies at Convocation March 3," Barnard Alumnae Magazine, Spring 1969, 11. [Return to text]

49. Ibid. [Return to text]

50. Peterson, "Miss Peterson Replies," 12. [Return to text]

51. Peterson, "Miss Peterson Replies," 13. [Return to text]

52. Ibid.[Return to text]

53. Susan Stein, "BOSS Asks Student Body for Support," Barnard Bulletin, 12 March 1969, 1. [Return to text]

54. Dramatic increases in black student enrollment were also occurring at other colleges across the country—including Columbia, which increased acceptances from 58 to 115 and enrollment from 29 to 51 in the same period. These increases come on the heels of black student protests at Columbia and the beginning of black student mobilization at Barnard. See Glasker, Black Students in the Ivory Tower, 45. [Return to text]

55. Linda M. Perkins, "The African American Female Elite: The Early History of African American Women in the Seven Sister Colleges, 1880–1960," Harvard Educational Review 67.4 (Winter 1997), 742. [Return to text]

56. Sadler, interview. [Return to text]

57. Rosser, "Barnard's Black Women," 18. [Return to text]

58. Ruth Smith, "Lawton Recommends Policy for Black Floor Be Upheld," Barnard Bulletin, 24 February 1971, 1. [Return to text]

59. Edwards, "The Dilemma of the Black Student," 10. [Return to text]

60. Trahan, interview. [Return to text]

61. LaBoard, interview; Miller, interview. [Return to text]

62. Edwards, "The Dilemma of the Black Student," 10. [Return to text]

63. Felice Rosser, "Barnard's Black Women," 5. [Return to text]

64. Barnard Mission Statement, http://www.barnard.edu/about/mission.html (accessed 23 April 2003). [Return to text]