Book examines OC decision to admit blacks

by PAUL MORTON

Associate editor

The tour guides for Oberlin College and the Oberlin Heritage Center dutifully tell their visitors Oberlin College was the first college to admit students irrespective of color. But a new book by former college archivist Roland Baumann examines how that decision was made, and how well the college has lived up to its commitment.

Baumann's book, "Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College," is expected to be released tomorrow, the 175th anniversary of the Oberlin College board of trustees vote to admit black students on the same basis as white students.

It examines 30 documents from the college's history relating to education of minority students, held in the college archives. Baumann said his familiarity with what was in the archives made writing the book easier for him than for someone else.

"I oversaw these holdings, and I came to know them," he said. "It's all in there; it just had to be discovered."

He said the process for writing the book began 20 years ago, when he was asked by the development office to help prepare a four-page pamphlet on John Mercer Langston. In helping other researchers delve into the archives, he said he came to be troubled about how well the college had lived up to its official commitment.

"I was always concerned that Oberlin, given the fact that it was the pioneer school in black education in the north and had an incredible reputation by 1900," Baumann said. "And I was wondering, why have we had such difficulty in the last three to five decades? Why was it that Oberlin couldn't get beyond?"

He said the decision to admit black students -- the phrase "irrespective of color" was not used until 20 years later -- was the most controversial decision by the trustees in the early years of the college. In fact, the resolution passed in the board of trustees by only one vote.

"That decision was made in a world that did not embrace that idea," Baumann said. "And they were not engaged in tokenism. They were going to admit black students on the same basis as white students because it was the right thing to do."

He called the time from the passage of the resolution in 1835 to the Civil War the "Golden Age" for the college commitment. But during Reconstruction, the commitment lost some of its luster, and in the first half of the 20th century some informal discrimination sneaked in, in response to societal pressures, including Jim Crow laws.

But Baumann said the college still managed to stay above the level of society. This, he said, was due in large part to the students.

"One of the subthemes I've developed through the book is that so much of what happened was done by student agency," Baumann said. "Students and a handful of faculty kept on reminding the presidential administration and the general faculty that we had to live up to what we said we would do."

He said one example was in 1944 when students and faculty formed a cooperative, paying $1 a share, to purchase a local barbershop so black students could get their hair cut in town. That was part of a quest to rekindle the Oberlin spirit during the 1940s and 1950s, Baumann said.

The book covers Oberlin College history through 2007 and the presidency of Nancy Dye. He said especially in the last 25 years the college has struggled to stay true to the commitment, not necessarily for lack of will to do so.

"The critical piece was always having to match its commitment with its dollars," Baumann said. "The competition for African-American students is very keen and very competitive. Oberlin College had to work ever so hard to attract as many minority students and first-generation students as it could in the 1990s and at the turn of 2000 to 2007."

He said the title of his book, "Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College," speaks to his purpose in writing it. He said he did not intend for it to be the definitive work on the matter.

"There's plenty of room for others to come to write a broader story line -- to take one piece and carry it forward," Baumann said. "What I see I've done is create post holes. And in between those post holes there's still a lot of work to do. We probably need 100 posts, and I've got 30 of them out there."

Baumann will make a presentation on his book at Kendal at Oberlin on Thursday, Feb. 25, entitled "Oberlin's Black Education History: A Time to Celebrate and Remember." He will also speak at the March 24 meeting of Spectrum.