Negotiating Integration: Black Women at Barnard, 1968–1974

On Rejecting the Offer

Alienation and Black Nationalism

Being Negro is being different, but America is called a melting pot, which I take to mean that everything goes in and one thing comes out. But it hasn’t worked that way, somehow thankfully; some elements, the Negro particularly, have not succumbed to the temperature, have not let blow freely the molecules of their makeup. But in places like this there is the danger of being blinded, or being bleached. ¹ —Joan Frances Bennett, black Barnard student, spring 1968

Socializing almost exclusively with other black students was one of the most defining characteristics about black students at Barnard during this period. All the interviewees from this period claim they made no real friendships with white students while at Barnard. Haratia Trahan, Jonette Miller, and Barbara LaBoard do not recall any significant interaction with white students while at Barnard. ² This was not a phenomenon found exclusively at Barnard. Many scholars have noted that, as the number of black students increased at historically white colleges and universities, instead of having more social integration between the races, black students became more alienated from the schools they were attending. Black students did not quietly assimilate into the white culture of their colleges. One of their initial acts of rejection of Barnard’s offer was to withdraw from the social life of the college and create their own social groups and communities. They decided that they would refuse to allow themselves to be assimilated into Barnard’s community. Why did black students reject Barnard’s offer and withdraw from the college? All the black interviewees from this period spoke about how they stuck together as a group as a means of getting through Barnard. They all spoke about a sense of disconnection and alienation they felt from the larger college environment.

Black students generally did not come to Barnard expecting not to fit into the social environment of the college. Although Jonette Miller and Haratia Trahan spoke about coming to Barnard looking specifically for the black Barnard experience, most of those interviewed said they expected some period of adjustment to college life but for the most part were simply looking for a good college experience. As Marsha Simms explained, when asked about her expectations of Barnard, “What did I expect? I expected to get a reasonably good education.” ³ Some, like Frances Sadler, were accustomed to integrating white institutions and did not really give much thought to the fact that Barnard was a white institution. ⁴ Although, undoubtedly some were probably well aware of the realities of being black at a white institution, many came expecting to be able to integrate easily into the Barnard community. In a piece written for The Barnard Alumnae magazine in 1969, Deborah Perry explained that even after an initial feeling of unease, she still believed she could fit in at Barnard:

During my first week as a Barnard freshman I was infused with a spirit of adventure, of anticipation at being in New York . . . I had very little contact with whites, except as teachers, and I staunchly supported the idea that only though integration and communication between the races could we ever have harmony. Yet and still, I worried about assimilation and acceptance here at Barnard. From the very first, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy with the white girls I met. I felt that I had nothing to say to them, and vice versa, but I ignored the feeling, chalking it up to “the period of adjustment.” ⁵

Perry was mostly excited about the prospect of college and, prior to coming to Barnard, believed thoroughly in the idea that social integration of the races was possible. Jacqueline Fleming, in a book comparing the experiences of black students at black colleges with those of black students at white colleges, concludes: “Because black students came to college expecting less prejudice and more social integration than they found, their consequent anger and despair contributed to a desire for separation and withdrawal from whites.” ⁶ Part of the reason blacks became so rapidly alienated from the white college environment, according to Fleming, was that they were expecting to be welcomed by the college community. Many of them after all had been recruited and enticed to come with special financial aid offers. Therefore, being rejected by the college community came as a surprise to many and their withdrawal from campus life was for some a reaction to this rejection. They wanted to feel accepted and valued by the Barnard community and when they did not receive this acceptance, they turned to each other for support and validation.

They were rejected both overtly and subtly by the college community. As Frances Sadler explains, “I don’t think the college was malicious. It was just a racist institution. It was an organization that had not worked at diversity. So, it never tried to support us, understand us, incorporate us. Mostly the policies were ‘fine—we invited you here, now deal.'” ⁷ Jonette Miller states, “It was even more than a matter of seeing through the transparency of the people’s prejudice to how they really were not there to support young black women, or how they really wanted us to be cookie cutter images of upper-class white women.” ⁸ From the very beginning of their Barnard experience many felt that the college had done nothing to prepare for their arrival. Deborah Perry remembered,

The Social Life—Freshman Orientation program, floor parties, mixers, luncheons, teas—was geared to the incoming white freshman, completely ignoring the different needs of black students. We were treated as whites too—which may sound fine and dandy—but this type of treatment is a kind of racism in itself. The administration, the student sponsors, everyone was so willing to “overlook” the fact that we were black and to ignore the different cultural and social background that is black people’s. Barnard’s lily-white faculty and courses of study emphasized even more the lack of concern or interest on the part of the “powers that be” about the needs or interests of blacks. ⁹

Perry re-emphasized Sadler’s point that black women felt ignored by the Barnard community. Like Perry, some of the women interviewed talked of the limits of social life provided by the college for black students (some stating they turned to New York City, and Harlem in particular, for entertainment). ¹⁰ And, like Perry, many regretted the absence of black professors and courses on black issues. Karen Butler majored in American Studies in order to pursue her interest in African American history. ¹¹ Sadler recalls feeling pressure to represent black people and teach other students about black culture in classes where blacks were never mentioned. Sadler remembered “taking an American Literature Symposium with Christine Royer and it was Melville, Whitman, and another American author of your choice. I think about the fact that I chose to do Richard Wright because I felt obligated to do a black author because otherwise no one else would have heard of him.” ¹²

Sadler also noted that not only were black students asked to carry the burden of educating their fellow students about blackness, they also felt they were rejected as full contributors to the intellectual life of the college because, as was previously discussed, many doubted their academic qualifications for gaining admission into Barnard. Sadler stated, “Everyone assumed that they had lowered their standards to let us in. And in fact we were highly qualified.” ¹³ These negative perceptions of themselves and blackness really frustrated the black students. Such perceptions were particularly annoying when they were held by white classmates with whom they lived.

Sadler felt that the college did nothing to prepare white students for integration, and that this lapse showed in white student’s reception of blacks. “Yes the college had a big part of it but it also didn’t do anything to prepare the white students for us being there,” Sadler explained. “They are the ones who made our lives miserable on a day to day basis. Not the college as an institution . . . You know, people talk today about the posture pictures and the touching hair. That wasn’t the college who touched our hair and invaded our space. It was the students.” ¹⁴ Jonette Miller also mentioned she felt that black students were always being watched by staff, in places like the dining hall, because people were always worried black students would steal or cause trouble. ¹⁵ Taking these women’s stories into account, it is not surprising that many of them found the Barnard of this period such a hostile environment in which to study, and turned to each other for support.

Alienation alone, however, does not fully explain the black women’s rejection of Barnard’s offer. In his discussion of black students’ protest at the University of Pennsylvania, Wayne Glasker argues for the importance of black power and black nationalist ideology to the development of group consciousness and, subsequently, black students’ protest at the University of Pennsylvania. Black power ideology also played an important role in black women’s rejection of Barnard’s offer. Black power ideology provided them with a view of integration different from the one being put forth by Barnard, and it also influenced their ideas about where they fit into the Barnard College community.

Black nationalism and alienation were, of course, connected. The black students who came to Barnard during this period had some commitment to integration; however, it soon became clear to most black students that they would need to form supportive networks if they were going to make it through Barnard. As many of the issues they were facing had to do with race, it was almost inevitable that they would form bonds along racial lines since these relationships helped to increase group identification and pride. Fleming quotes a researcher as stating that, “‘[T]he experience in the white senior college or university in most cases seems to lead the student toward an increasing consciousness of his blackness, toward an identity not with all people, but with black people.'” ¹⁶ James P. Pitts in his article discussing the politicization of black students at Northwestern University explains, “Black students, despite differences in status and regional origin, constituted a nascent group from the moment they entered the University, sharing honor, stigma, elation, and frustration. This nascent group, not simply individuals, became politicized in their attempts to cope with the campus environment.” ¹⁷ In his study, “College as a Source of Black Alienation,” Richard Shingles defines black nationalism, in terms of black alienation from white American society, as “a sense of powerlessness and isolation from American society leading to a counter move or withdrawal characterized by militancy, the rejection of traditional means of political access and social reform, and separatism, the black demand for control of their own affairs and the institutions which influence their lives.” ¹⁸ One alumna, in an article assessing the state of blacks at Barnard in 1976, explained the growing feeling of black nationalism at Barnard in reaction to white rejection: “We felt a need to show whites that we didn’t want them, that we (the) rejected, just discovered a pride in our own culture and wanted to spread it around us, just have total Blackness around us.” ¹⁹

Wayne Glasker explains that toward the late 1960s the influences of black nationalism and black power could be clearly seen among the black student population of the University of Pennsylvania. ²⁰ Evidence for their shift toward a black power ideology could be found in their creating black students’ organizations (that limited or forbade white participation and membership) and protests, to make demands on the administration regarding issues of racial importance. Pitts also notes this shift in the experience of students at Northwestern University.

Black students who entered Northwestern in 1966 were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the objectives of the Civil Rights Movement, but few saw themselves as crusaders or activists. Their experiences between 1966 and 1969 reflect much of the general pattern of change in race consciousness among young blacks from an ‘integrationist’ to a ‘black nationalist’ perspective. ²¹

This race consciousness, as Pitts argues, moved many black students to reject integration and move toward a black nationalist understanding of race relations, especially as they became more politicized. A similar shift in ideology to the one at Northwestern can be seen at Barnard. Just in looking at black students’ writings in the Barnard Bulletin that year one notes a new emphasis on racial consciousness. One student, Paulette Williams (later known as Ntozake Shange), announced this shift in an editorial in the Bulletin:

I have seen Black men and women preparing themselves together for participation in the development of the black nation we intend to build . . . Martin Luther King is dead now. He died because non-violence is out of context in the American experience. Black Barnard realizes that this golden dream of peaceful reconciliation of Black and white society has died with him, in spite of the eulogies expressed by generous white leaders who had opposed him subtly or blatantly while he lived. There is going to be throughout the country a shift in the attitudes of the Black community, especially students. ²²

For students at Barnard there was an acceleration of the shift toward black nationalism in the spring of 1968, a significant time in the development of black power thought and increased politicization of black students both at Barnard and Columbia and really throughout the nation. According to Fleming, “Prior to 1960, most black students on white campuses had been content to be seen, not heard (except within their own peer group).” ²³ Robert McCaughey argues that spring 1968 was a turning point for black students at Columbia University. Although they had formed their own communities and social networks between and within the two colleges prior to 1968, they did not have a political agenda until that moment. ²⁴ As increased feelings of alienation and black nationalism took hold, black students began creating their own political agendas.

1. 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.[↑]
2. Trahan, interview. Jonette Miller, interview by author, 4 October 2003. Barbara LaBoard, interview by author, 1 June 2002.[↑]
3. Marsha Simms, interview by author.[↑]
4. Sadler, interview.[↑]
5. Perry, “Because I Was Black,” 1.[↑]
6. Jacqueline Fleming, Blacks in College (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1984), 18.[↑]
7. Sadler, interview.[↑]
8. Miller, interview.[↑]
9. Perry, “Because I Was Black,” 1, 15.[↑]
10. Simms, interview.[↑]
11. Karen Butler, interview by author.[↑]
12. Sadler, interview.[↑]
13. Ibid.[↑]
14. Ibid.[↑]
15. Miller, interview.[↑]
16. Fleming, Blacks in College, 21.[↑]
17. 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.[↑]
18. Richard D. Shingles, “College as a Source of Black Alienation,” Journal of Black Studies 9.3 (March 1979): 267.[↑]
19. Felice Rosser, “Barnard’s Black Women: The Calm After the Storm,” Barnard Bulletin, 24 February 1976, 5.[↑]
20. Wayne Glasker, Black Students in the Ivory Tower: African American Student Activism at the University of Pennsylvania (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 12.[↑]
21. Pitts, “The Politicalization of Black Students,” 284.[↑]
22. Paulette Williams. “Black Students: North and South,” Barnard Bulletin Wednesday, 17 April 1968, 3.[↑]
23. Fleming, Blacks in College, 11.[↑]
24. 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).[↑]