“The light-skinned, old-guard elite had run the school for so many years,” says a Los Angeles attorney who attended the college and law school in the 1960s. “It was about time that we got a young president and a student population who were willing to sacrifice their ambition to emulate Harvard so that they could become moral leaders in the midst of the discrimination and riots that were going on around us.” The attorney says he remembers one particular Howard alumni homecoming event that underscored how much Howard had finally changed. “For years, we had been this very accomplished yet smug school, filled with smart, light-skinned, good-looking kids from comfortable homes. All of a sudden, in 1969, we had this young president who looked like the rest of black America and who hadn’t come from a family with Ivy League credentials—it was great!”
Howard continued to change even after the civil rights period, with its students becoming more and more activist and less concerned with creating an image of genteel, satisfied members of the black upper class. After it was announced in 1988 that Republican National Committee head Lee Atwater would be joining the school’s board of trustees, students staged marches and campus sit-ins, expressing their repugnance that a conservative race-baiting politico who had worked to undermine programs such as affirmative action might be setting the agenda for their university. This incident caused many angry conservatives to focus on the fact that Howard had been receiving millions of dollars each year—40 percent of its operating budget, in fact—from the federal government because the school was chartered by the U.S. Congress. Not long after, the House Budget Committee was to end the government’s annual subsidy to the school.
Many of the school’s old guard felt that the militant voices on the campus sometimes went too far in the direction of offending whites or potential supporters. One example occurred in the early 1990s, when a campus group hosted controversial anti-Semitic speeches given by a Nation of Islam member, then turned away a Jewish Yale professor who had originally been invited to discuss the issue of black-Jewish relations.
The school’s most vocal critics focused on its fourteenth president, Franklin Jenifer, who assumed the presidency in 1990 and lasted less than five years, during which the university suffered a severe downturn in finances and enrollment and in morale among faculty and students. Many alumni were upset with the administration led by the former biology professor and blamed him for a series of embarrassing incidents that have lingered in the popular press. People unfamiliar with the school are unlikely to know that under new stewardship the school’s direction has shifted significantly.
Today Howard has approximately eleven thousand students, with a quarter of that group enrolled in the graduate and professional schools. Reemphasizing its interest in taking the most ambitious and accomplished students, current president H. Patrick Swygert recently announced that Howard’s class of 2,000 included more National Achievement Scholars—seventy-nine—than any other school in the country—including the University of Virginia and Harvard, which came in second with sixty-nine of the scholars.
One of the most shocking facts about Howard is that despite the success of its many prominent alumni, a painfully small percentage of them—only 5 percent—contribute financially to the school.
“I’ve never understood why so few of us give back to our top black colleges,” says a Howard alumnus who graduated in the mid-1940s. “When you look at top schools like Howard or Spelman, there are two possible explanations for the lack of contributions. First, many of us think that because they are the wealthiest of the black colleges, they must not need our money. And second, there is a culture within the black community—even the wealthiest of the group—that contributes a greater portion to church, fraternity, and civic groups like the NAACP and the Urban League: groups that are going to advance the black political agenda and aid impoverished blacks.”
It is true that even among the well-educated black elite, the black church is perceived as a much more influential institution than the black university when it comes to effecting change in the black community. It is also true that the strongest ties that blacks maintain to their college past is through their fraternities and sororities. Unlike whites who saw their fraternities as purely social groups that lost relevance after graduation, black fraternities and sororities play a much more important role later in life and serve as a vehicle for black alumni to contribute money and time to civic projects, scholarships, and other programs to aid disadvantaged blacks in the United States and abroad.
Dr. Chester Redhead, one of Howard’s longtime board members and one of its most generous alumni contributors, says, “I contribute to that school because I owe so much of my success to it. I went to college and dental school there. I met my wife, Gladys, there, right in front of Frazier Hall. My sons went there, and many of the doctors I work with got their training there. I wish more of our alumni realized that it is our money that will keep the school vital and relevant. We cannot rely on the government or anyone else to keep it going.”
When talking to people like Chester Redhead, it becomes clear that the Howard circle is more tight-knit than any of the other black schools. Everybody knows everybody, and they know each other’s parents, as well as their children, through their memberships in the elite organizations that attract the Howard crowd. Redhead serves on the board of trustees with actress Phylicia Rashad, as well as with close friend Elizabeth Graham Early, who is a member of Gladys Redhead’s Girl Friends chapter. And Early’s husband, Robert, is in the same Boulé chapter as Chester. They both own homes in suburban New York, and they throw parties for each other in the popular Sag Harbor resort community.
The daughter of a New York dentist, Gladys remembers considering Fisk because her sister had gone there, and Vassar because of a friend who was there, “but I knew that Howard was the gold standard.” A retired schoolteacher who later received a master’s degree at Columbia, Gladys remembers the affluence of her fellow classmates, as well as the superior scholarship and research that were present on campus. “The school is an oasis for children of black families who value intellect,” Redhead adds, as she points out that the school’s Moorland-Springarn Research Center has the largest collection of books, manuscripts, and artifacts on Africans, African Americans, and Caribbean people in the world.
Because of such intellectual “assets” and because of the name recognition it enjoys, Howard has no problem remaining relevant to today’s young black elite. Even though it loses some top student applicants to the most competitive northeastern universities, the college and its many graduate schools remain the leading choice for old-guard families.
“If her father was a doctor, and her mother was well-educated, and she was from an attractive, socially ambitious family, then it’s likely that she would have been sent to Spelman. She was like a half-step above the women at Bennett or Fisk,” says a Spelman graduate who was attempting to describe the kind of black woman that went to the school prior to the 1960s. “After women’s lib and the integration of the large white schools in the late 1960s, Spelman women were not as easy to categorize.”
Founded in Atlanta in 1881 as Spelman Seminary, it was the first college for black women in the United States. Honoring its most important benefactor, the Spelman name came from the maiden surname of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller. Set on a traditional, bucolic campus of redbrick buildings on thirty-two acres in southwest Atlanta, the school is just steps from Morehouse College, where many Spelman women ultimately find their equally socially elite male counterparts.
Atlanta natives are very proud of pointing out that the school was first conceived at a meeting that took place in the basement of that city’s historic Friendship Baptist Church.
From its founding, Spelman had traditionally been headed by white women. Many of the older alumni from that early period grudgingly admit that powerful white Atlanta politicians, residents, and dignitaries gave the school more money and more respect because it was run by a white person. The school named its first bla
ck president, Dr. Albert E. Manley, in 1954, and he was ultimately one of the longest-serving presidents at the college. He tripled the school’s enrollment and raised millions for the school through the Rockefeller family during his twenty-two-year tenure. The brother of Michael Manley, prime minister of Jamaica, he held a doctorate from Stanford University and had previously served as dean of arts and sciences at North Carolina Central University.
One of the reasons for Spelman’s prestige among many well-to-do black families was the school’s strict rules governing academic and social life. Fourth-generation Atlantan Ella Yates remembers attending Spelman in the late 1940s, when Florence Matilda Read was president. “Miss Read ran the college like a small boarding school, and that’s what put parents at ease,” says Yates, who recalls some of the rules that governed students’ daily activities. “Not only did we have to sign in and out of our dormitories after getting permission from our assigned ‘house mothers’ but we had to get permission to leave the campus at all times. We were not allowed to wear slacks unless an extracurricular activity required it, and we could not wear shorts unless we were in gym class.” Yates also remembers that every student was required to attend services at Sisters Chapel every day, regardless of the student’s religious beliefs. She adds, “And don’t even talk about boys. To avoid awkward situations with the opposite sex, we were told to always travel in twos or more when we went shopping. Miss Read knew us and our parents by name, and she never hesitated to fire off a letter to them if she spotted inappropriate behavior. If a student got married while in school, she would have to withdraw, because Spelman felt that serious dating and marriage would distract us from our studies. That’s why they also did not allow sororities at the time.”
Yates continues, “Miss Read not only implemented a lights-out rule at 10 P.M. but she also monitored our hair, makeup, and jewelry.”
Other graduates during the 1940s and early 1950s remember that male visitors were not allowed after dinner, and when they came earlier they had to remain downstairs in the common room. By senior year, the rules were even more strict, says Yates. “When I was in my last year, Miss Read told us that seniors would not be allowed to visit their parents more often than once every six weeks. She felt that this was the best way to teach us independence. She didn’t want to see a class full of spoiled young women who would not know how to live their lives once they graduated. It was very clever.”
Although Spelman was in the South, many well-to-do families sent their daughters from New York, California, Detroit, Chicago, and other distant locations because of the school’s strict rules and because of whom the school attracted.
“My parents liked the fact that I would be surrounded by other girls from good families and by famous dignitaries who regularly visited the campus,” adds Yates. “Marian Anderson was constantly there, and so were politicians, journalists, and African leaders. And because there was always at least one Rockefeller on the board, we’d always see them on campus.” To ensure that the students benefited from these visits, the college required the visitors to meet with the students in both formal and informal sessions while they stayed on campus in the president’s home.
It was during the tenure of President Manley that several local black institutions like the Waluhaje Ballroom and the Auburn Casino’s Rainbow Room opened up in the area near Spelman. But these were places where one rarely found Spelman girls.
Among Spelman’s more recent presidents are Donald Stewart, who headed the school starting in 1976. An active member of the Boulé, Stewart, along with his wife, Isabel, who heads the national organization Girls Incorporated and belongs to the Links, is a regular guest at Atlanta and New York fund-raisers. It wasn’t until Stewart stepped down that the black women’s college actually appointed a black woman to the presidency. That woman was Johnnetta B. Cole, who raised a record $113 million during her last capital campaign. Each year during her presidency, I saw the popular anthropology scholar and her husband, Arthur Robinson, as they were regular guests (and a major attraction) at the annual Labor Day tennis party held a few doors down from my parents’ home, at the Tudor mansion of Spelman board chairman Bob Holland. Holland was the first black partner at the global consulting firm McKinsey and Company before later becoming CEO of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Both of Holland’s daughters attended Spelman during Cole’s presidency. It was also during the Cole presidency that Bill and Camille Cosby gave a record twenty million dollars to the school. Following her term, Cole stepped down to teach anthropology at nearby Emory University.
The newest president, Dr. Audrey Manley, was appointed in 1997, after leaving her job as acting U.S. surgeon general in President Clinton’s administration. A 1955 graduate of the school, she is the widow of former Spelman president Albert Manley.
A major center for Atlanta’s black society, the school continues to receive support from some of the city’s most prominent families, who are either active alumni or powerful trustees. Maynard Jackson, whose mother and five aunts graduated from Spelman, is an important supporter, as is board member Marge Yancey, who was one of the first blacks on the Atlanta school board and is the wife of renowned surgeon Dr. Asa Yancey.
While the old Spelman stereotype was that of a wealthy civic-minded wife of a doctor or attorney, its alumni include many women who have made major professional contributions of their own, including Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alice Walker, TV entertainers Esther Rolle and Rolanda Watts, and U.S. ambassador to Kenya Aurelia Brazeal.
Today, because of its faculty, its wealth, and its ties to the large Atlanta University system, Spelman is still able to compete successfully for the same students who are being accepted by Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, the other Seven Sisters colleges, and Ivy League universities. At Spelman, unlike most women’s colleges, more than 80 percent of its faculty hold doctorates, and more than a third of the students major in mathematics, engineering, or the sciences.
When I encounter Spelman women of my own generation or of my mother’s generation, I recognize a sisterhood and a camaraderie that I have never seen among black women who attended predominately white women’s colleges or who have joined sororities at other historically black schools. Because it very much identifies itself to the world and to its students as the ultimate college for black women, these students and alumni are fiercely loyal to, and respectful of, this Atlanta institution.
Founded in 1867, Morehouse is the only historically black four-year college for men in the United States. Located in Atlanta near Spelman College and the Atlanta University consortium, it was originally established in Augusta, Georgia, by a group that included a former slave, a Baptist minister, and other religious leaders who were focused on educating former slaves. The funding for the school came from the white religious members of the American Baptist Mission Society, which operated in order to bring education to recently freed slaves. The Society followed in the footsteps of the more established American Missionary Association, a group formed in 1846 to encourage white southerners first to abolish slavery and then to invest in the education of freed slaves. Both the Society and the Association recruited black and white teachers from the North in order to found black southern schools like Morehouse and nearby Atlanta University.
Although it has long been a prestigious institution, Morehouse was not a school that traditionally sought white support and approval to the same extent as Howard and Spelman. In fact, by appointing John Hope to the presidency in 1906, the school preceded most of the other black colleges in selecting a black leader.
Some of Morehouse’s best-known alumni are Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson, movie director and actor Spike Lee, former U.S. secretary of health and human services Dr. Louis Sullivan, Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett, and Georgia politician Julian Bond. Its most famous president was the religion scholar Dr. Benjamin Mays.
Ties between Morehouse and Spelman are so tight that not
only do Morehouse men often date Spelman women but a look through the marriages column in The Alumnus, Morehouse’s quarterly alumni magazine, reveals that an overwhelming percentage of Morehouse men marry Spelman alumni. Spelman alumna Ella Gaines Yates remembers marrying Morehouse alumnus Clayton Yates in the late 1940s. “Who else would we marry when they were right across the campus?” Mrs. Yates says with a laugh. “We were basically told that they were the only men good enough for us.”
In recent years, Morehouse faced a scandal that rocked Atlanta when its president, Leroy Keith Jr., was accused of using the school’s funds for a $700,000 home and for a compensation package worth $460,000. Keith resigned shortly after an audit was released. Replacing him in 1995 was Dr. Walter Massey, a class of 1958 Morehouse graduate who quickly launched a $60 million fund-raising campaign.
Like Massey, Morehouse alumni are diehard supporters of the school who can rattle off statistics that alumni of other colleges would never know. They announce that 74 percent of its faculty hold doctorates and that it is the only black university with a graduate who has won a Rhodes scholarship.
“There are many Morehouse families who would never consider sending their sons to another school,” says Morehouse graduate Keith Chaplin after bumping into former Morehouse president Hugh Gloster at a Links brunch at the Atlanta Ritz-Carlton. The Atlanta-based CNN executive frequently runs into fellow Morehouse alumni in his tight society circles. “The Morehouse credential is real currency among the black elite,” he adds, “because the school has admitted some of the most accomplished men in our community.”
“I was absolutely furious,” says a woman who graduated from Fisk in the mid-1960s. “My mother called me up in October of my sophomore year and said, ‘Your girlfriends are getting engaged to future surgeons and you haven’t even been over to Meharry to date one of those boys. We’re not spending all this money for nothing.’”
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