Going to School in Black and White

by Cindy Waszak Geary

  My plan had been to go to graduate school in clinical psychology after I finished at UNC. That goal was partial motivation for going to summer school every year so that I could graduate in three years, thus reducing the total number of years I’d be in school before getting a real job. At the end of those three undergraduate years, though, I was feeling a little burned out, and I didn’t want to have to make any decisions that might affect my budding romantic relationship, so I deferred going back for a doctorate. But I did graduate with honors.

  Gender politics was what mattered in my day-to-day experiences, and gender politics was where I was putting my energy for social change. Gender shaped many choices I already had made and would continue to inform how I negotiated my way through family and career. I knew there was still racial prejudice in the world, and I knew it was wrong, but after three years in a white institution of higher learning, I still wasn’t conscious of the unearned privilege that came with being white. It was just the air I breathed.

  10— Discovering I Was Black

  TEN

  Discovering I Was Black

  LaHoma

  While Hillside had prepared me academically to be admitted to Duke University, once I got there, I realized that I was not prepared culturally. I migrated from a close and tightly knit Southern working-class black community in Durham to an unfamiliar Northeastern, upper-middle class and elite, mostly white community right across town. Although the distance in miles was few, the number of cultural miles traveled was immeasurable.

  Hillside had instilled in me the confidence to think that I could excel anywhere—even at Duke—but my confidence quickly dissipated once I stepped onto campus. I had never visited the campus before I applied, relying, as most students had, on the academic reputation of the school as reason enough to want to attend.

  I did not think much about race before I entered Duke in 1975, but I sure thought a lot about it when I graduated four years later. At Hillside, I had been part of the majority, the leadership, one of the smart kids, the honor kids, one of the students who had her pulse on everything going on in the school, who knew everybody, and was seen as a vital part of what made the school tick. At Duke, I was nobody. I did not fit in. I was not a leader. I was not seen as smart or sharp or vital to the school at all.

  I quickly realized that I was not going to excel in this environment. The day after my high school graduation, I got a call from a black upperclassman at Duke who urged me to come to a boot camp to get to know the campus, take a few classes and meet other students. I didn’t think I needed to attend the camp, especially because I had never had any academic challenges EVER in my life, and I made friends easily. The caller begged me to reconsider.

  The only reason I eventually consented was because I did not have to make that great an effort to get there. I did resent the implication that I needed to do remedial work before beginning school in the fall. I was, however, not alone. About 40 or 50 students attended the eight-week residential summer program. All were black incoming freshmen. They were all smart, among the top 5 percent of their high-school classes, as I had been at Hillside. We all had been the leaders of our schools, and we all expected to do well at Duke.

  We were told that we needed to make sure that we were able to keep up when regular classes started in the fall. This was a new experience for me. Never had I been made to feel that I might be lacking in academic preparation. A few of the upper-class black students were paid to serve as tutors for our English and calculus classes. The entering students came from all over the country—Atlanta, Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. Krista became my freshman roommate. Val, Rita, Ronnie, Lil, Earlene, and Ernestine, among others, became close friends who helped keep me grounded through the most turbulent storms.

  With these really smart black students, I developed a support system that helped me tolerate the sometimes hostile, mostly indifferent environment I was to experience at Duke. Some of those college friends are still friends today.

  I started at Duke in the fall of 1975 with approximately 100 other black students from around the country—mostly the East Coast. By the end of that first year, half of them had left. They either dropped out or transferred to other schools. I knew many black students who, scarred from their early experiences at Duke, vowed never to return to that campus.

  It was tough. I stayed primarily because a lot of black people from the Durham community, including my teachers from Hillside, believed in me. They were counting on me to finish to show the world that we could do the work. I met some wonderful people during my four years there, and I cherish a few of them as friends for life. But if I had it to do all over, I would NOT have gone to Duke.

  I sat in classes with professors who insinuated through crude comments that black students did not belong at Duke. I was not used to being treated like a second-class citizen in the classroom, with subtle references and hints of discriminatory attitudes. I was not used to my intelligence being questioned and challenged. Probably one of the most puzzling grades I received at Duke was a C in Ebonics from a white professor. I guess I didn’t demonstrate that I knew how to talk black enough for him. One semester, when I thought that I had been particularly mistreated, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I scheduled an appointment with the dean of students to complain about what I felt was an unjustified C in a course in which I thought (and my grades up until the final paper clearly supported) I deserved an A. I obviously delivered an unconvincing argument, because the dean seemed slightly amused by the entire conversation. How in the world did I dare to question the decision of the professor? I should be grateful to even be at Duke. Over the course of the past 40 years, I have forgiven those faculty members for making me feel inferior to the white students, but I will never, ever forget the pain of those memories.

  Black instructors were few, and I had none my first year at Duke. I was fortunate to be taught by two during my other three years—one of them the legendary jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, for whom the black cultural center on campus eventually was named. The other was a young sociology professor, who granted me permission to take his upper-level class even though I hadn’t taken the prerequisite. I longed for some measure of validation from a faculty member. I did OK in his class, earning a B, but he made it clear that he had not signed on to be the “safe haven” for the black students, so he was not as available as I had hoped he would be.

  Those of us who stayed survived through a combination of peer support and social support from the cafeteria and janitorial workers on campus, who let us know by winks and smiles, and extra large servings of food, that they were proud of us. My mother’s cousin, Mr. Fieldpot, worked in the cafeteria, and I sought him out every now and then for encouragement.

  “Never give up,” he would say. “Never give up.”

  I did not share too much with him because I did not want to give the impression that I was not smart enough to stay, and I did not want him calling my parents to worry them. I was going to have to figure out pretty much on my own how to make this work.

  My saving grace was the other black students on campus. We walked to class together, we lived together, we ate together in the cafeteria, we joined the same organizations, and we leaned on each other to help make sense of class lectures.

  I rarely sought help from faculty members. I considered it to be a sign of weakness to ask for help from the white professors, teaching assistants or the white students, because doing so would just provide confirmation to them that we did not belong. So I refused to ask the whites on campus for help, seeking help in more unconventional places and people, such as my godfather, who was a math teacher at Hillside. He tutored me through my college math classes.

  I knew almost no white students. Today, I am ashamed to say that although I remember a few faces, I can’t remember more than a couple of white students’ names from my days at Duke, while I remembered hundreds from my Hillside days. I did know white students who graduated with me from Hillside who also went
to Duke, but we lost touch, and I did not see them at all during my four years. That’s not to say that I didn’t talk to white students; it’s that none of them became people in whom I held any lasting interest or had any meaningful connections.

  My black racial identity, however, grew stronger from one semester to the other. After a tenuous first year academically, I threw myself into organizations focused on improving the experience of black students on campus. I joined the Black Student Association, the Black Dance group, and the Black Mass Choir.

  As a member of the Black Student Association (BSA), I was responsible for bringing prominent black lecturers to campus. Ed Bradley of CBS and “60 Minutes” fame, the first black journalist to cover the White House, was one of the many famous personalities whose visits to Duke I coordinated.

  We also protested the lack of black faculty, called for more cross-cultural studies and staged a sit-in of the Allen Building, the main administration building on campus. I respected the actions of the president of Duke, Terry Sanford, who met with us as we sat on the chairs and floor in the hallways and in his office. He told us he took our concerns seriously and that he would work with faculty and staff to respond to our needs.

  I was initiated into a social group for one of the black fraternities, and I continued to surround myself with people and activities that seemed familiar from my Hillside days.

  I did not avoid all white students and organizations. The end of my freshman year, the campus newspaper ran a notice of tryouts for the band’s majorette squad. The only thing I knew about the band was that there appeared to be no black members. But I was curious and, given my experience at Whitted and Hillside, I ventured over to band practice to check things out. The similarities between Hillside’s high-stepping Hornets and the Duke University Marching Band (DUMB) began and ended with the fact that everybody played instruments. The style of marching and the genre of music were completely different.

  The band director, Mr. Henry, seemed genuinely pleased that I was interested in joining the band and encouraged me to apply for the majorette squad. Although the classroom had diminished my confidence in my academic abilities, I knew I could still twirl a baton. The chance to be a majorette in the band, to dance and create routines intrigued me, and I wondered—how bad could it be? So I tried out, with a fabulous (if I do say so myself) dance and twirl routine. Then I waited for Mr. Henry’s decision.

  I got the notice in the mail: “Congratulations! You have been selected as a majorette for the 1976 season…” I stared at the letter, surprised but pleased with the outcome. That was the most fun I had the next three years, going to all the home (and a few away) football games, although the band itself had a terrible reputation. My participation in the band was a source of constant teasing from many of my black classmates. I took it all in stride, because I agreed with many of their comments, and the joking was never done with malice or cruelty. I also felt that many of them were proud that I was breaking another barrier at Duke.

  DUMB was not my Hillside marching Hornets, but it provided me with another type of lifeline to the Duke University community. By my senior year, another black student two years my junior, Tamra, had also joined, and our suggestions were regularly integrated into the squad’s routine. That year, Mr. Henry selected me over two other girls to become the head majorette, featured at all the home Duke football games in 1978. My parents, being local, attended many of those games. Little kids (mostly white) would come up to me after the half-time show to get my autograph!

  * * *

  DUMB participation increased my visibility on campus, and I was invited to interview for the Duke Duchesses program. These young women were selected to serve as the official hostesses for important visitors and events at the school. I had never heard of the organization and had never seen an announcement inviting applicants, so when I told some friends that I planned to go to an interview, I could sense their disapproval.

  “Why do you want to do that?” they asked me.

  “Those girls will never accept you,” they warned.

  “You are just going to get your feelings hurt.”

  But someone also dared me to go—and I took her up on her wager. Had I not tried out for the majorette squad and succeeded?

  So I applied, and I was accepted into a group I was never comfortable being around. I had neither the experience nor enough knowledge of etiquette to fit into the settings and receptions that entertained Duke VIPs. The next year, I did not bother to return. All the girls were cordial, but the effort to fit in did not seem worth it just to serve punch and cookies to Duke VIPs.

  My racial lenses grew more discerning as the semesters passed. Sometimes this sensitivity caused friction even within the small black community of students on campus. Most challenging was the secret hostility that I felt toward black males, particularly black male athletes, who dated white females. During one particular week, marked by allegations of disloyalty to racial unity, we staged a “boycott” of the black males who were known to be dating white girls. The boycott strategy was simple: Don’t talk to them; ignore them and disrespect them the way that they had disrespected us by choosing to date white girls rather than us.

  There were two reasons for this reaction to interracial dating on campus. The first was the belief that, because there were so few black students on campus, we needed to stick together to survive. How could dating white people help us support one another? The other reason was more practical for us black females. Although the black males were successful in dating white girls on campus, white guys had demonstrated absolutely no interest in dating the black girls. Not one interracial couple was a white male and black female. Some of my black female classmates felt that the only dateable guys were the black guys, while the black guys had more choices and could cross racial lines. The boycott lasted only a couple of weeks, but it caused a lot of heated discussions among the black students, those who supported it and others who thought the boycott was stupid. Eventually things calmed down, but there were always whispers about the black male athletes, who seemed oblivious to any tensions, laughed them off, and continued to date whomever they wanted.

  I can laugh now about how ironic it was that I participated in that boycott, because the love of my life, my husband of 30 years and the father of my children, is a white man. Given my loud opposition to mixed race relationships at that time, my 180-degree change in attitude is often met with a chuckle by those who attend our Duke class reunions. I also find it amusing that during one of the early reunions I attended, I ran into one of my former Hillside classmates, a white woman. When she introduced me to her spouse as a fellow Hillside and Duke alum, he looked me up and down and said “Hillside—you mean the ghetto school?” She seemed embarrassed, and I didn’t know how to help her, so I made a quick exit. That is when I got my first inkling that my white peers had not shared my love of my high school.

  Although many students came from high school or hometown traditions that celebrated homecoming events, Duke had given up the tradition of homecoming parades and royal courts, and there were no concerts featuring prominent artists to attract students, alumni, and area residents. Black students especially felt this lack, which was in stark contrast to the spectacular events surrounding homecoming at the historically black college across town, North Carolina Central University. A few black students tossed around ideas that led to plans to hold Duke’s first-ever homecoming celebration specifically for black students. We were too few in number to have a parade, but we did host a number of activities, including a step show by the black fraternities and sororities, a banquet and a homecoming ball where we elected our own black homecoming court. Names of young women representing the four classes, plus another category for Ms. Black Duke, were placed on ballots. On the specified day, black students cast their ballots. The all-male committee collected the ballots and said the winners would be announced the following week at the homecoming dance.

  I will not keep you in suspense. I won the Ms. Black
Duke title. When my name was called, I came forward, wearing one of my mother’s home-sewn dresses to take my place in the center of my court to the applause of our black classmates. I received a nice letter from the dean of minority students, and although there was no other real official recognition of this title by the school, I was satisfied. I had been accepted by my peers, and my identity as a black female at Duke had been affirmed.

  * * *

  There are many advantages to attending college in the town where you were raised. You can always eat a home-cooked meal and get your clothes washed, and, if you tire of dorm life, you can sleep in your own bed in your very own bedroom at home.

  But for every advantage, there is a counteracting disadvantage. I tried to reconcile my high school life with my new college persona, and it did not always work. I also knew Durham better than most of my college classmates did, but I quickly realized that the Durham they saw was very different from the Durham I knew. Duke University was, and has always been, an anomaly within the Durham community. Duke created an enclave of mostly white, Northern, affluent students in proximity to a mostly working class and blue-collar town whose growth was fueled originally by the American Tobacco Company. The interdependency between students of money and privilege and working class folks who made the campus run was not always well understood by those students.

  Each passing year accentuated the growing schism that existed between my life at Duke and the comfort and familiarity of home. In Durham and at home I felt smart, but when I returned to campus I was less sure of myself. By my junior year I was confident that I was going to be able to graduate from Duke, but I was still unable to escape the pull, tensions and limitations of my modest upbringing. I grew concerned that my natal world was too small.

  The most concrete example of this emerging self-awareness appeared at the beginning of one of my required history classes—European history. I was often the only black student in any class. This class was no different—a fact of my life in a predominantly white institution. But the racial isolation had other disadvantages as well. I vividly remember the instructor starting the first day of class with the question: “How many of you have even been to Europe?” I looked around the room. Every student in the class raised his or her hand—except me. I was embarrassed. Was that a prerequisite for taking the class, I wondered? Why was European travel a common experience for my classmates, yet it had never even come up in any conversations? I wasn’t even sure where Europe was, let alone having traveled there.