Video opens on a woman standing at a podium. A box with text appears in the corner of the screen which reads "How would Brandeis and its 75-year history look different if we centered the presence and experiences of Black people?"
Lucretia Jones (00:00:00):
Good afternoon everyone.
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All right. Good afternoon and welcome. It's so great to be back here on Brandeis campus to celebrate the 75th anniversary, and to welcome you here to today's session, Black Brandeis, Black History.
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I want to take a moment first to get some housekeeping out of the way. So first, please take a moment to identify all exits for this facility. The nearest exit may not be the doors in which you entered. Exit doors around are clearly marked. In the event of an emergency that requires evacuation, please follow any staff instructions and proceed calmly to the nearest exit and move away from the building. Okay. So also, please make sure to silence all your phones. All right, thank you.
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Okay, so hi everybody. I am Lucretia Jones, and I'm so honored to be here back at Brandeis and to hear this great discussion on Black Brandeis, Black History. I am class of 1977. I was a AAAS major. I participated in the Pearlman takeover back in '75. I've worked with the Alumni of Color Network for some years and I'm currently a board member, the alumni board.
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On behalf of the Alumni Association, I am honored to introduce today's speakers, who will examine the history of the Black presence at Brandeis, from the university's 1948 founding to the present. Our esteemed speakers will discuss how Black students and alumni have shaped Brandeis' intellectual and political community.
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Professor Chad Williams, Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies. And we have Dr. Roy DeBerry, 1970, master's '78, PhD in '79, is executive director of the Hill Country Project and the leader of the Ford Hall takeover in 1969, which led to, among other things... Yeah, let's give him a round of applause, yes. Yes. And that, which among other things led to the creation of what was then called the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis.
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So before we get started, I'd like to thank the Department of African American Studies and the Division of Humanities for sponsoring this event. Now it's my privilege to turn this over to Professor Chad Williams to begin the program.
Chad Williams (00:03:08):
All right, good afternoon everyone.
Audience (00:03:10):
Good afternoon.
Chad Williams (00:03:11):
All right, glad you could find the place. All right. Thank you Lucretia for your very kind introduction. I want to start off our conversation today with this question. How would Brandeis and its 75-year history look different if we centered the presence and experiences of Black people? While this question might at first thought seem speculative or inviting type of rhetorical exercise, as a historian, as a Black studies scholar and a faculty member of the African, African American Studies Department for now a decade, I'm in fact quite serious about posing this question. The Black experience at Brandeis has been central to this university's history and its identity, an identity that has always been contested and uniquely complex.
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The occasion of Brandeis's 75th anniversary should certainly be a cause for celebration, but it must also be a moment of interrogation and excavation to think critically about what type of institution Brandeis has been and to bring to the surface historical narratives that both converge and diverge with the larger story that the university aims to tell about itself. So let's be very clear. Black people have been absolutely central to Brandeis's history, and recognizing this history is essential for how Brandeis must imagine its future. Brandeis held its first classes 75 years ago this week in October of 1948, and Black people were there from the beginning. Ralph Bunche, noted African American scholar and diplomat who had recently negotiated the Armistice agreement ending the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, was the university's first convocation speaker.
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In his June 19th 1949 speech, Bunche told the Brandeis audience, "There is much to be done in our world, but in a democracy, what needs to be done can be done if the people are alert and determined. I have great faith in democracy, because I have great faith in the basic goodness, in the conscience and instincts of mankind. I'm convinced that the common people long for a world in which peace and justice shall reign." In 1950, Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize, and he ended his acceptance speech in Oslo on December the 10th 1940 with these words. "May there be freedom, equality, and brotherhood among all men. May there be morality in the relations among nations. May there be, in our time at long last, a world at peace, in which we the people may for once begin to make full use of the great good that is in us." I believe now more than ever before, we need to heed Bunche's message and take to heart his words.
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Black people, both symbolically and substantively, were central to the development of Brandeis's identity as a Jewish-sponsored, non-sectarian university open to people of every race, religion, and nationality. A small handful of Black students at Brandeis in the early to mid 1950s were on campus. They were spotlighted in a February 1952 Ebony Magazine article, which lauded the university, describing it as a school that, quote, "operates on a set of democratic principles, which could easily serve as goals for every other university in the United States." Herman Hemingway and Theresa Danley were the first two Black graduates of Brandeis in 1953. Brandeis attracted students, Black students, certainly from the immediate Boston area, but gradually from a wide variety of backgrounds. The Wien Scholarship program established in 1958 broadened the international diversity of the Black student body with students from Africa and the Caribbean. Truly diasporic community.
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Black students made real Brandeis's commitments to freedom of speech, expression, and open debate, and tested them as well. In the spring of 1955, controversy erupted over a proposed screening of Birth of a Nation. One of the few Black students at Brandeis at the time, John Howard, can see in the picture there on the bottom right, educated his fellow students on the painful history of this film, which ultimately was not shown on campus. Brandeis, perhaps more than any other university at the time, had strong connections to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The university is an important part of the historical legacy of alliance between African Americans and Jews in shared struggles against racism and antisemitism. Herman Hemingway, in fact, established a Brandeis chapter of the NAACP in 1953.
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Numerous African American civil rights figures visited campus and spoke. Roy Wilkins, Ralph Abernathy in February 1957. Later that year, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made the first of two campus visits, the second coming on February the 25th 1963. This was quite the academic year, let me tell you. In the fall of that year, James Baldwin came to campus, and then that April, Malcolm X. This reflected Brandeis's spirit of intellectual curiosity, as well as an openness to varying perspectives. Other notable individuals who visited campus in the early to mid 1960s included Bob Moses, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer. They no doubt helped to spur the activism of non-Black students, some of whom participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, as well as voting rights, mobilization movements in Mississippi and Alabama in 1965.
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It's also important to note that the Black presence at Brandeis was not solely about civil rights and politics. As a university dedicated to the arts, the campus served as a showcase for Black culture and performance, from Thelonious Monk to the Supremes. And let's not forget about athletics. K. C. Jones serving as men's basketball coach in 1968.
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Now it's easy to perhaps romanticize all of this, but the reality is more complicated. Brandeis's first president Abram Sachar made clear that Brandeis aspired to be a world-class American university. An American university. As such, Brandeis was not immune from one of America's most enduring traits, racism. We also cannot ignore how throughout the history of Jews in the United States, Americanization has very often gone hand in hand with an embrace of whiteness and with it anti-Blackness, both conscious and subconscious.
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Being a Black student at Brandeis in the 1950s and for much of the 1960s was an incredibly isolating experience. Angela Davis, class of 1965, reflected in her autobiography, "Brandeis University was different. There were no roads leading outside. Its physical and spiritual isolation were mutually reinforcing." Her experience was shared by other Black students like Margo Jefferson, Patricia Hill, later to be known as Patricia Hill Collins, and Ricardo Millett, who increasingly believed that their educational needs at Brandeis were not being adequately met.
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Martin Luther King Jr's assassination on April the fourth 1968 marked a turning point for the nation and for Brandeis as well. Black students let their anger be known and mobilized to make Brandeis a truly welcoming institution. The Afro-American Society issued a series of proposals to President Abram Sachar that led to the creation of the Transition Year Program, Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarships, and more financial aid for Black students. As a result, the number of Black students enrolled in 1968 more than doubled from the previous year.
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Morris Abram stepped into the Brandeis presidency in the fall of 1968. On October the fourth in Spingold Theater, Coretta Scott King, Abram's special invited guest, spoke at his inauguration ceremony. She urged students to continue the work of her late husband and not be swept up in the growing wave of calls for Black power. But that wave reached Brandeis nevertheless.
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Inspired by the student strike taking place at San Francisco State and no longer content to remain patient on the afternoon of January the eighth 1969, approximately 70 Black and Latino students occupied Ford Hall, at the time one of the main academic buildings on campus, which also housed the university switchboard. After the building was secured, students allowed members of the press to go to the office of Lathan Johnson, the Black student advisor, where the occupying students held a news conference. At the news conference, spokespersons Ricardo Millett and Roy DeBerry... There you are, Roy. You look good. A little less hair now, but you know, Black don't crack. You look good.
Roy DeBerry (00:13:26):
You're too kind.
Chad Williams (00:13:31):
They read a prepared statement and a list of 10 non-negotiable demands, the first and most important being the establishment of an African American studies department, and that students have the ability to choose its director and chart its future. The occupation quickly made national and international headlines and represented a crisis for President Abrams, who considered himself a civil rights ally. But for those inside Ford Hall, it was a remarkable moment of Black political consciousness, as well as communal solidarity.
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The protest ended on January the 18th when the Ford Hall activists received a promise of amnesty and pledged that they would continue their fight for a full AAAS department with student input on its staffing and structure. On April the 24th, after continued negotiations between students and administrators, the Brandeis faculty formally approved the creation of the AAAS department.
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Now, the Black experience at Brandeis is all too often frozen in time in 1969. Ford Hall is certainly a watershed moment, but we tend to overlook the aftermath, as well as the challenges that Black students, faculty and administrators continued to face at Brandeis. While the AAAS department was indeed established, it faced resistance and had to contend with institutional neglect. This was the view of President Abram's, which was shared by other administrators, and faculty as well, following his departure.
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Black staff and administrators are an overlooked part of Brandeis's history. Many of them lacked support, and felt that the university, despite its professed commitments, did not take issues of race and cultural diversity seriously. And for Black students, racism remained a part of their campus experience from the 1970s into the early 2000s, and still today.
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All of this makes the legacy of Black people at Brandeis all the more remarkable. Brandeis would not be the university that it is today without Black people. Our presence and legacy is more than symbolic, and cannot be conveniently packaged for marketing purposes to demonstrate Brandeis's professed commitment to social justice. Our legacy is pioneering, brilliant Black faculty, from the first Black faculty member, professor of physics Robert Thornton, to Pauli Murray, Ronald Walters, Wellington Nyangoni, Ibrahim Sundiata, who is in the audience with us today, Anita Hill, Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, Derron Wallace, [inaudible 00:16:31], and Faith Smith, holder, as of last year, the first endowed professorship in AAAS history.
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Our legacy is honorary degree recipients like Marian Anderson, Harry Belafonte, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Russell, Deval Patrick, and most recently Annette Gordon-Reed. Our legacy is some of the most notable figures in African American intellectual, political, and cultural history speaking and performing on campus. Maya Angelou. Shirley Chisholm. Toni Morrison. Eddie Murphy. Kendrick Lamar and Nas. All right, I see some of my hip hop students in the crowd here.
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And most importantly, our legacy is students. Generations of Black students who have built community in and outside of the classroom. Who have demonstrated leadership in student government, from Ron Glover to Nyah Macklin. Who through their activism have made social justice more than just empty words, demanding financial aid equity for students of color in 1973, insisting that the university divest from apartheid South Africa, and in 2015, making clear in their own remembering of Ford Hall that Black lives matter and Black students at Brandeis matter.
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And we've graduated. We've walked across the stage and, as alumni, represented the best of what this university is and what it can be. This is Brandeis. This is Black Brandeis. This is Black history. This is all of our history. You can clap [inaudible 00:18:28]
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All right, so at this point I am going to do the honors of welcoming my good friend Roy DeBerry up to the chairs with me.
Roy DeBerry (00:18:41):
[inaudible 00:18:57]
Chad Williams (00:18:59):
All right. These are working. Always a pleasure to be in your presence Roy, and be in conversation with you.
Roy DeBerry (00:19:07):
Same, Chad.
Chad Williams (00:19:09):
So there's a lot that we could talk about to get this conversation going, but let me just start with, why did you come to Brandeis?
Roy DeBerry (00:19:19):
Well, let me think [inaudible 00:19:24]
Chad Williams (00:19:23):
And also, what made you think that Brandeis would be the place for you?
Audience (00:19:26):
[inaudible 00:19:29]
Roy DeBerry (00:19:29):
Okay, hold that. Let me thank you first for a good job. That picture obviously still does justice, I guess, for a good job in terms of the history, right? Because I think in particular with respect to Ralph Bunche, because a lot of people do not know that relationship between Brandeis and Ralph Bunche... And I'm also going to take the liberty while up here before I start to answer your questions-
Chad Williams (00:19:58):
You got the mic.
Roy DeBerry (00:19:59):
... to talk about the book that you just did on Du Bois. And Du Bois has always been one of my favorite scholars. And what I was struck by was this stuff that is going on now to some extent in the Middle East, and this notion about war and how a war can be just so absurd. And the reason why I mentioned Du Bois in a great job that you did in that book, because [inaudible 00:20:27] was never finished by Bois, and I think he would be thoroughly gratified that you took the effort to put so much research time into finishing that product.
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But I couldn't help but reflect on that contradiction that he had to face when he asked Black people, as a way to prove your citizenship, that you had to go and fight, with at least a misguided notion that once that happened, you would be accepted when you came back home, or you would be accepted in the military, or you would be accepted in the military overseas while you're fighting this war. And that was never realized. And I think that he lost a lot of credibility, as you know, among his colleagues because of his stature and asking people to step out and do that.
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I just, again, want to just thank you for bringing that product to... And if you've not... Please, please. And if you've not read that book called The Wounded Soldier-
Chad Williams (00:21:34):
Wounded Warrior.
Roy DeBerry (00:21:36):
Wounded Warrior, please, please take a look.
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Now, I'll get... You know I'll always do that. When you ask me a question, I go off on something else. And I'm not even a politician, by the way, Chad. So if you would, would you go back to that question?
Chad Williams (00:21:51):
Yeah, so what made you come to Brandeis? What brought you to Brandeis and what made you think that Brandeis could be a place where you could be a student and flourish?
Roy DeBerry (00:22:03):
I guess the same thing that brought me to Brandeis today, when I had an opportunity to go and speak to some students at the health school, someone undergraduate, I spoke to about hour and a half, and just the love of seeing those students in that classroom and seeing the kind of education that they are still getting at Brandeis.
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With respect to history, Aviva Futorian, who was a graduate of Brandeis in 1959, mentioned the name... and again to diverge for a moment, I had an opportunity last night for the first time to meet Justice Brandeis' granddaughter and meet two of his nieces. And turns out that one of the granddaughters actually married to a man from Meridian, Mississippi. So we had a chance to discuss, that's a connection, and understand that the present board of trustee chair is from Memphis, Tennessee, as a matter of fact. I didn't know that.
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So, Aviva. I was a teenager in middle school and working for SNCC, and my friend and my brother were standing in Holly Springs in 1962. And we saw... And this was time when Kennedy was president, right? And our good governor at that time decided to defy the federal government, and Kennedy was then forced to, not because he had love for the civil rights movement, but he was forced to send troops to Oxford because of the enrollment of James Meredith, the first African American of color that was known. I understand there was some Black students who were of lighter hue that had gone there, but they were not known. So he was the first known Black student to go there.
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But anyway, seeing those soldiers coming through Holly Springs just left me in a mood that even as a youngster, I couldn't understand how in the United States of America in 1962 as a youngster, the soldiers were being sent to a university in America to enforce the law. After that, it just dawned on me that I needed to get involved. So I got involved with SNCC as a 14-year-old and had to honor... And you mentioned Bob Moses today. Had to honor meeting Bob Moses as a teenager.
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And so through that movement and the fact Aviva had been a Brandeis graduate and was teaching there in Holly Springs in the Freedom School. I had an opportunity to attend Freedom school for a while as well. She was the first person to mention Brandeis to me as a university. I had heard of Justice Brandeis, I didn't know all the details, but I knew that he had been a justice and had been somebody that believed in social justice. And she talked about the quality of the education at Brandeis, that it was a first-rate institution, it was a small school, and it was really my age. I think Brandeis, we're twins. Brandeis is a little bit older, founded in 1948, so I had that affinity as well.
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So she talked highly about Brandeis. As any youngster would do, I put off things for a while. She kept encouraging me. And the point here is mentorship, how important it is to mentor a young person. And so she just stayed on me. "You need to get that application and you need to apply. You need to go ahead and get it done. Have you got it done, Roy?" "No." "Have you got it done, Roy?" "No." "Have you got it done, Roy?" So she stayed on me, and eventually I put the application in, and came initially in 1965, early summer. I had just turned 17, 18, can't remember now. But anyway, I met Phil Driscoll, who was dean of admission at the time.
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First time I had been to Massachusetts. I had been to New York before in 1964, but had never been to Boston before, and took the train from Boston out to the university and met Phil. I thought Phil was a wonderful man, did a great interview. And I left that feeling pretty optimistic that I would get accepted. Got accepted, and then Brandeis decided to do a summer program, the Carnegie program, which happened in 1965. So I came back to attend that program. And just an interesting story about the cultural differences between coming from the South and coming to the North was that while on the train, I made the mistake of speaking to someone. I think I got on the train and said, "Good morning. Hello, how are you?" You Know, the kind of thing-
Chad Williams (00:27:00):
Southern hospitality.
Roy DeBerry (00:27:01):
Yeah, Southern hospitality. Well, I was not greeted with a lot of hospitality. I was greeted with, "Why are you speaking to me?" And then of course I went back home later before I came into the Carnegie program and I said, "Well, let me try not speaking and be more like the Northerner." And of course I was quickly corrected that this is not what you do in the South, that's not showing Southern hospitality, you better speak. So anyway.
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But I came back, spent that summer. I think Bob Jones had gone to a similar program at Yale, and I did the one at Brandeis. And at Brandeis it was not only about Black students at that time, because a lot of poor white students were not at Brandeis at the time, and there were a lot of other Hispanic and Asian students who were not at Brandeis. So that summer was made up of what a university should look like, and I think Brandeis was willing to do that. So to answer your first question, I think my mentoringship with Aviva Futorian as an activist in the movement was the first person that lit that light under me to apply and come to Brandeis.
Chad Williams (00:28:10):
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's so significant that it was your activism, your involvement in the Black freedom struggle, in your case in the South, which brought you to Brandeis and clearly shaped your Brandeis experience and how you viewed your place in the university.
Roy DeBerry (00:28:26):
Well, there's no question that the struggle was early. Activists trying to get people registered to vote, trying to get people, really, to fight against segregation and to fight against Jim Crow. Obviously as a young age, that has to have an impact on you, and you don't lose that because you go off to college. But one of the things in terms of my parents, my parents on my mother's side really came from independent... They owned their land since the 1870s. Matter of fact, if some of you ever decide to come and visit me in Oxford, Mississippi, where I live now, I just restored an old house that my grandfather built in 1915, and it's off the grid. Bob has been there, he's seen it. And we restored it in 2015, which was a hundred years.
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So my grandmother was a seamstress, my grandfather was a carpenter. They were independent minded. Most of the differences in terms of my experience as opposed to people in the Delta, who were sharecroppers, were that you lived on somebody's land, and if you live on somebody's land, you are not about to challenge that landowner, because that meant you were going to be kicked off the land, if not worse to happen to you. My grandparents gave me the kind of independence to do the kind of things that I did as a youngster that had I not had that independence, I could not have done. So I want give them their due as well.
Chad Williams (00:29:44):
Yeah. Well, we could... yeah absolutely, can snap for that. We could have a whole session devoted to 1969 and Ford Hall, and I actually encourage everybody, if you visit the AAAS website, our department website, we have archive videos from our 50th anniversary commemoration where this photograph was taken. There was an incredible panel conversation with [inaudible 00:30:11] the veterans of Ford Hall. So there's some great resources and information that you can learn about that remarkable moment on our department website.
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But without going into, again, all the detail, how did that experience shape you? And did, perhaps in a curious way, Ford Hall deepen your investment, your connection to Brandeis, and make you feel more Brandeisian, for lack of a better word?
Roy DeBerry (00:30:44):
Well, one of the things I always said is that my focus is not really on Ford Hall. And there was a movement between 1966 and 1970, to your point. Things happened before, things happened during, and things happened afterwards, right? And there were a lot of things that took place. Medgar Evers had been assassinated in '63, okay? And of course we know about the assassination of King in '68, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy in '68. So we had a lot of stuff going on nationally, right? Student protests, student movement, [inaudible 00:31:14]-
Chad Williams (00:31:14):
Vietnam War.
Roy DeBerry (00:31:15):
... all of that. So the context was there was activism across the country. There was activism on the campus. And one of the things that Aviva talked to me a lot about, and what I read about before I came to Brandeis, and what I found out during that summer, was Brandeis had this goal, this mission of justice, of equality, of truth unto its innermost part. All of this stuff, right? But when I get here, after I went to Commonwealth for a year in Boston and I get here in '66 and we look at the campus, in my class, there were eight Black students. Four graduated. I was out the country, but I guess I graduated too. That was in 1970.
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But prior to that, there had been... And again, I think there's a misconception about my leadership. It's always about a collective effort. Right? The other thing is that it was not about just a Black movement. It was about a movement for inclusion, which included poor white students, which included Asian students, which included Hispanic students or Latinx students. And this notion that somehow it was all about trying to be just strictly for African American... it's just not historically accurate. Right? So in terms of our movement, even though the focus had to be, because that's who we were, African American, and because we did not have an organization or president on this campus, we had to organize the first Afro Society, which we did, and eventually got it approved, which was not easy, by the way.
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That was not easy. Because one of the things I heard from my Dr. Sachar, and I had a lot of respect for Dr. Sachar, was this notion of, "If you do this sort of thing, that sets up the quota system." Because one of the things that coming off of Germany, and I respected that the Jewish people clearly understood, was how they had been treated with respect to the Ivy League schools. Right? They could not get in. There was quotas set up. So I could appreciate this notion of, "If you're trying to set up a society..." Or we could appreciate. "That means that somehow you were trying to be separate." We were not trying to be separate. We were trying to be inclusive, and we were trying to say, "Look at us, recognize us as..." As you pointed out today, "recognize our presence."
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But you got to do more than recognize us. There are certain things you have to do. And that is we look around, we see a paucity of Black students, we look around, we see very few if any Black professors, we look around and see there's no Black department. At the time I was majored in sociology, which I was told when I came as a freshman was probably one of the best 10 sociology departments in this country. I mean, the people in that department was the A team. Right? We knew it then, we knew it while we were students and we knew it afterwards. So all that was taking place as a context when we start to have those first meetings long before Ford Hall took place. You're talking about '66, you're talking about '67, the war that took place. All right. And then we talking about '68, all that activity's going on on campus, and finally you get '69 and you get Ford Hall.
Chad Williams (00:34:27):
Yeah, yeah.
Roy DeBerry (00:34:27):
So what I want to do is say there's a context and there's a history long before we get to Ford Hall. Matter of fact, an example of Sachar, we had talked about 10 demands. That was before we developed the 10 demand, we had talked about scholarship. Because I came to Brandeis on the [inaudible 00:34:46]-Jackson Scholarship. It was [inaudible 00:34:50] had been killed in the civil rights movement, right? Gunned down. Jackson, a young former soldier, had been killed as well. So that scholarship that I came to Brandeis on was named after those two martyrs that had been killed trying to get civil rights.
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So when we went in long before Ford Hall and said to Dr. Sachar, "Dr. Sachar, we would like to see five Martin Luther King scholarship." And I'll never forget that, Bob knows about it, Dr. Sachar looked at me and says, "I'll do better than that. I'll give you 10." In the negotiation we walk out, right? Right. Smart man. Now Abram is another animal, but we'll talk about that later.
Chad Williams (00:35:32):
Yeah. So again, just to follow up on the last part of my question, in the wake of Ford Hall, did you feel a deeper sense of connection and investment in the university? Because you came back, you got your MA, your PhD. You could have been through with Brandeis at that point. Did you feel like, "Okay, this is a school that I have contributed to, but also helped build, in the vision of what I think a true university should look like?"
Roy DeBerry (00:36:04):
I felt connected to Brandeis then, I've felt connected to Brandeis since. Now you know as soon as we left Ford Hall, the next year I did not come back. I left and went to Africa. Right? So I missed that first year of the formation of the department under Ron Walters. So I missed that. But in terms of my connectedness, I was connected because I thought Brandeis then, still do, was a first-rate institution.
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And one of the things that my mother and my father and my grandparents always taught me, that education is key. Whether Du Bois said this or whether you at Tuskegee or at Rust College or at wherever, that education is important. And one of the things that we had seen even growing up was all these fantastic Black scholars at these Black institutions. So we knew about scholarship, right? We knew about the prominence of Black scholars. Right? We saw it in action. So I saw that at Brandeis in terms of not being a Black institution, but I saw it as being a first-rate institution. So I felt connected.
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But also, to my earlier point I was trying to make, is that we also saw the contradictions. That if you have these theories and you have these concepts, and we look around and we don't see this, we then have an obligation, as scholars but as activists, to make it better. Educationally it was always on the agenda. It stayed on the agenda. One of the things that worried me more, and Barbara and I talked about this because we used to drive back and forth from Memphis on the way up, is that my parents... I would have been mortified to go back to Mississippi and say to my mom and dad that I don't have a degree after being at Brandeis.
Chad Williams (00:37:42):
You didn't want to have that conversation.
Roy DeBerry (00:37:43):
I mean, it's nothing at Ford Hall would have scared me more than that conversation with my mom and dad about the fact that "You spent four years here, and you come back with no degree? That ain't happening." Right?
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So anyway, I've always felt connected to Brandeis and I still feel connected to Brandeis, but we called Brandeis out on certain things that they had to be called out on, and we did that collectively, not as one leader.
Chad Williams (00:38:05):
Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Truth, even unto its innermost parts. Absolutely.
Roy DeBerry (00:38:08):
Yes. Yeah.
Chad Williams (00:38:09):
So as far as your continued activism... Because I want to give you an opportunity to say a little bit about the work that you've continued to do in Mississippi, the scholarship that you produced, just the incredible work that you've done in documenting the voices of Black folk in Mississippi. How did your Brandeis experience prepare you for this next phase of both your intellectual work but also your political work?
Roy DeBerry (00:38:37):
Thank you. The political stuff, I'll hold till later, but the empathy thing, I think is there. That I have always felt an empathy and a sympathy for the other. And you mentioned the nonprofit that I started along with Aviva. Again, that connection between Brandeis and Aviva. Aviva and I are still very good friends. Matter of fact, I just got off the phone with her this morning. She's getting ready to go in and do some surgery. So we have maintained that contact over those 50-plus years. So that's there.
(00:39:06):
And so we would always... As a SNCC conference where we met Bob Moses and Cleveland Sellers and all these people, we would talk about things we do. We would sit around and we would hear Bob [inaudible 00:39:18], Bob Moses and others trade stories about the civil rights movement. And finally one young person in the audience said, "Look you guys, you old guys, you all are sitting around here trading war stories. Okay. What we need to know is how is this stuff that you're talking about relevant for us today?"
(00:39:34):
And it dawned on me. We were talking among ourselves, as we often do, right? "But what are we doing to get that information out to another generation?" So from that, we decided that we could go to a place like Ashley, Mississippi, which is predominantly poor white majority but significantly Black there, and record histories, oral histories, of these wonderful people. And I bought some, as any office should do. I didn't bring the books, but I bought some postcard with some ZR codes. And please feel free to get the book. It's called Voices from the Mississippi Old Country.
Chad Williams (00:40:10):
Yeah, it's... Amazing book.
Roy DeBerry (00:40:11):
Thank you. Please check it out. So this took us about 25 years to do all this research, and we did about a hundred plus interviews. Right? Brandeis, I think, prepared me and her for that kind of project. Had I not gone to a place like Brandeis, had not been exposed to the kind of rigor and scholarship and criticism that you get at Brandeis, perhaps I would not have been able to do these interviews.
(00:40:40):
Because one of the things that I know for a fact, before we started these interviews with these wonderful people, was that you got to build a relationship with people that they have to trust you when you ask these kind of personal questions, very intimate questions about their lives. And they were willing to share that with us. And then of course, we were able to edit the book and it was published by University of Mississippi Press. Which we were fortunate, because usually they don't publish that kind of book on oral history. But we tried to make a point, is that in Mississippi and so many other places, history is not told. And when it's old, it's told badly, all right? If at all. Or you have these other crazy folk-
Chad Williams (00:41:16):
Not just Mississippi.
Roy DeBerry (00:41:18):
Right. All these other places where [inaudible 00:41:22] crazy stuff, right?
Chad Williams (00:41:22):
[inaudible 00:41:23]
Roy DeBerry (00:41:23):
So that's what we wanted to get out there. So it's again about the idea of going and not only working with the people to do this book, but we also still got a connection with Brandeis because we started something called the Brandeis Ashley, Mississippi Remote Program. And as of January, we are working with the people in the math department, and they're working with my principal and my superintendent at this place to mentor high school kids and middle school kids in math and science, particularly those students who want to go on to colleges and university, and even to the military or the workforce.
(00:42:02):
So this Brandeis legacy and this Brandeis connection continues, because I think there are things that Brandeis can gain, these students can gain, from working with students from Mississippi, and I think there are things these Mississippi students can gain from working with students at Brandeis. And at some point we're going to organize a trip where we're going to have some of the faculty members from there come here and we're going to have some of the faculty members and tutors and mentors from here come there. Because I think it's important, if you're going to be working and mentoring students in a particular area, to know something about where they come from, to know something about that environment, to know something about that profile of those students. So again, that's [inaudible 00:42:41] go on.
Chad Williams (00:42:41):
Yeah, that's great. So we're going to open things up for questions...
Roy DeBerry (00:42:47):
And you know I skipped Ford Hall, right?
Chad Williams (00:42:49):
I noticed that, yeah. That's okay, that's okay. So while folks are thinking about their questions, we got microphones set up. Feel free to come forward.
Roy DeBerry (00:43:01):
By the way, if I may Chad, on that Malcolm X university piece, let's correct the record. A couple of things. One, we inside the building for the whole time, I'm negotiating with Peter [inaudible 00:43:13] from time to time. I didn't leave the building except to come out at night and do a negotiation, because one of the things I know for a fact is that we know for a fact that if you're going to get something accomplished, you got the negotiate. Even though there were people on the Brandeis side that didn't want to negotiate, there were people on the Black side that didn't want to negotiate. And so you had to find some middle ground to make this happen. And there were people on both sides.
(00:43:34):
I will say too, you know that from the record, that the majority, the clear majority, the whole [inaudible 00:43:41] majority of the faculty Brandeis, voted against the movement, voted against everything we were doing at that time. There are a few minority of faculty that supported us, and we had student support, and I see some of them here today, but it was not overwhelming. So I just want the record to be straight.
(00:43:57):
The other thing in terms of [inaudible 00:43:59] book, a good political scientist from Brandeis? Errors. One, he says, I was a Rust College graduate. Not. Taught at Rust College. Okay? The other one was, he said that he was instrumental... And this is Abram, right? In getting me out the draft. False. I had been interviewed a couple times by the draft board. What I eventually did, I got a conscious objector status from the draft board because my grandfather... I can see him now saying, "You got to be out of your mind. You going to go to a Southern draft board clerk and tell her that you are not going to fight in Vietnam?" And I said, "Exactly, Papa. I'm going to do that."
(00:44:39):
And believe it or not, and today it must have been divine individual because I don't know how it happened and why it happened, but I know what Abram... I got the deferment. I got the deferment and I got the fact that I had a right to take that position.
Chad Williams (00:44:55):
Yeah yeah. Do your historical research, folks. Right? So, more than happy to have anybody come up if you have any questions, maybe brief comments.
Ron Kaiserman (00:45:13):
My name is Ron Kaiserman. I was in the class of 1963. One of the people you omitted as coming to the campus was Odetta, who was here...
Roy DeBerry (00:45:24):
The great Odetta.
Ron Kaiserman (00:45:25):
... with a remarkable performance that was, in fact to me, very effective and eye-opening.
Chad Williams (00:45:33):
I wish I could have included all the folks who were here. Believe me, it's a remarkable collection of performers, activists... I mean, you name it, they came through Brandeis. Yeah.
Ron Kaiserman (00:45:43):
Secondly, I don't remember what year it was, but a bunch of us ended up going into Boston every Saturday and picketing Woolworths. Because they segregated the counters in the South, and we were trying to keep people out of the store in Boston as a way of protesting the segregation in the South.
(00:46:10):
And the third thing that occurred to me as I was listening to Professor Williams was that when I was in high school in the 50s, my history textbook never mentioned Black people doing anything. They don't do nothing except being slaves.
Roy DeBerry (00:46:26):
They don't do now. Happy slaves, happy slaves.
Chad Williams (00:46:30):
Benefited from it.
Ron Kaiserman (00:46:31):
There was no other mention of any contribution of any type of description in our textbooks. So that when Morris Abram objected, it was the same kind of ignorance that I had, that "Why should there be an African American study department? There's nothing to study." And it's just pure ignorance.
Roy DeBerry (00:46:53):
Well, in the case of Morris, if I'm going to correct that, because he came out of Atlanta, he was Jewish obviously, had gone to Oxford, got all his stuff, the scholarship stuff. What's the name of that very prestigious scholarship you get from Oxford?
Audience (00:47:08):
Rhodes Scholar.
Roy DeBerry (00:47:08):
Rhodes Scholar. And so my first encounter with Abram being a Southerner, and I was a Southerner, was a kind of paternalism that I'd seen before. And I think what I saw there was, "I'm a Southerner and therefore I know what the Blacks want."
Chad Williams (00:47:25):
"I know what's best for the Negroes." Yep.
Roy DeBerry (00:47:28):
Exactly. And so I picked up on that and I think other students picked up on that as well. There's no question he had been an activist in Atlanta and done some good things in Atlanta. He knew Dr. King's wife very well, Coretta, and so I'm not taking anything from him. Bright man, scholarly, good lawyer, had a lot of influence in Atlanta, took some position that was really physically threatening to him in Georgia. But I think he brought that kind of paternalism, and that's what I read when he was talking to me. And I can pick up on any kind of paternalism, but I certainly can pick up on Southern paternalism, because I had encountered it and seen so much of it. So I think there was a strain there that a lot of people don't pick up on. And that's why I think when he was interviewed there, it was quoted in [inaudible 00:48:16] book that he-
Chad Williams (00:48:16):
That was in his biography that he wrote.
Roy DeBerry (00:48:16):
Yeah, did this wonderful thing for me in terms of the draft. And I did not think him for it, which... There was nothing to thank, because we didn't have the discussion. Anyway, thank you.
Chad Williams (00:48:30):
Yeah. And maybe we have another microphone it'll be easier to get to you. Okay.
Mikayla Kose (00:48:36):
Hi, I'm Mikayla Kose. I am in the department of AAAS both as a major and a student admin assistant. And I was lucky enough to be here for the 50th anniversary of AAAS, along with knowing some people who also did Ford Hall 2015.
(00:48:58):
In 2019 we did have a protest. However, that outcome came from the university setting up... In section seven of the Department of Students' Rights and Community Standards, they set up a protest policy and campus demonstration. And it's basically saying that students have the right... "a member of the university community may protest, rally or demonstrate, provided such protest of demonstrations, do not disrupt university operations or obstruct physical movement to and from or within any place on campus, including university property that is located off the main campus." And so it seems as if they took from Ford Hall, the original Ford Hall, and was like, "Well, since slavery is a perpetual state of warfare, let's use this to counter..." I guess it would be like, I don't know, "counter, intervene with, student protests."
(00:50:04):
And now it's saying that students will have consequences for this. There is no vote for immunity or negotiations. And these conditions that were going on back in the origin of Brandeis, the anti-Blackness that is insidious within this institution, still exists, and sometimes in worse ways because it has learned how to morph, for students today. And I was just wondering if you can speak to some students, because there's freshmen here who do not necessarily get taught or even get shown what protest or a fight looks like at Brandeis, because it's constantly being masked by this facade of social justice, as in, "Be grateful because the Negroes are here anyway." So I was just wondering if you can speak to us about that.
Roy DeBerry (00:50:54):
Well, thank you, thank you. Every action creates a reaction, so I don't think Brandeis is unique to that. You see it in terms of the country now. Every step you take forward, every three steps you take forward, sometimes you take five backwards. That's why struggle is always continuous, right? Each generation has to be reengaged.
(00:51:12):
I was thinking as you were talking, when King and us as youngsters do things, you don't do things expecting... You do things expecting things to happen to you sometimes, and sometimes those things are not always so nice. For example, even though we were granted amnesty after the fact, we didn't go into Ford Hall expecting to be granted amnesty. It's not even on your mind. What was on our mind was we wanted to make Brandeis more inclusive, we wanted to create these things, and we felt there was a way to do it. If we had been worried about certain things going in, whether or not we're going to be kicked out... I was worried about that, because I didn't want to have to deal with my mother and father and grandparents, and a lot of students worried about that.
(00:51:57):
But essentially, if you think your cause is just, as Mrs. Hamer used to say or Bob Moses used to say, [inaudible 00:52:06] these people who have engaged in struggles for generation, they don't really talk about the consequences. Now they tell you though, there will be consequences. Sometime they physical consequences, sometime they mental consequences, sometime it's economic consequences. I remember some of these people we interviewed in the book, right? When we interviewed them, they said, "Okay, as a sharecropper, as a person working in somebody's home, as a person renting from somebody, if you go down there and register to vote, if you go down there and try to integrate that luncheon counter, they're going to throw you in jail, or in some case you might get killed."
(00:52:44):
Did that stop people from doing it? No. So if your cause is right and your cause is just, then you have to pursue that, not thinking that, "Well, I'm going to worry about the consequences." But make sure that your cause is just, though. Because you have a lot of craziness that takes place too, by the way. And Bob Jones and Leroy [inaudible 00:53:02] understands that. FBI, for example, had thoroughly infiltrated the building. I was interviewed a couple of times by the FBI, I think Bob was interviewed for FBI on the way back from Africa. And so there was always the consequences of Brandeis, and to Brandeis' credit, I say this in my podcast with my daughter, to Brandeis' credit, even Morris Abrams, that I did not feel as strongly about as Abram Sachar, they did not call in the Waltham cops.
(00:53:33):
Because we knew, Bob and everybody in that hall knew that if those Waltham police had been brought to this campus, it was going to be a butcher. And to Brandeis' credit, that was prevented, and I'm not going to ever forget that. Now, were we concerned about that at the time? Not really. Because you're 18 and 19 and 20 years old, so you think you... you know.
Chad Williams (00:54:01):
You think you're invincible, right?
Roy DeBerry (00:54:01):
Invincible.
(00:54:03):
So your point is, people going to put up these barriers about what you can and not... you know, keeping you within the fence. "If you behave this way, it's acceptable. If you don't behave this way, it's not acceptable." But if you there as a student and you love Brandeis and you want Brandeis to be better and you want Brandeis to be improved, if you see injustice, whether it's here or at home or anywhere else, you have to speak out against it. Right?
(00:54:28):
Now, you do it in different ways. And as I said earlier, reason why I didn't want to emphasize on Ford Hall, because people like to always go to the big event. And what I'm trying to say is, so much other stuff goes on. And there were people... Not all Black students on this campus supported us. I want you to be clear about that.
Chad Williams (00:54:44):
That's true.
Roy DeBerry (00:54:44):
And there were a lot of white students... But there were a lot of white students who did support us. There's no way we could have survived inside that building without the food, without the water, without people bringing us things to survive on. You cannot survive 11 days in a building and you don't have that kind of support.
Chad Williams (00:55:00):
Yeah, there was a sit-in in Bernstein-Marcus at the same time. White students, yeah?
Roy DeBerry (00:55:04):
Yes. Yes. So again, I just think this thing is much more complex than sometime the press, whether it's the New York Times or the Boston Globe, or even some of the international papers that carry the story... Everybody wants the sensational stuff, right? "65 Black students take over Ford Hall." We didn't take over anything. We were already in Ford Hall. We just stayed.
(00:55:30):
I mean, language is important. How things get misconstrued and misinterpreted. And that's a fact, Bob will tell you that we were in Ford Hall already and we just stayed. There are some other occasions where students joined us, but we were students here. This was our university. We were here. We were part of this university. We were not against this university. We wanted this university to be better and it is better, and it can get much better. It was a first-rate university then, it was a [inaudible 00:56:00] now, and it'll be a first-rate university in the future. Thank you. Thank you for that question.
Chad Williams (00:56:12):
So we had a question here. We have a microphone for you.
Diane Berkowitz (00:56:13):
Yeah. Oh. Thanks, hi. I was Diane Berkowitz then. I was outside Ford Hall with the sandwiches [inaudible 00:56:23] you know, brisket. So I took a couple of the first African American Studies courses, and the first one I remember was African American music. And you couldn't get a seat in that classroom, and people were hanging off the [inaudible 00:56:44]. And the second course I signed up for was African American literature. And that course had two professors, young... a white guy and a Black guy from Harvard who came over to teach the course, African American literature. And I was the only student in the class. So what was it? Did people expect Black music but not Black literature?
Roy DeBerry (00:57:09):
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, because that's part of this whole notion, and Chad can speak to that, of during this idea of setting up the department, one of the things we heard over and over, and Bob knows about that, is just how authentic it can be. Is it credible? Is it scholarly? If you talk about bringing in top notch Black scholars, are they up to speed? Can they do the work?
(00:57:34):
So all of that was there. At no point did we ever advocate that you bring in anything less than the best. Right? Why would you want less than the best for you if you believe in the best? But that was part of that whole climate at the time. So I'm glad you mentioned that.
Chad Williams (00:57:54):
Yeah, and I think there's some people in the audience who could speak on this better than me who were there. But it's important to keep in mind, in 1969, 1970, a new discipline is being created from the ground up. Right? The creation of Black studies departments at Brandeis and across the country was a remarkable experiment in intellectual development, creativity... of rigor, right? Really laying the foundation for the vibrancy that Black studies is today. And without question it went through growing pains, faced considerable resistance, people believing that "There's no such thing as Black literature. What is Black literature? Black people wrote books?" Right?
(00:58:43):
So these are the type of headwinds that you were up against, right? And it's a credit to the perseverance and the incredible vision of the people in that moment who were steadfast in making it clear that this is a department, this is a discipline, this is a field of study that is worthy of serious interrogation. But also the vision to have a department. Right? To make sure that AAAS would have the longevity of a department as opposed to a program, and be subjected to all the challenges that a program could face, including being eliminated altogether.
Roy DeBerry (00:59:27):
Yeah, thinking about that, Chad, because that was a big discussion about program versus department, and we were insistent on doing a department as opposed to a program, because we knew a program could be easily phased away and we wanted to build in some continuity. But Dr. Grossman, the great professor here, there were some professors... And that word rigor, I used to dream about it. I heard it so often about... What? Rigor, rigor, rigor. And he was one of those professors that spoke out early and often about the fact of this not being an issue here, that this is addressed and this is going to be the kind of scholarship we are looking at.
Chad Williams (01:00:02):
Oh, I mean listen, we have some of the earliest syllabi from the department still archived, and those things are thick. Y'all were assigning a lot of reading. You think it was bad now? Those syllabi were heavy. So yeah, the rigor was there from the start, and probably scared a lot of folks off too.
Roy DeBerry (01:00:20):
[inaudible 01:00:22]
Marcia Jackson (01:00:22):
I'm right over here.
Chad Williams (01:00:23):
Okay yeah, Marcia.
Marcia Jackson (01:00:24):
I can't stand, I had a injury, so.
Chad Williams (01:00:31):
We understand, Marcia.
Audience (01:00:31):
[inaudible 01:00:32]
Marcia Jackson (01:00:32):
Okay, hello? Hello? Okay. All right. Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Marcia Jackson and I'm an alum affiliated with class of '74. This was a wonderful presentation. I was very happy that Professor Thornton, who was professor of physics, was included. He was a friend of Brandeis, and I think this is the first or second time that I've heard his name mentioned. What wasn't included, however, was the TYP program, and the transitional year program, I believe, was in a growth from the Ford Hall in terms of-
Roy DeBerry (01:01:24):
Part of Ford Hall.
Marcia Jackson (01:01:25):
Excuse me? Yeah.
Roy DeBerry (01:01:26):
Well, it became part of Ford Hall. But Bill Goldsmith and Jerry [inaudible 01:01:31] were the two that started, I believe, the TYP [inaudible 01:01:35]-
Chad Williams (01:01:34):
In '68.
Roy DeBerry (01:01:34):
Yeah.
Marcia Jackson (01:01:43):
In '68. Okay. And you can help me with this, because I wasn't there at the time, but to bring in non-traditional students, to provide a year of intensive education scholarship tutorial, so that they could then join the university, compete, and go on to compete and become professional, represent the university in their own right.
(01:02:07):
I understand that TYP has changed or there is some talk about it changing.
Chad Williams (01:02:14):
It has changed, yeah.
Marcia Jackson (01:02:14):
And number one, there is a tuition for some students. This is my understanding, perhaps I don't know all of the details. But that the full costs will not be covered by the monies from which the program was originally designed. That's number one. Number two, that there's a different tract that somehow the students will matriculate for four years in TYP. And if that's the case, what happens to their foundation, to the foundational knowledge that they got both at TYP and then at the university? So that they can then go on and graduate, be acknowledged as having come from this fine university to go on to other disciplines. So what's going on with that?
Chad Williams (01:03:18):
Yeah, so just briefly. So the TYP program is still here. It's still here. It was endowed. The name was changed to the Myra Kraft TYP program. Recently, really just in the past couple weeks, it was changed so that the transition year is no longer there. So it's a four-year program now. I'm sure other folks in the audience can provide more details.
(01:03:49):
But I think to your point, it's really necessary to understand the origins of TYP. Right? The fact that it was really born out of student activism, the protest movements here on campus in the late 1960s, and that for much of its history, TYP has been struggling for its existence against people who believe that it was not a valid program. And the fact that I think it still exists today, even though it has gone under some significant changes, is an important part of Brandeis's Black history. That should be told. In that way. I think it's very easy to erase the Black history from the TYP program, which we need to be very cognizant of.
Roy DeBerry (01:04:43):
Yeah, Chad has hit on the here and now, and get to your question... But go back to the origin again-
Marcia Jackson (01:04:49):
But what-
Roy DeBerry (01:04:50):
Initially Marcia, if I may, it had to do with the fact that a lot of folk at the university at that time, rightly or wrongly, felt that the students that they were getting, particularly from the urban areas, were not quite ready for Brandeis' rigor. Okay, that was the argument. And so as Joseph [inaudible 01:05:10] and others argued, "Let's do this one year program where we would take students..." And not just Black students, poor white students as well. A lot of students came out of South Boston at the time. And prepare them one year, not necessarily to go to Brandeis, but prepare them so they could go to other institutions of higher learning.
(01:05:28):
Now later on, as Chad's pointed out, it's been endowed. Initially it was not endowed. But at the time... I'm really shocked that TYP has survived as long as it has survived. I frankly felt at the time, and Bob and Leroy may have felt the same way, that if TYP existed for four or five years, that would be about it. Because I think the assumption was that American education would improve so much that you wouldn't need a TYP program. That when kids came out of high school and secondary school, they would be so ready academically that Brandeis wouldn't have that need. In other words, it would just die from its own weight. Yes, sir.
Speaker 9 (01:06:06):
Can I add something to the question [inaudible 01:06:08]
Speaker 10 (01:06:08):
Can you pass the microphone?
Speaker 9 (01:06:10):
With regard to TYP, I think the shortening was meant to be a plus, in the sense that students could graduate in four years rather than five. And of course there's a money aspect to it. Supports will remain, as far as I understand, additional supports. And there's some evidence that other programs that exist at Brandeis have provided supports to students, and those students have been able to excel in four years rather than five. That's my understanding [inaudible 01:06:48], as limited as it is.
(01:06:48):
[inaudible 01:06:49]
Chad Williams (01:06:49):
So I'm keeping track. I don't know if anyone's going to pull rank on me and say we're out of time. But Professor [inaudible 01:07:02]
Ibrahim Sundiata (01:07:01):
Yeah, I'm going to be brief. Yeah, I was going to say something about TYP. Anyway, I'm not an alum. I came to Brandeis in 1991, before most people were born in the room, and retired in 2013. But I just want to say that I think Brandeis had a multiplier effect that was nationwide. And I don't say that to be flowery or nice. I was at another school, Northwestern, and someone came to a meeting that we were having. Our group was called For Members Only. It was a Black group. I wouldn't have that name today. But anyway, someone came-
Chad Williams (01:07:45):
That's [inaudible 01:07:46] song.
Ibrahim Sundiata (01:07:47):
Someone came to us and said, "There's this small school in New England." Actually... And we were meeting and they took over a building, and we were like, "Oh yeah, what?"
(01:07:59):
But what happened was, it wasn't copycat, because we already had a movement, we had momentum. But we lacked certain ideas. The idea that you could... We called it the bursar's office, and that's where they had primitive, primitive computers. They already had computers way back in the day. And someone said, "Well, let's go where the machines are." IBM, that was a company then. And so a group of us went in the money room, right? And we knew someone had come from Brandeis, the school with the funny name. Because we were in Chicago. And it was really so important for us.
(01:08:39):
We already had causes. We wanted more Black faculty, we wanted more Black students, we wanted more facilities, and we also wanted better treatment of football players. Because it's a Big 10 school. I mean, that was one of the big things. Different schools have different aims, right? And so we had a list of demands and then someone said, "Come on." And they called me by my last name. I hate that. "Come on, Sundiata. They're not going to do anything." And I said, "If we call them... This little school up there, wherever it is, they call them demands. Why don't we do that?"
(01:09:14):
And you know something, and I'll just leave it at this? We did. And the next year, the number of Black students went up by, I would say a hundred percent, and we had this wave, and it was good. Because when I was there, I was in African history. I was a graduate student, I was already old. Guess how many graduate students in African history there were out of 30? Me. Only one in African history. That was a disgrace, and that was one of our demands. "Sundiata shouldn't be the only one." And guess what? I'm proud today there are many.
Roy DeBerry (01:10:02):
[inaudible 01:10:03]
(01:10:02):
By the way, just to Greg on Brandeis, I do think Brandeis got it right. And I know we talk about Harvard and Yale and all the other places. I think in terms of what Brandeis put together, I think it got it right, and I'm very proud of Brandeis for that, and proud of the support it's given this effort ever since.
Chad Williams (01:10:20):
So Leroy, we'll give you the last comment here.
Leroy (01:10:23):
Well, well...
Chad Williams (01:10:23):
Think your mic is on.
Leroy (01:10:26):
I don't know if it's on or not, but I can hear it. So Roy, you made a key point about language, and one of the things that I'm looking at Joyce about is that when the 75th magazine came out, the achievement that we've talked about this afternoon was identified as a concentration, was not identified as a department in that magazine. And what Joyce was interviewed in a Boston paper recounted the exact same thing that you did. So now we have a historical fact and the 75th Anniversary magazine does not identify the achievement of being a department, but a concentration. And I caught it and I moved it around, but I didn't say anything before now. But that is a point of information and clarification.
Roy DeBerry (01:11:10):
Very well taken. Very well taken. History's important. Accuracy is important as well. Particularly at the university.
Chad Williams (01:11:15):
Absolutely. All right.
Lucretia Jones (01:11:19):
This has been a great conversation. I know we could go on, I feel we can go on, for another hour or two, but we do have to bring this to an end. So I'd like everyone to please give a big round of applause to Professor Williams and Dr. DeBerry. Thank you so much. This was really fascinating, Roy, this whole discussion, and I love, Professor Williams, your slides. I hope you make that available on the website and all, because I know a lot of people, I learned a lot from seeing that. I really appreciate that.
Roy DeBerry (01:11:56):
[inaudible 01:11:57] take the show on the road, by the way. [inaudible 01:12:03]
Chad Williams (01:11:57):
[inaudible 01:12:04]
Lucretia Jones (01:12:03):
Yeah, this was great. So I want to thank everyone here for coming, and I hope... looking forward to all of you meeting us in the next session, so at 4:15 for the closing plenary session on Brandeis' future. And that'll be at Spingold. And I also want to remind and welcome everyone to the Alumni of Color Reception this evening from seven to nine, and that'll be at the Shapiro Campus Center in the multipurpose room on the second floor. So everyone, again, thank you, thank you so much, and I will see you...
Roy DeBerry (01:12:43):
We have [inaudible 01:12:44] QR codes. For those of you that did not get one, you can just go to...
Lucretia Jones (01:12:47):
I think they'll go...
Roy DeBerry (01:12:50):
... the book. Just go to our website at W-W-W Hill Country Project dot org. You got the book. W-W-W Hill Country Project dot org. Thank you.