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11/15/2002
The University of Minnesota graduated its first African American student, Andrew Hilyer, in 1882. Through the next 40 years, a small number of black students followed Hilyer at the U, including such notable figures as Frank Wheaton (1894), Roy Wilkins (B.A. ’23), and 1906 all-American football player Bobby Marshall. As the numbers of African American students in northern colleges, including the University of Minnesota, began to increase after World War I, campuses began to feel the strains of racial tension. At the University of Minnesota, those stresses would be felt most acutely in areas where black students and whites were most intimately mixed. This is the second in a series of three articles that outline the history of African Americans at the University of Minnesota. By Tim Brady In 1925, Lotus Coffman, president of the University of Minnesota, was contacted by the local head of the Women’s Christian Association on behalf of a young, out-of-town student at the University named Dorothy Waters. Waters had applied to the school’s nursing program and been accepted, only to be refused assignment at a St. Paul hospital because of the color of her skin. How could this happen? asked Mrs. James Paige. "While the University of Minnesota has no prejudice against Miss Waters because she is colored," Coffman wrote, "nevertheless if we had known that she was colored we would have advised against her coming." The St. Paul hospital was a private facility. The University was only affiliated with it and did not control its personnel. "Those whom we send must be agreeable to the officers at the hospital." The dean of the medical school moved further toward the crux of the matter in a letter of his own. When Waters arrived at the campus and it was learned that she was black, the nursing program "found [it] impossible to accommodate her because of the intimate work with white patients which our nurses have to undertake. You will note that the prejudice is not on our part at all but on the part of the patients." Over the next two decades, the University of Minnesota would spend a good deal of time denying its own prejudice, even as it countenanced and supported the practices of racial discrimination. "Under the guise of doing what was best for all concerned, the University of Minnesota in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s often segregated black students and routinely denied them the full life of the campus. While the U of M was far from alone in its practices, and far from the worst transgressor in the ranks of colleges across the country, it was also slow to rectify the problems of racial inequality that became apparent on campus in the years before World War II. "Prior to World War II, segregation was viewed by the administration as the solution to the problem, rather than a problem itself," says Mark Soderstrom, an historian and doctoral candidate in the University’s history department who is writing a study of race relations at the U. The stated aim of segregation as practiced at the U, he says, was to guard against troubles that would arise from the interaction of the races. To keep African Americans and whites from each other, "there was a very sophisticated mindset that mapped the way spaces were allocated. There was a space where [interaction] was appropriate and a space where it just couldn’t happen." Perhaps the most visible space where mixing couldn’t happen was in the dormitories. It was a problem that first came to public attention in the fall of 1931 when freshman John Pinkett, Jr., arrived at the newly opened Pioneer Hall. Pinkett, who was from Washington, D.C., had applied for and been accepted into the dormitory. But when he brought his bags to campus and authorities discovered he was African American, they suggested he look elsewhere for housing. Coffman explained the matter in a letter to Lena Smith, president of the local NAACP: "John Pinkett, Jr., made a reservation in our university dormitory. The difficulties involved in this situation were pointed out to him. He stated that he preferred to live
To Coffman, the separation of races was all a matter of common sense shared by African Americans and whites: "No rule has ever actually been adopted denying colored students admission to university dormitories. No colored student has applied before for admission to the U dorms. The good sense and sound judgment of the colored students and their parents with regard to this matter has been a source of constant gratification." Of course, it was not so much good sense and sound judgment that kept African American students from applying for University housing. They knew they weren’t welcome in dorms, or in the University-approved boarding houses that surrounded the campus. Regarding these houses, a 1935 survey done by a student group, the All-University Council’s Committee on Negro Discrimination, showed that of the 62 sanctioned dwellings, 58 would not accept African Americans. Yet black students who applied to dorms were routinely given a list of these homes by the University, under the guise of helping them find alternative housing. "There just wasn’t any place to live on campus at the time," recalls Barbara Cyrus, who spent her years at the University commuting to school from the home she’d grown up in on the north side of Minneapolis. "I think one group of young men lived in a rooming house in Dinkytown, above a drugstore. Otherwise, you either lived in a private home or at Phyllis Wheatley" settlement house. Cyrus, who was Barbara Mallory then, worked in the library at the settlement house, which, along with the Hallie Q. Brown Center in St. Paul, served as a social center for University students. "We had fraternity and sorority dances [at Phyllis Wheatley] and basketball tournaments and plays." Though no one kept precise numbers of students by race, the All-University Council survey counted 45 African Americans at the University in 1935. This included graduate students, many of whom arrived in Minneapolis from southern black colleges. According to Cyrus, the University at that time "was particularly welcoming of people studying social work. There were very limited job opportunities. Teaching wasn’t a possibility, except in the southern schools. You couldn’t teach locally. And, of course, no business or industry was hiring [black graduates]. Social work seemed to be a good out." A number of Minnesota social work students began filling the ranks of the Urban League, including Whitney Young (M.S.W. ’47), who did his graduate work at the University and who would go on to fame as the national director of the league. Meanwhile, housing problems continued to plague the U. In 1935 the All-University Council, in conjunction with its report on the state of African Americans on campus, asked President Coffman and the Board of Regents to allow blacks to integrate Pioneer Hall. Coffman denied the request: "It is the unanimous opinion of the Board of Regents that the housing of Negro students in Pioneer Hall at present would not be conducive to their best interests, nor to the interests of the other students who may be residing there. The Regents recognize that deficiencies exist at the University with regard to housing and they wish to correct them as rapidly as possible for all students, including Negro students." Though Coffman gave no indication in this public letter how the University planned to "correct" the housing deficiencies, in a private message to the All-University Council, Coffman suggested that the University and critics of its policy "do something constructive" to change it. His idea was to provide an "International House," which would offer rooms to African Americans only. Such houses were already in existence at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley, according to Coffman. "I am wondering if the Council would be willing to join with me in making a study of this matter," he wrote. But no one seemed quite interested in the idea at the time, or they
The local black press, the All-University Council, campus progressive groups, and, beginning in 1937, the first African American political group formed at the University, the Council of Negro Students, all clamored for change at the U. But discriminatory practices continued, and not just in housing and not just on campus. This was an era when touring black entertainers—renowned performers like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington—would stay in local homes because they couldn’t find hotel rooms in the Twin Cities. It was an era when State Fair concessionaires routinely denied service to African Americans. On campus, there were few places where black students could gather, and few places nearby where they could meet. A number of local restaurants flatly denied tables to African Americans, offered slow service, or brought heavily salted food to the table. In October 1935, the same month that Coffman and the Regents issued their statement barring African Americans from the dorms, came one of the period’s most notorious moments of prejudice. The Golden Gophers were preparing for the year’s homecoming game. Minnesota’s opponent was Tulane University of New Orleans. Walter White, secretary for the national office of the NAACP, outlined the controversy in a telegram sent to President Coffman a few days before the game: "National Association for Advancement of Colored People is informed that [Dwight] Reed, first string Negro end on University of Minnesota football team, will be kept out of Tulane game on October 19 because southern people oppose playing against Negro athletes (stop) We respectfully urge cancellation of game as rebuke to unsportsmanlike and prejudiced attitude of Tulane (stop) We do not believe University of Minnesota will surrender high principle for sake of gate receipts (stop) Cancellation of game would set high moral standard for other northern institutions in similar situations and would give growing number of fair-minded southern students encouragement in their efforts towards fair play (stop) I am sure you will agree University of Minnesota cannot descend to racial attitude of late Huey Long’s state." White’s request fell on deaf ears. Despite local anger and national attention from the African American community, the game was played and Dwight Reed watched from the press box. Change would come at the University, but it would come slowly. "It wasn’t until people began to contest the system that said, ‘this is where whites belong and this is where blacks belong’ that things started to happen," says Soderstrom. "It was a small thing, but I think that one of the most revolutionary acts in the period was in January 1937, just after the formation of the Council of Negro Students. They went on a joint sledding party with a group of white students from the American Student Union. This kind of socializing was unheard of. There were probably deans rolling in their graves." Barbara Cyrus is retired from a long career as a Twin Cities editor. She first enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1937 and joined the Council of Negro Students that fall. After spending her freshman year at Minnesota, Cyrus transferred to Spelman College in Atlanta, a black women’s college, before returning to the U of M in the fall of 1939. The contrast between schools was sharp. "I was the only black student in my first three classes at the U that fall," she says. One of the reasons that she chose to return to the Minnesota after her year at Spelman was because the University Theater was planning to stage a version of the play Porgy and Bess and she had been offered a role in the production. "I had seen two or three stagings of Porgy [including one starring Cab Calloway] and I thought it was just terrific that we were going to produce it here at the University," she says. It was to be the first all-black play on campus, a fact that brought it a great deal of attention. In fact, Life magazine was considering using it as the subject
But from the moment the staging of the play at the University was announced, it caused controversy within the local African American community. "First they complained about the language in the play," says Cyrus. "Then the people in the city heard about the staging and they got up in arms. We kept hearing this phrase, ‘Detrimental to the race.’" Porgy and Bess was seen by many black people as a vehicle that promoted racist stereotypes. Opponents of the production doubted that a white audience would grasp the fact that the characters in the play, and the play itself, were depictions and not a broad view of African American life. "We do not dispute the existence of a ‘Catfish Row’ no more than we would dispute the existence of a ‘Tobacco Road,’ which portrays similar conditions among whites in the south," wrote editor Cecil Newman in the local paper, the Minneapolis Spokesman. "Unfortunately, most of those who see the play will not remember that if offers a social picture. They will tend to regard it as a typical illustration of Negro life everywhere." African American students of the day were "bound and determined to be seen as first-class citizens," Cyrus recalls. "We felt this intense pressure to always be perfectly groomed; to not be too loud or boisterous." Porgy and Bess was ultimately canceled by the University, a fact applauded by its opponents as a sign of the growing influence of the black political voice in the community. That increased political voice also helped bring an end to "Jim Crow" housing at the University. Its final days began in 1941, when the Phyllis Wheatley settlement house decided it would no longer take boarders and the University felt obliged to find substitute housing for its black students. Lotus Coffman was dead, but his idea for an International House was resurrected to meet the new housing demands. The U purchased and refurbished a home on Washington Avenue and placed it in the charge of an African American graduate student, who rented rooms to a mix of white and black students. The University immediately shut the place down, claiming the house was meant for African American students only. The administration would sanction all-white facilities, like Pioneer Hall, and sanction all-black facilities, like an "International House," but a mix of students still violated its sensibilities. Protests followed. Rallies on campus against the closing drew hundreds of protesters. Virtually every political group at the U, the local branches and national offices of the NAACP, and the African American community at large in the Twin Cities all protested the closing. Finally, it seemed the University would have to do something. "Times had changed," says Soderstrom. "The world was at war. This old form of segregation seemed suddenly unpatriotic." The end of housing discrimination at the University came with no great drama. Prompted by the protests, a committee was formed to look into the issue. Quietly the group agreed to open housing in the fall of 1942 to students of all races. It was typical of how racial conflicts were resolved during the period. The same structures of power which had instituted policies of segregation determined when they would end. Deeper issues would be dealt with another day. In the postwar years, however, as the African American student body continued to grow, as it became more urban and more steeped in the passions of the civil rights movement, racial problems at the University would feel first a nudge, and then a shove into the light of day. When he arrived at the University as an undergraduate in the early 1960s, David Taylor (B.A. ’67, Ph.D. ’77), dean of the General College at the University of Minnesota, says, "The campus had never really wrestled with the profound circumstances of having a diverse student body." There’d be a whole lot of wrestling before that decade was through. Editor's Note: The third and last article in this series is slated for the January–February issue of Minnesota. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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