Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College: A Documentary History

Preface

PREFACE For more than a decade I have wanted to write about the educational opportunity and experience of black Americans at Oberlin College. In this endeavor, I follow the lead of Oberlin’s 0rst archivist, William E. Bigglestone , who built the road on which many of us have traveled. Most notably, he authored two important works, “Oberlin College and the Negro Student , 1865–1940,” Journal of Negro History 56 (July 1971): 198–219, and They StoppedinOberlin:BlackResidentsandVisitorsoftheNineteenthCentury, rev. ed. (2002). Occasional pieces, including “Irrespective of Color” and “Straightening a Fold in the Record” regarding the college’s 0rst colored student, appearing in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine, round out his scholarship on the subject. Among the many local bene0ciaries of Bigglestone’s scholarship are Geofrey Blodgett, Gary Kornblith, Carol Lasser, Ellen N. Lawson, Marlene D. Merrill, and myself, as well as a number of nonresident scholars, such as William Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, Juanita Fletcher, James Oliver Horton, and Cally L. Waite. Like Bigglestone, I came to appreciate the potential value of the documentary sources on this topic held by Oberlin College in its archival groups and its manuscript collections. With the assistance of Leslie Farquhar ’50, I published in the spring of 1990 a four-page brochure, Oberlin College: A Unique African-American Heritage. The target audience for this informational brochure was black alumni donors, who had contributed funds for the renaming of North Hall after John Mercer Langston, Oberlin’s most distinguished black graduate of the nineteenth century. More recently, I published a sixty-four-page booklet, The1858Oberlin-WellingtonRescue:A Reappraisal (2003), which focused on the rescue of runaway slave John Price from the Kentucky slave catchers. This volume is the product of my research to understand the black student experience at Oberlin College and the institution’s commendable though uneven commitment to black education over the last 175 years. It draws heavily on the college’s unparalleled documentary record—the number of preserved documents relating to this subject is signi0cant. Personal xiii accounts exist in the form of letters, reminiscences, and third-party documents by black and white students as well as other members of the academic community. These are supplemented by a wide array of institutional documents , both o2cial and uno2cial, which describe the changes in Oberlin’s cultural, religious, and academic perspectives over the years. Embedded in the documentary record is evidence of anger, fear, goodwill, miscommunication , misunderstanding, lash points on race, and political trivia. In addition, readers will 0nd in the annotations and 0gure captions supporting information that adds details to the rich story of Oberlin’s experience. Together, these sources help explain the institution’s path as it struggled to remain at the cutting edge of equity and access in higher education. The documents in this book appear in chronological order. My objective in presenting them to readers is twofold: 0rst, to provide a context for writers interested in the larger story of Oberlin’s place in the history of American higher education and in the history of African American education ; and second, to foster an interest in reading and interpreting archival documents that relate to the African American educational experience at Oberlin and beyond. These documents contain many voices, and they ofer important clues about how Oberlin faced the challenge of establishing a culturally diverse institution up to 2007. They also inform researchers about the actions and motives of individuals, both black and white, on many college campuses. A note preceding each document introduces the reader to the text, its historical context, and sometimes its original meaning and provides an explanation of a given source. To ensure textual accuracy, each document is typically presented in its full form, with all misspellings, extra verbiage, inconsistencies, and stylistic characteristics intact. Editorial insertions are enclosed in square brackets. Words inserted in handwriting on the original documents appear in angle brackets. Crossed-out words are indicated as such. Contractions and abbreviations are retained as written. Dates, salutations , and closings are included as written but sometimes are set without line breaks to save space. When a word, phrase, or other portion of the text requires explanation, it is provided in an endnote. To further facilitate the work of future researchers and writers of African American history and Oberlin history, I have fully annotated the chapter introductions and the prefatory notes to documents. Finally, when quoting college administrators and faculty, I have tried to note their titles at the time. Preface xiv In 2003, the African American Studies...