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Thirty Years of Black "Firsts" in Higher Education
by Russell L. Adams, Ph.D.
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 In
the 30-odd years of affirmative action politics in the higher education
of some 3,800 degree granting organizations, over 50 African Americans
have become visible as presidents of historically
“white” institutions. Blacks have been chosen to head collateral
associations disparate as the American Library Association and the National
Association of Intercollegiate
Sports Information Directors. Their presence as the leaders of these
organizations generated African American “cross-over firsts” which were not
required by affirmative action programs nor demanded by ethnic or gender
advocacy groups. Whatever the reasons or influences affecting decisions of
decision-making bodies, without a doubt their actions are intended to maintain
and enhance the institutions under their stewardship. Rather than an attempt
fully to explain these particular “cross-over firsts,” what follows is a
suggestive citation of leadership situations in higher education not explainable
in the usual terms of pressure
politics.On November 3, 2000, Dr. Ruth
J. Simmons, currently president of Smith College, was selected to become
president of Brown University, effective July 1, 2001. On January 24, 2001, Dr.
Roderick Paige was sworn in as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.
Newsworthy in and of themselves, these two events are also high profile
“firsts” for African Americans. Dr. Simmons was an earlier “first” in
1995 when she took office as the first African-American female head of Smith
College. The former dean of Texas Southern University and superintendent of
schools in Houston, Texas, Dr. Paige is the first African American to hold the
nation’s highest office in the field of education. Thirty
years ago, America’s higher education establishment was about as de
facto segregated as the Southern public school systems had been prior to Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954).
Since 1970, African- American educators have experienced many
barrier-breaking, crossover “firsts,” especially in the area of education
administration. The National Center for Education Statistics supplies reams of
highly useful quantitative diversity data highly useful in developing a nuanced
statistical picture of the Black presence within an education establishment of
nearly 4,000 formal institutions and hundreds of collateral support
associations. In this brief essay, however, attention is given to various
African-American “firsts” within different portions of this vast enterprise. Historically,
American education has always been race-conscious and gender sensitive. Amid
contentious issues of access and equity, the record of
“firsts” of the past 30 years make a benchmark against which to
measure the selected aspects of educational leadership
gender were beyond the barriers
of race and gender. Prior
to 1970, race was the primary criteria undergirding all other attributes in educational
leadership. From the following institutions came a wave of African-American
“firsts” as they shifted from white to Black presidential leadership:
Morehouse College (John Hope, 1913); Howard University (Mordecai W. Johnson,
1926); Morgan State University (Dwight O. W. Holmes, 1937); Lincoln University (
Horace Mann Bond, 1945); Fisk University (Charles S. Johnson, 1947); Hampton
University (Alonzo G. Moron, 1949);
Talladega College (Arthur S. Gray, 1952) and Spelman College (Albert E. Manley, 1953). Each of these firsts made
news, for they signified a number of things. Marking the decline of white
administrative paternalism, these changes fostered the belief that competent
Black leadership was available. They supported the belief that all-Black
institutions should be lead by African Americans who also symbolized the Black
communities on which their enrollment was based. In
the Black community, African-American college presidents had a significance
extending beyond the campus. Their institutions were considered major community
assets and their payrolls the largest under Black control. As leaders of the
most highly educated segment of their communities, these pioneer presidents
easily surpassed local clergy in social prestige.
These “firsts” were selected because they were Black, male and
competent. It should be noted
that all of these “firsts” occurred during the era of
“legally” enforced racial segregation in all of the ex-Confederate
states. White male management of
all-Black colleges was an aspect of white power and control. They were both
emissaries and missionaries to Black America. This
first wave of Black college presidents signaled the emergence of a new
educational leadership class, which in all probability laid the foundation, in
our time, for a new round of “firsts”
involving African-American educators. Prior to the l970s, few African-American
students and faculty attended predominantly white colleges.
Black professors in white institutions were so rare that their mere
presence made them celebrities among educators in historically Black colleges
and universities (HBCUs) where 99.9% of all Black administrators were to be
found. Prior to 1970, no predominantly
white college or university was headed by an African American. But between 1970
and 2000, some 52 out of 2,100 predominantly white institutions were headed by
African Americans. And of this small number, 14 of these presidents were Black
females. This cluster of “firsts” is too numerous to individualize but will
simply be represented below. The
momentum of the civil rights movement, the existence of Executive Orders
prohibiting discrimination in hiring, the assertiveness of Black and white
undergraduates, politicized by United States involvement in Vietnam, and the
assassination Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. together constituted the critical mass
for increased Black participation in the conduct of America’s educational
establishment. Publications such as THE
BLACK COLLEGIAN appeared and became the recorders of the African-American
experience in higher education. The pages of these new publications contained
advertisements for “Associate Director of Admissions,” “Coordinator of
Multicultural Programs and Services,” “Assistant Director, Paul Robeson
Center,” “Director, the W.E.B. DuBois Institute,” “Vice Chancellor for
Human Resources,” and “Chair, Black Studies Department,” etc. For many
these advertisements were codes addressed to African Americans. By the l980s, at
least 162 majority group institutions had some form of Africana ,
African-American or Black Studies programs in which often were found the largest
proportion of Black faculty.
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When he was inaugurated president
of Michigan State University on January 2, 1970, Clifford R. Wharton, Jr.
became the first African American to head a majority group university. In
1977, Dr. Wharton became the first African- American chancellor of the New
York University system, at that time the nation’s largest collection of
institutions under the same administrative umbrella.
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In 1972, Attorney Marian Wright
Edelman became the first African- American female to be elected to the Yale
Corporation. In 1980, she became the first Black female member of the Board
of Trustees of Spelman College,
her alma mater. Edelman is currently president of the Children’s Defense
Fund, a national children’s rights advocacy group which she founded in
1973.
* In 1973, when John Hope Franklin (left) was elected president of
Phi Beta Kappa, he became the first African American to head the nation’s
leading academic collegiate honor society, dating from 1776. In 1970, Dr.
Franklin became the first African-American president of the Southern Historical
Society, and in 1978 he became the first person of color to head the American
Historical Society.
* In 1973, Shirley Ann Jackson
was awarded the Ph.D. by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an
achievement making her the first African-American female to earn a doctorate
from this institution and the first in physics. She has also been a member of
the physics department at Rutgers University.
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In 1976, Ms. Clara Stanton Jones
became the first African American to be elected president of the American
Library Association, an organization made up of public school, municipal,
college and university librarians throughout the nation. The Association
attracted some 20,000 delegates to its June 2000 convention in Chicago.
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In 1976, Joseph Booker, former
sports {information} director for Texas A & M University, became the
first African-American vice president of the National Association of
Intercollegiate Athletic Sports Information Directors, a policy-making body
for colleges and universities throughout the nation.
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In 1981, Dr. Jewel Plummer Cobb
was selected president of the University of California at Fullerton, and
thus became the first African-American female president of a major
university on the West Coast. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Cobb was
professor of Zoology and Dean of Connecticut State College.
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In 1987, Dr. Johnetta Betsch Cole
became the first African-American female president of Spelman College and in
her ten-year term made it a nationally recognized institution specializing
in the education of women of color. A
social anthropologist by training, Dr. Cole is now one of the first few
females of any race occupying an endowed chair at Emory University.
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In 1989, three African-American
males became presidents of predominantly white colleges: Dr. Irvin D. Reid
at Upper Montclair University in New Jersey; Dr. F.C. Richardson at State
University College, Buffalo, New York; and Dr. William Truehart at Bryant
College in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
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In 1990, Dr. Marguerite Ross
Barnett became the first African-American, as well as the first female
president, of the University of Houston.
Dr. Barnett had also been the first African-American female
chancellor (1986) of the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.
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In 1990, legal scholar H. Patrick
Swygert became the first African- American president of State University at
Albany, New York. Prior to this, in two earlier “firsts,” Swygert had
been executive vice president of Temple University and acting dean of its
law school. He is now the fifth Black president of Howard University.
As the above list suggests, during the
past three decades, a few African Americans are now visible as leaders at the
highest levels of institutions and organizations in which race and gender might
be of less significance than they were a generation ago. Paradoxically
“cross-over firsts” make race and gender even more significant to the social
groups from which they were chosen. However small quantitatively in higher
education, as in other areas of life,
the breaching of barriers usually
means the erosion of taboos against
inclusion.
Dr. Russell L. Adams is the chairman of
the African-American Studies Department at Howard University.
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