Blacks at Harvard: A Documentary History of African-American Experience At Harvard and Radcliffe

MURIEL SNOWDEN

MURIEL SNOWDEN Muriel Sutherland Snowden was born in Orange, New Jersey, on 1 4 July 1916, one of three children of a dentist. Sh e grew up in nearby Glen Ridge and was class valedictorian at its high school. Sh e received her A.B. from Radcliffe i n 193 8 with a concentration i n Romance Languages, but soon decided that her future lay in social work. Fro m 1938 to 1943 she worked for a New Jersey welfare board , and then won a fellowship fo r graduate study in community organization and race relations at the New York School of Social Work. Afte r a return to Cambridge in 1948 as executive director of th e city' s Civi c Unity Committee , she an d he r husband Ott o i n 194 9 conceived, founded , an d directe d Freedo m House , Inc. , a nationall y renowned civic center in the heart of Boston's black community, for 35 years until thei r retiremen t i n 198 4 t o becom e privat e consultants . Despit e indefatigably throwin g hersel f int o a n endless serie s o f task s promotin g urban renewal and social betterment, Muriel Snowden made time to serve on countless committees and boards (she was the first black and only woman on the board of directors of the Shawmut Bank) and to teach community organization at Simmons College for more than a dozen years. In 197 2 she becam e th e all-tim e to p vote-gette r fo r directo r o f th e Associated Harvard Alumni, and in 1977 was the first black woman elected to the Board of Overseers. Sh e received many honors, including the College Alumnae Achievement Award from Radcliffe (1964), and honorary degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1968) and from Boston College (1984) . I n 198 7 she was the recipien t o f a $375,000 no-stringsattached "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Sh e succumbed to cancer at her Boston home on 30 September 1988. 298 Muriel Snowden Right to Participate Despite everything that came afterwards,m y most vivid memory of Radcliffe is of being denied access to a dormitorymy freshman year. It continues to rankle to this day—despite the fact that Radcliffe was the only college to which I had applied; that I had graduated as valedictorian from one of the best public high schools in the country at the time; that I had been admitted without examination under the then existing "highest seventh plan" without the need for scholarship assistance—[that] the Radcliffe administration focused onmy race as the rationale for concern about whether or not I would be"happy" living in a dormitory. Formy mother, however, determined that I should not miss out on the essence of college life, this was definitely a non-issue. Fo r her, the "quality" ofmy social life was our problem and not theirs; so after being forced to live outmy freshman year as a"day hop" commuting from Belmont, I was finally assigned a room in Whitman Hall. Thus, (I believe) as only the second Black woman in the history of the college up until that time who had been "allowed" to live in a dormitory,my life took on a somewhat different coloration from that of other Black students who commuted the entire four years. I remember those thre e years in Whitman as warm and happy ones, where I shared withmy dormitory mates the buzzing excitement of the date one of them had with Joseph Kennedy, Jr.; the intense dinner discussions about whether one should accept religious dogma without question; gossipy sessions about sex, love, and marriage; the agony of studying all night for exams; the secret champagne celebrations on the stairs after lights outs; and the anxiety of getting back to the dorm by sign-in time. Although I was to learn later thatmy presence sparked special meetings about what would be the procedures should I decide to sign up for the dorm dances, who would exchange dances with me andmy date, etc., there was very little open evidence of prejudice, hostility, Muriel Snowden 299 or discrimination. Lif e was easier for me as the result of growing up in an all-white community, attending all-white schools, being carefully nurtured in self-esteem and self-confidence...