When Edwin Sanders ’69 decided to attend Wesleyan University—and consequently to become one of the 13 black male students comprising the Vanguard Class of 1969—he had to defy his stepfather’s wishes and turn down the historically black Morehouse College.  It was the biggest argument he and his stepfather ever had.

“For African Americans, Wesleyan was not all that,” Sanders said.  “I appreciate the investment made in me, but I always try to make people understand that there are many dimensions to this story.”

Sanders heard about the school from Wesleyan students who came to his church in Memphis, Tennessee to work on voter registration drives and set up Freedom Schools in the 1960s.

“I was already considering that I would go to school somewhere in the northeast, but Wesleyan was not a school that was on my radar screen until they came along,” he said.

Sanders and several members of the Vanguard Class returned to campus this Saturday for a series of panels and receptions with current students and faculty members, titled “Welcoming the Vanguard Class Home.”  Sponsored by the Center for African American Studies (CAAS), the event was an opportunity for the Class members to reconnect with each other, reflect on their shared history, and engage with the larger University community about current racial and social justice issues.  Several administrators from this time period also returned to share their experiences.

In planning the event, Art History and African American Studies Professor Peter Mark, who chairs CAAS, hoped to make it more than just a one-dimensional celebration of this important moment.

“We didn’t want this to be Wesleyan’s current students and faculty paying unquestioning tribute to these iconic individuals,” Mark said.  “I was much more interested in inviting back a bunch of gentlemen who have done pretty interesting things over the last 40 years.”

Four members of the Vanguard Class, as well as a white student from the class of 1969 and a black student from the class of 1964, comprised the first panel, which was entitled “Taking Down Barriers; Changing the Institution.”  The second panel featured faculty members and administrators of the time, as well as one member of the Vanguard Class, discussing “How the Vanguard Class challenged Wesleyan to Become a Better University.”

The third panel was cancelled at the last minute.  The day also included an informal lunch, a closing reception, and an open house at Special Collections & Archives with materials from the Vanguard Class’s time at the University.

FORGING COMMUNITY

Howard Brown ’69 recalled arriving the first day and thinking the campus looked like it was out of a storybook.  The alumni also remembered, however, feeling much discomfort at being in the minority on a predominantly white campus.

“It was not a comfortable thing, at least not for me,” Bernard Freamon ’69 said.

Similarly, Sanders made the drastic transition from all-black, segregated inner-city schools to all-male, majority white classes at Wesleyan.

“I had not ever been in class with white students before and I had never been in a class that was all-male before,” he said.  “Those two aspects of the experience were probably most challenging, in the transition.  But in terms of the academic rigor and things like that, obviously the students who had the opportunity to go to some of the leading secondary schools in the country probably had some readiness that was different than mine.  It didn’t take long for us to I think compete successfully and effectively.”

The members of the Vanguard Class did not know each other prior to their arrival, though Edward Hayes ’69 joked that white students assumed that they did.  The Class was a diverse group from across the nation, hailing from small towns and cities, inner-city schools and private institutions.

Dispersed across Foss Hill in different dorms, the students initially only nodded at each other in passing.  There was no discussion of the history of black students at the University, though several black students had matriculated throughout the decades.

“There was an awkwardness at first,” Hayes said.

Towards the spring of their freshman year, however, the students began eating meals together in McConaughy Hall.  But as the black students got to know one another, white students criticized them for what they called self-segregation, which would be further emphasized in a “New York Times Magazine” article that remarked on the University’s “two nations.”

“[Sitting together at meals] was viewed as a subversive act,” Freamon said. “That we had no right to do so or that there was something amiss.”

Sanders suggested that this perception may have stemmed from white students’ interest in getting to know their black peers.

“Some people felt like that meant the white students did not have the opportunity to interact and to get to know us personally,” Sanders said.

The students gathered in other places across campus as well, such as the apartment of a cook who worked at Eclectic, where they would talk and listen to jazz.

Similarly, Sanders noted that many of the black housekeepers who cleaned the Foss Hill dorms were excited about the Vanguard Class’s arrival.  In particular, some helped to connect students with churches in the area, offering an informal support network.

“There were folks in this community who were proud and excited that we were here,” he said. “They weren’t professors, they did the most basic things.  They lent their support in their own ways.”

Many members of the Class noted that the community they forged empowered them to try to change the institution, both academically and socially.

TENSIONS AND CHANGE IN THE INSTITUTION

In many of his classes, Sanders soon found himself debating his white classmates about various issues.  In doing so, he feels that he honed his ability to argue forcefully.

“There were some battles that went on in those classes,” Sanders said, laughing.

Academic disagreements erupted not only between students but also between students and faculty.  Freamon found many of his courses limited, such as those in his Anthropology major, which focused almost entirely on the Native American experience.

“We would go into these courses and we were invisible, the African American experience was invisible,” Freamon said.

As Freamon, Sanders, and others agitated for courses that simply did not exist, they were permitted to create their own Independent Studies courses.  But given that few faculty members had any expertise on African American or African history, students and professors had to work together to create syllabi and gather what readings were available.

After years of frustration, several members of the Vanguard Class—joined by younger black students—took over Fisk Hall in 1969 to demand that the institution make significant academic and extracurricular changes, such as the development of an African American Studies department.  While not all of their demands were met, Class members noted the symbolic achievement of the transition from “John Wesley House” to “Malcolm X House.”

The occupation of Fisk demonstrated that while the University had worked hard to recruit black students, the institution was not prepared to accommodate these students once they arrived.  The second panel of the day, which featured several faculty members who worked at the University throughout the 1960s as well as Hayes, discussed some of these issues.

“We didn’t do much of anything [in terms of facilitating the transition],” said Robert Kirkpatrick, former director of admissions and vice president of the University. “I certainly was clueless as to what we were getting into.  I really was not fully aware of what the impact was or the implications were of starting a program such as an increase in racial diversity.”

While many panelists commented on the tumultuous events of the 1960s, Kirkpatrick offered an institutional context for the arrival of the Vanguard Class.  He identified three groups that the University hoped to recruit at this same time: Jewish students, female students, and African American students.

Upon the arrival of the Vanguard Class, many of the white male administrators looked to Edgar Beckham ’58—an African American Professor of German who eventually became dean of the University—for guidance.

Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Acting President in 1970 Robert Rosenbaum noted during the panel that Beckham once told him, “You don’t understand that the African American students don’t want to be part of the community in the sense that you want.”

Similarly, former director of admissions Jack Hoy remembered telling Beckham that the Class would “educate the white students,” to which Beckham replied, “No they will not, and that is not their purpose.”

Hoy maintained that in actuality the black students did educate the white students.

“The class of 1969’s presence on this campus educated a significant proportion of the Wesleyan faculty, who had never taught an African American student in their careers,” he said. “And it certainly had an influence on the lives of the overwhelmingly white student body.”

Sanders, however, remained ambivalent about the University’s intentions.

“I didn’t think of it as being somehow we were here to educate,” Sanders said.  “I do think though in some instances it ended up being just that.  I’m not sure the degree to which that was a part of a master plan.”

Given these tensions, Benjamin Hart ’11 was surprised by how well students and administrators seemed to get along during the panels.

“I guess when you have 40 years between you and an event that gives you a lot of perspective,” he said.

SPEAKING OUT IN THE PRESENT

Freamon posed a question to Hart and other audience members during the first panel:  “What do you think might be the next frontier in terms of making this university experience work for you?”

In grappling with this question, Sanders acknowledged the changing nature of struggles for social justice in the post-civil rights period.

“It’s a different dynamic, so it is hard to comment on,” he said.  “The challenges, I think, are more complex.  For us, it was easy to see black and white.  It was easy to see the clear signs of segregation and bigotry.  Now it’s a much more subtle dynamic, it’s a much more complex dynamic, and consequently I think [current students are] challenged in ways that we weren’t.”

The discourse about race has changed as well, Sanders noted.

“It’s amazing to me that the word racism has been taken off the table,” he said. “Diversity happens to be a word that I strongly dislike.  It has allowed the energy of our movement to be co-opted, especially by corporate America.  It has become a nice, little formula; you check the right boxes, but the same horrors exist.”

In this new context, Freamon fears that people have become complacent.

“I worry we’re not pushing the envelope anymore,” Freamon said.  “It seems there’s a complacency in the liberal community…this generation especially.

During the lunch, Hart discussed this issue with his fellow students as well as Class members.

“We talked about what’s read as complacency in our current generation of students, not just here at Wesleyan but all over,” he said.  “It’s not that people don’t care, I think it’s that people don’t know how to care or how to make their cares voiced.”

Hart appreciated the opportunity to gain insight from members of the Vanguard Class.

“Having that multi-generational bouncing off of ideas was great,” he said.  “I think I was hoping that they would give us more perspective on how they did what they did, what galvanized them to do it, and how we could do the same, at least in terms of creating a collective student effort around a specific goal.  But I think it’s probably just as telling that their real insight was, ‘You have to figure it out.  There’s nothing we can tell you to do.’”

Similarly, members of the Class enjoyed engaging with current students.

“I think we had some really frank discussions,” Hayes said. “We had some very illuminating discussions.  And we had many good questions from the audience.”

In addition to difficult dialogues, the event was also a time for Class members to revisit the campus and to reconnect with one another.  Paul Melrose ’69, a white alumnus chosen to be on the panel as well, noted that he hadn’t seen many of his peers in maybe 40 years.

“This is an opportunity for us to reconnect,” he said.  “I’m just glad to be here because I’ve not been back to Wesleyan for a long time, so to be here and see the physical and other changes, as well as the increasing mix of the population.”

Sanders, who has served on the board of trustees and has returned to campus many times since graduating, also commented on the ways in which the University has both changed and remained the same.

“I think you can’t help but appreciate the admix of students along racial and ethnic lines that is significantly different,” he said.  “But if you look at the way in which issues of race are being played out in a larger sense in our society, it’s clear that the problems continue to persist and that the challenges require something more than just lumping people together in an environment and thinking that that in and of itself is going to resolve and solve some of the issues.”

Sanders did, however, offer advice for future generations.

“I think that you have to appreciate the fact that there are very hard conversations and difficult conversations that have to be had,” he said.  “We still sometimes are not very open to having those conversations because it challenges us black and white to deal with aspects of who we are that sometimes we are reluctant to address.”