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CHAPTER T HR E E THE RISE OF RACIAL POLITICS T he rise ofracial politics at Cornell paved the road to the Straight. The key elements were the COSEP program and the Afro-American Society (AAS). But the origins go back to a scene that took place at Cornell in spring 1962, more than a year beforeJames Perkins became president.Malcolm X, the outspoken Black Muslim and black nationalist, and James Farmer, the head of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), engaged in a debate titled "Separation versus Integration." Farmer, an African American, made the classic case for integration based on the tenets of the burgeoning civil rights movement, which entailed an appeal to white consciences. "We are Americans," he said. "This is our country as much as it is white America." Then Malcolm spoke, "steely and intense," in the words ofTamar Jacoby. He denounced integration in favor of "complete separation" and accused men like Farmer ofbeing "Uncle Toms" and "not black enough." According to Jacoby , the largely white audience left the debate very troubled by the message "that blacks didn't like or trust whites, that the ghetto wasn't interested in their help, that there was nothing they could do to make up for the past-no way, as King was suggesting , 'to redeem the soul ofAmerica.'" 1 Though Malcolm's message was strange for the Cornell of that time, it was about to grow in influence as new students arrived on campus. COSEP In 1963 Perkins appointed the Committee on Disadvantaged Students, under the chairmanship of Vice President for Student Affairs John Summerskill. Perkins charged the committee to "recommend and initiate programs through which Cornell could make a larger contribution to the education ofqualified students who have 46 been disadvantaged by their cultural, economic and educational environments."2 The committee eventually changed its name to the Committee on Special Education Projects (COSEP) because the students objected to being characterized as "disadvantaged ," an issue that always haunted the program. The burgeoning black consciousness and Black Power movements had begun to take issue with integrationists' practice, in their efforts to win support for civil rights and social programs, of depicting blacks as having been "damaged" by racism. According to Daryl Michael Scott in a book that traces the links between social policy and claims about the "damaged black psyche," the rejection of "damage imagery" was now imperative. "By the late 1960s, reshaping the image of African Americans became an important movement within many of the social sciences, attracting leading talents. . . . From the perspective of the present, the dismantlement of damage imagery seems a preordained event, a logical outgrowth of the Black Power and New Left movements . .. .Just as grassroots activists challenged liberal politicians, radical intellectuals challenged liberals in intellectual and policy-making communities." 3 The committee reflected the progressive view of the university that Perkins brought to Cornell. In a 1994 interview, he stated: There was only a handful [of Afro-Americans] in each class, and I was told that that's the way in which the Administration and even the Board, perhaps, wanted it. I felt that that was a situation in which a modern university could not stay. ... So in talking to my colleagues and others, and fortunately some of them were enthusiastic members ofthe campus, we set up an organization called COSEP.. . . It would try and recruit black students, where the principals and teachers in their schools would write a letter saying, "We believe that ifJohn or Jane So-and-So is admitted to Cornell, they have enough academic promise that they will be up to the average of those who enter and graduate."4 The first committee, which consisted of Summerskill and such key progressive professors as Douglas Dowd, Chandler Morse, Benjamin Nichols, and Walter Slatoff (each of whom would play significant roles in the events that led to the crisis), had to decide what the committee's mandate meant. According to Gloria Joseph, COSEP's most important administrator, "There was a group of faculty we called 'The Tired Seven' because every time there was a problem or a situation involving a black student, these seven faculty members were right there on our side doing their thing, trying to place the so-called problem situation in perspective." 5 At the beginning no one considered black studies to be part of the committee's mandate. COSEP was originally a recruitment and fund-directing program, not an academic program, but it was a visionary effort for its...

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