by Diane Brady
While Thomas’s interest in writing articles for The Crusader took a backseat to other commitments, Ed Jones discovered that writing was his passion. Jones’s newspaper column gave him an outlet for his anger, but it was a course in the nineteenth-century novel that nurtured his love of storytelling. His English professor, Maurice Geracht, was immediately struck by the speed with which Jones read the assigned books, as well as by the beauty of the sophomore’s prose. Geracht later invited Jones to be a part of the college’s first-ever creative writing class. Jones, meanwhile, was inspired by the way that Geracht approached the craft of writing and was flattered by his praise. While other professors were lukewarm about Jones’s work, Geracht told Jones that he had a gift. After reading Dubliners, a collection of short stories by the Irish author James Joyce, Jones felt he had discovered a calling: He wanted to do for Washington, D.C., what Joyce had done for Dublin, to bring the city to life and give voice to its people.
Clarence Thomas with other members of the Purple Key Society
Ted Wells, meanwhile, had his hands full as chairman of the BSU. It wasn’t long before the black freshmen who had been living in the regular first-year residences were complaining to him that they felt lonely. Wells asked Father Brooks to let some of the freshmen move in with black roommates or move to the black corridor, but Brooks opposed the idea on the grounds that the room changes might cause chaos in the other residences, and leave some wounded egos among the roommates who were left behind. Brooks was irritated that the freshmen weren’t even willing to give the broader college experience a try, but he also recognized that some of the men who were now sophomores had found the isolation of their freshman year to be particularly trying, so much so that it affected their success in school. Once again Brooks let the BSU have its way. Wells sent the offer out to all freshman members of the BSU to let them know that the school was willing to let them move, but in the end only a small number of the black freshmen were willing to disrupt their routines or abandon their white roommates to achieve a measure of comfort.
Brooks also told Wells that he would allow the BSU to reach out to incoming freshmen the following year, allowing them a chance to opt in advance for a black roommate. It was a mirror image of the dubious outreach that had so enraged the men a year earlier, when administrators had asked white students if they would mind living with a black man. Now the BSU was insisting that black students be given the option to reject a roommate based on skin color. Wells again convinced the dean that creating a comfort zone for new black students would ease the transition. Still, Brooks hoped the segregated living experiment would fail. He rejected the idea of a “Black Judicial Board” that could rule on matters involving black students and over which the BSU leadership—in this case, Ted Wells—would have veto power. But on many of the key issues, Brooks agreed. Wells had personally approached the admissions office to ask that the school admit fifty-seven black students in the class of 1974—about 10 percent of the total number of admitted students. In a note to the admissions director, Brooks argued that the BSU’s request sounded reasonable, as the college had identified 108 black students who had expressed interest in attending Holy Cross, of whom sixty appeared to meet the school’s admissions standards and twenty-five would likely be acceptable under the standards they’d adopted for admitting blacks to the class of 1973. That allowed for the consideration of special factors that might dampen formal test results, such as family hardship or the quality of the high school education that a student had received. The concern for Brooks was whether the students could receive adequate preparation to bring their academics up to speed. Special consideration in granting admission was not the same thing as special consideration in granting grades. Allowing the latter, Brooks firmly believed, would be toxic to everyone, especially the students themselves.
The challenge, as always, was finding the money. Campus visits for potential recruits had become too expensive. The school was in a tough spot. To satisfy all the requests for financial aid the following year, it would need around $450,000, and there was less than $150,000 available. As it was, Holy Cross was going into the next school year with a planned deficit of $1.4 million, and that figure already factored in a $350 increase in tuition. Over the previous two years, the budget for scholarships and grants had increased by a third, to more than $1 million, in part due to the significant increase in aid for black students.
While Brooks didn’t share his financial concerns with Wells, he did convey some of his frustrations. Wells was succeeding at Holy Cross, as were most of the others. But some of the black students were continuing to struggle, and were on the cusp of dropping out. The issue, in most cases, wasn’t intelligence or grades. Some of the black students who weren’t happy, Brooks concluded, hadn’t been adequately prepared for the realities of college life.
Efforts to stop the Vietnam War had taken on even greater urgency after the lottery. Clarence Thomas joined several of the men that spring to take part in an antiwar rally in Cambridge. They parked the van near the Harvard University campus and joined a crowd that was marching toward Harvard Square, shouting “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh” to protest the treatment of America’s domestic political prisoners. On the way, they passed a liquor store where the owner was giving away free drinks. As Thomas recalled in his memoir, he wasn’t sure if the man supported the antiwar cause or if he was simply trying to build goodwill to avoid having his windows smashed. Whatever his motivation, the men stopped long enough for Thomas and some of the others to get drunk. With a little more wobble in their stride, they continued marching until they came upon a group of policemen wearing riot gear and wielding billy clubs. The officers fired tear gas into the crowd and then walked up to where Thomas and the other men from the corridor were standing. “This must be the nigger contingent from Roxbury,” Thomas recalled one of them saying. The students turned around, walked briskly to the car, and drove back to Worcester as fast as they could. Thomas vowed to never take part in a public demonstration again. He had had enough of the angry mob.
Meanwhile, Thomas was struggling to figure out where he stood on issues of social justice. While he still saw himself as an essentially left-wing thinker devoted to addressing social wrongs—when books by black conservatives came his way, he immediately threw them in the trash—he had grown tired of the standard-issue radical rhetoric. As he later said, “I just fundamentally disagreed with the in-your-face approach to everything.” He didn’t buy into the conspiracy theories about the war, and he disliked the constant rage that the other BSU members expressed. He was especially critical of the assumption that every brother had to think and act the same way. He found it all too simplistic and immature.
As he looked around for a better philosophy, Thomas found himself intrigued by the half dozen Black Muslims who were living on campus. They were sharp dressers, almost always seen in the crisp white shirts and bow ties advocated by the Nation of Islam movement. They also ate well, eventually getting Brooks’s help in setting up their own menus and permission to prepare food in the corridor. Thomas liked that the men weren’t in any way frivolous. When they weren’t studying, they were usually praying or traveling to the Boston mosque where the Roxbury-raised Louis Farrakhan had gained fame as a minister a few years earlier. Some of the other men on the corridor would enjoy a laugh at their expense, shouting sarcastic responses like, “Yes sir, brother,” or “You say it, brother” when their earnestness became too much to take, but Thomas admired the Muslim students’ mantra of self-reliance, the philosophy that the black man had to shift his focus from buying things to building them; from hurting one another to helping one another. Only then could he hope to control his destiny, gain self-respect, and avoid going back to the white man for handouts. Every time the Muslim students went to Boston, they would bring back bean pies and issues of the popular Muhammad Speaks newspaper to sell to other men on the corridor. To Thomas, it demonstrated an admirable work ethic, but he couldn’t ascribe to their philosophy of militant sepa
ratism. It seemed futile and naïve.
Eddie Jenkins was finding himself increasingly paralyzed with anxiety over Vietnam. He was worried about being called up and, as he feared, his draft notice arrived soon after he returned to school in January. He was lifting weights when someone brought him the envelope, and he knew what it was without even opening it. His father, the mailman in their neighborhood, had taught him how to detect a draft notice. After working-class recipients had complained that they couldn’t afford transportation to the draft board, the city had started including subway tokens with draft letters. All his father had to do was feel the weight of the letter to know that he was bearing an unwelcome delivery. Jenkins instantly felt the token in his own package.
Jenkins slipped into a funk. He had known for weeks that his low number meant a trip to Vietnam, but he hadn’t expected the call to service to arrive so soon. He was due to appear before the draft board at Fort Hamilton in New York City just a few weeks later, where the board would determine if he was fit to fight. President Richard Nixon had promised in his 1968 campaign that he would end the draft, but nobody thought he would deliver on his promise anytime soon—and, regardless, it certainly wouldn’t happen soon enough to make a difference to Jenkins.
The men on the corridor tried to cheer up Eddie with jokes and gave him advice on how to handle the interview. Jenkins tried to make light of his situation—he’d get the chance to escape another winter in Worcester and meet the beautiful women of Asia—but he was so scared that he started having nightmares. Jenkins wasn’t about to lie his way out of it, as some other recruits tried to do. He wouldn’t claim to be a conscientious objector based on his religious beliefs—American Catholics had clearly shown a tolerance for war. He didn’t have a criminal record, and nobody on the draft board would believe him if he claimed to be homosexual, an exclusion that was proving hard to get even for men who were. He wasn’t a teacher, a farmer, or in the National Guard, and he hadn’t fathered any children that he knew of. Jenkins couldn’t think of any scenario in which a healthy football player could avoid serving in Vietnam.
When Jenkins arrived at the recruitment office in New York, some protesters outside the building told him to try to get every answer wrong, so that he would be disqualified on intellectual grounds. Inside the waiting area, a man played a haunting soundtrack on the harmonica. Once in the office, a middle-aged man handed Jenkins a qualifying test to fill out. Watching him, the man raised his eyebrows. “Son, I know what you’re trying to do here,” he said. “But I should tell you that we’ve been through all this since Muhammad Ali.”
Ali had lost his career when he refused to serve in Vietnam. If that’s how they treated a celebrity, Jenkins wondered what they would do to a no-name black kid like him. As harmonica music droned on in the background, the man informed Jenkins that he could be a certified idiot and the army would gladly let him in. “But here’s what getting all the answers wrong will do,” the man continued. “It will mess up your chances of becoming an officer.” Jenkins, who never thought that playing dumb would be a viable strategy, sat down to do the best job he could.
At his physical exam, a physician asked him to do a knee bend. Jenkins did one, but he winced slightly. The doctor told him to do it again. “We have a problem,” the man said. “Do you have something wrong with your knees?” Jenkins explained that his knee had been operated on and he had done some rehab. It didn’t usually bother him much, but he wasn’t about to say so. The doctor stared at his leg as if summoning up a mental picture of Jenkins crawling through the jungle on his problem knee. Jenkins detected a look of sympathy in the man’s eyes. He said a silent prayer as the doctor asked him to do a knee bend again. “I don’t think so,” the doctor said when Jenkins came up to his full height. “I think you may be a candidate for a 1-Y status.”
When Jenkins returned to Holy Cross, the parties, the jostling in the hall, even the fights took on a sweeter tone. A week later a letter arrived to inform him that the injury had rendered him unable to serve. He wasn’t going to go to Vietnam. The raucous and wisecracking Eddie J. was back.
Eddie Jenkins’s personal good fortune didn’t take away from the reality that the political mood on campus was increasingly somber. Holy Cross, perhaps owing to both its prestige and its convenient location, had become a popular stop for political activists on campus tours, but opinions about the school from its guest speakers weren’t always favorable. The “Yippie” leader Abbie Hoffman returned to his hometown to speak at the Field House and called Holy Cross a “minimum-security penitentiary.” The only good thing the activist could bring himself to say about the college was that counterculture guru Timothy Leary had studied there. Jenkins was intrigued by the Black Panther who’d come and scoffed at their reports of the walkout. “You brothers are wasting your time,” he told them. “The only thing the Man understands is a gun.” As proof, he pulled one out of his pocket. He suggested the BSU blow the buildings up and threaten violence. Jenkins could barely stifle his laughter. Jenkins remained passionate in his politics but he was increasingly aware that some of the people around him were more invested in the cause than he was. That became even clearer to him after arguing with a white basketball player about social injustice. The student insisted that he and Jenkins were brothers because Irish suffering was just like black suffering. “Catholics are the niggers of Northern Ireland,” the man told Jenkins. “We’re connected.” Jenkins responded that he didn’t know there had been slaves in Ireland. He debated mentioning that his white grandfather had come from Ireland, but he decided that he couldn’t be bothered.
Jenkins agreed to witness what the group of Irish American kids was doing to help their comrades across the Atlantic in what became known as “The Troubles,” a period of violent clashes between Catholic and Protestant militants in Northern Ireland. The basketball player picked Jenkins up in a battered old car a few days later and handed him a wool cap to pull over his eyes as he jumped into the backseat.
“What’s this for?” Jenkins asked.
“Put it on!” another man barked. “It’s for your own protection.”
There were two other white men in the car, and Jenkins suddenly felt nervous, wondering if the rhetoric about Irish liberation was a ruse, a front for a group devoted to bringing down the system. Then again, he thought, who would kidnap someone in Worcester? He pulled the cap down to his nose and sat back in the seat, trying to look as if he was enjoying himself.
About eight minutes later they stopped on a suburban street. Jenkins thought maybe they had driven around the block several times to make the distance seem farther. The men led him out of the car and down into a basement, where Jenkins took off the wool cap. Lying before him were dozens of guns and rounds of ammunition. In another corner of the room there were white sheets draped across what looked to be more caches of weapons, as well as a table laden with tinned hams.
“What’s all this for?” Jenkins asked.
“It’s for the fight, brother,” said one young man with a thick Belfast accent. “We’re raising money and sending supplies to the Irish Republican Army. We’re fighting for our homeland.”
Jenkins’s Holy Cross companion immediately launched into a speech about how the British government was destroying the Catholic people, the same British government that had forced Jenkins’s people into slavery, and how the Irish Catholics had been oppressed for generations, just like the blacks. “Martin Luther King is our hero, too,” said the man. “We’re brothers in the fight against oppression.”
It seemed that everyone on campus had a cause to support, and the political atmosphere was about to get even more tense. On April 30, 1970, Richard Nixon announced that U.S. troops were invading Cambodia to cut off supply routes to the North Vietnamese. America was deeply divided about the war, but especially its younger people. While those under thirty were the loudest opponents of the war, in polls conducted between 1965 and 1971 they reported the highest percentage of support for it. A common compl
aint was that the United States hadn’t done enough to try to win the war. While 55 percent of Americans said the war had been a mistake, by 1969 a substantial minority still felt it was their duty to support the military and its efforts in Vietnam. Despite promises from Washington to train more Vietnamese allies to defend the South, allowing U.S. troops to pull out, the war seemed to be shifting in the North’s favor. Less than a week after Nixon’s announcement, on May 4, the Student-Faculty Senate at Holy Cross voted to hold a weeklong strike of classes to protest against the deployment of troops to Cambodia. Father Brooks spoke out vehemently against the war, but he reminded students that they should find peaceful ways to express their views. The same day, four students at Kent State University in Ohio were shot and killed by National Guardsmen who were sent to quell a demonstration. Riots and protests broke out on campuses across the country.
Suddenly, to most of the students, nothing felt more important than stopping the war. Holy Cross canceled classes for the week. On May 5, about two hundred angry students gathered outside the Air Force ROTC building in protest. Brooks guarded the door as President Swords spoke to the students and eventually convinced them to disperse without damaging the building. Ted Wells, Eddie Jenkins, and several other men on the corridor drove the BSU van to Washington to march on the White House. Ma Wells took them all in for the night.
