Negotiating Integration: Black Women at Barnard, 1968–1974

Barnard Reacts to the Counter Offer

Concessions

President Peterson did respond to the BOSS demands during her convocation speech on March 3. This willingness even to address the issues and engage in a discourse on race on campus shows that Barnard began to move slowly toward a recognition, and even toward an acceptance, of the fact that it could not expect black students alone to change and accommodate to better fit in at Barnard—that Barnard needed to change and make accommodations as well. This of course is not to say that Barnard was one big happy family after President Peterson gave her address. The address was one representation of Barnard as a community in transition—a community engaged in a discussion and a negotiation about the meaning of integration.

Although President Peterson’s address cannot be taken to represent the views of the entire Barnard community, it can be said to provide insight into the thinking of the Barnard administration led by President Peterson, as well as many white students who attended convocation, who, according to Abecassis, seemed to overwhelmingly support the sentiments expressed in President Peterson’s address. ¹ It is clear from President Peterson’s speech that Barnard was in effect approaching the bargaining table and at least considering some of the issues and ideas raised by the black students at Barnard, Columbia, and at other selective institutions throughout the nation. In her speech President Peterson conveyed the message that Barnard was actively attempting to react to the times and was changing. BOSS ultimately rejected the speech as insensitive and irrelevant.

President Peterson began her speech by explaining why she felt compelled to respond to the BOSS demands at convocation. She stated that the issues brought by BOSS were of significance and deserved to be addressed because of the social climate of 1969 and also because the black women who raised the issues were part of the Barnard community. President Peterson explained, “They are questions which black students must ask now about their relationship to their college . . . . Because these questions are important to a part of our student body they should be considered thoughtfully by all of us, white or black, student or faculty, young or old.” ² This, again, (although it may seem as though the issues being brought up by the black students were really only of relevance or importance to black students) indicated that the college recognized that these were issues that should be engaged.

President Peterson then moved into discussing the limitations of change at an institution like Barnard, which, judging by their rejection of her speech, really frustrated the BOSS members in attendance. She explained that decision making at Barnard was a structured process that required the following of certain procedures. This was a prelude to explaining to the BOSS members that they would not be “given the assurance that proposals they work out in the specific areas be accepted: that they be in charge of their own lives and be able to make the changes they desire.” ³ President Peterson did assert, however, that the college would accomplish all recommendations that were “sound educationally” and “practically feasible” which again illustrated that, at some level, Barnard recognized the need to accommodate black students. ⁴

After she explained the limitations of the possibility of change, President Peterson went on to discuss the steps being taken to address some of the issues brought up by BOSS, which again shows that Barnard was at the very least adopting the discourse of accepting change. Peterson indicated that she thought the request for an Afro-American Studies major was particularly reasonable and should be implemented as quickly as possible. She stated that all chairmen of affected departments had agreed to develop such a major, and a committee of faculty and students, led by Professor Peter H. Juviler, would meet to begin the process. President Peterson declared that she did not have “one iota of doubt” that an Afro-American Studies major would be established at Barnard, but it had to first be approved by the faculty (such a major was established at Barnard, but not for another 20 years). Further, President Peterson encouraged students interested in increased black recruitment, improved financial aid, having more books on black culture in the library, or a revised Special Students Program to speak to the admissions director, the financial-aid director, the head librarian, and/or the director of the Special Students Program respectively.

Significantly, President Peterson accepted, without much qualification, black students’ request for selective living areas for black students, a black orientation program, and to make available a meeting space for BOSS. This showed an understanding of the fact that minorities at Barnard might have had needs that were not being met by the services and spaces designed for majority students. Peterson stated, in support of black selective living: “The black students who have requested such separation describe eloquently their unhappiness in the present situation and their need for unity in order to be at home in the College.” ⁵ Here again President Peterson acknowledged that black students’ experience Barnard differently than white students. President Peterson also realized that that particular request was particularly controversial and in her address she asked members of BOSS to hold forums explaining to the general college community why they want selective living space because “so many disagree with you philosophically on separatism.” ⁶ President Peterson did not have a direct response for the question concerning harassment of black students by campus security. She said procedures would be developed to ensure a safe environment without demeaning students.

As was previously stated, President Peterson’s speech was well received by white students in the audience. However, according to Andrée Abecassis in an article written for the Barnard Alumnae Magazine, following President Peterson’s speech, one BOSS leader, Carmen Martinez, stood up and rejected the speech as insensitive. Martinez’s comments upset many of the white students in the audience. As a result, in the following weeks BOSS issued statements and held meetings and rallies on campus to explain their rejection of the president’s speech to the other members of the Barnard community and to ask for their support. Again, this campus-wide discourse on race indicated that Barnard was a campus in transition. One Barnard Bulletin article describing a BOSS rally showed that BOSS was engaged in discussion with white students and received support from both white and black students’ organizations at Barnard and Columbia.

A rally held by the Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters on Friday, March 6th called for support from the rest of the student body to continue the discussion of the organization’s demand for sole power to institute the changes they seek. The rally was addressed by BOSS members and invited speakers from the Student Afro-American Society, Students for a Democratic Society and The Barnard Young Socialist Alliance . . . SDS support for BOSS was expressed by Nancy Biberman. She said that the fight against the military and against Columbia expansion is part of the same fight of the black students. ⁷

Despite its campaign and the support from other student organizations, BOSS was never granted the opportunity to decide who would be allowed to implement its programs, or the power to implement changes. However, Barnard did begin to change as a result of this process, as President Peterson’s speech indicated that it might. The changes that Barnard decided to implement represented at some level a qualified acceptance or at least a recognition of the new terms for integration being presented by black students at Barnard specifically, but also more generally around the country. They began recruiting more black students (there was a particularly large increase in accepted black students, from 33 in 1968 to 81 in 1969, with a similar increase in black enrollment, from 20 in 1969 to 40 in 1970), ⁸ made changes to the Special Students Program, allowed BOSS to have a black orientation program, began investigating possibilities for studies in black culture and history (this would not begin to fully take shape at Barnard until the late 1980s and early 1990s), and created a black residential floor.

The changes that Barnard made indicated a newfound willingness on the part of Barnard to recognize that black students would not necessarily fit into the mold it had created for the majority of its students, that black students may have different needs and wants than those of the white students, and, more importantly, that the college should take measures to accommodate those differences and not attempt to ignore them. One of the more significant examples of Barnard’s shift can be found in its creation of a black floor.

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. ⁹ 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.” ¹⁰This 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. ¹¹

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.” ¹²

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.” ¹³

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.” ¹⁴ 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. ¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶

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.

1. Abecassis, “Blacks at Barnard,” 7.[↑]
2. Martha Peterson, “Miss Peterson Replies at Convocation March 3,” Barnard Alumnae Magazine, Spring 1969, 11.[↑]
3. Ibid.[↑]
4. Peterson, “Miss Peterson Replies,” 12.[↑]
5. Peterson, “Miss Peterson Replies,” 13.[↑]
6. Ibid.[↑]
7. Susan Stein, “BOSS Asks Student Body for Support,” Barnard Bulletin, 12 March 1969, 1.[↑]
8. 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.[↑]
9. 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.[↑]
10. Sadler, interview.[↑]
11. Rosser, “Barnard’s Black Women,” 18.[↑]
12. Ruth Smith, “Lawton Recommends Policy for Black Floor Be Upheld,” Barnard Bulletin, 24 February 1971, 1.[↑]
13. Edwards, “The Dilemma of the Black Student,” 10.[↑]
14. Trahan, interview.[↑]
15. LaBoard, interview; Miller, interview.[↑]
16. Edwards, “The Dilemma of the Black Student,” 10.[↑]