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House Proud
In 1969, a handful of black students founded the Afro-American Cultural Center—“the House”—as shelter and home base for African Americans at Yale. What does the House mean today to those who love it? On its 35th anniversary, House-affiliated alumni talked about outreach, Saturday night dances, and where they’d like Yale to try harder.
January/February 2005
That the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale is 35 years old and not 95, like the Whiffenpoofs, or 172, like Skull and Bones, is an expressive minor artifact of American history. It speaks of race relations in a once-slaveholding nation, of an insular New England patriciate, and of change and upheaval in the 1960s with the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement. But take it down to the individual people and events that are the fine-grained texture of the historical trends, and it speaks of the energy and persuasive powers of a group of young black men. Starting in the fall of 1964, when 14 freshmen entered Yale—at the time, the largest number of African Americans ever in a Yale College class—black students started to strategize together in their own interests. They founded the Black Student Alliance at Yale. They won the right to room together (overturning an apparent unwritten rule). They analyzed the college curriculum and presented to top administrators and faculty a critique of what Armstead Robinson '68 later called “a fundamental kind of non-intellectualism” underlying the choices of texts and topics: “the idea that the Anglo-Saxon norm is not only a good norm but the best norm.” (In response to the critique, Yale formed a student-faculty study committee and in 1968 became the first Ivy League school to adopt an African American studies program.) And these young men founded the House.
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The mission of the House includes cultural outreach to non–African Americans at Yale. |
The mission of the House is partly to be shelter, home base, and home away from home for African Americans at Yale who seek it out. It also serves as a headquarters for two dozen student groups, and its staff provides academic and advisory support to some 200 members. It is a base for outreach programs to neighborhoods in New Haven. Increasingly, its mission will include cultural outreach to non-African Americans at Yale; the House, writes director Pamela George, has always been “an environment in which racial heterogeneity is understood and respected.”
Below, alumni with close ties to the House look back at its founding and recent past, and ahead to potential changes, both in the House and the university.
Homecoming
by Rohan Preston '89
The 35th anniversary celebration of the House was an inspired and beautifully executed celebration—panels, films, student performances, a jazz-band reception at President Levin’s home, readings by Yale’s black literati, including Yolanda Joe, Elizabeth Alexander, and Forrest Hamer.
In the centuries-long history of Yale, 35 seems, well, toddler-ish. Yet the stimulating and felicitous reunion, which drew hundreds of bright, handsome alums from across the globe, manifested a deeply meaningful maturation process—both for the returning graduates and for Yale, which has not always celebrated its brilliant black alumni.
Many alums, of all backgrounds, have conflicted feelings about their crucible years in New Haven. For many African Americans, those ambivalences are sharpened by history, whose ignorance can be repeated like mutated DNA. During the reverie-filled bonhomie of the weekend, we heard disturbing stories about police treatment of black Yale students.
In an elegantly novel keynote discussion, Emory law professor Kathleen Cleaver '89JD and Harvard great Henry Louis Gates '73 pondered the question of how far we have come, and whether we, as a people and nation, had the correct vision during the civil rights movement. It was a stimulating, appetite-whetting discussion. Gates once taught at Yale; the university let him go. There are other examples of African American faculty whose luminous intellects have not been adequately recognized.
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Yale can feel cold, even for one who had several places to get lost in literature or activism. |
Yale is a context that can sometimes feel cold, even for one who had several places to get lost in literature or activism. The House has been and remains a warm sanctuary—not just on Sunday mornings, when divine spirits break over the assembled fellowship, but also on Saturday nights, when hip hop, funk, reggae, soca, house, and other soul-riddling dance music allow people to, in the words of Master T., flash their spirits.
When I was an undergraduate waiting tables at college reunions, I always chuckled at the old geezers coming back to campus. I am on the other side of the coin now, reliving long discussions about poetics, literary theory, and philosophy. Those years came alive again in ways that I did not expect. The celebration of the House made the return to Yale feel like a festive homecoming, and brought into high relief another maturation—my own fondness for Yale and my happy (and, I hope, long) march to geezerdom.
Context
interview with Victor Chears ’74
To the extent that Yale changed in the late 60s and early 70s, the founders of BSAY and the House helped to change it. The student body was different in those years. Students were compelled to get involved, to help make a change. It was a process very much connected to forging a place in society—which is essentially what we were trying to do by establishing the House.
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African American alumni are getting to the age where we want to give back to Yale. |
But not everyone thinks that Yale has emained as “changed” now as it was then. There was a deeper richness of African American culture then and more integration into the life and vibrancy of the university. I took courses from a number of African American professors—more, I believe, than are available to students today. Yale was much more open to experimenting, opening itself up to African American music and culture.
From an African American perspective, Yale today does not seem to be putting the kind of resources it could be allocating toward attracting and retaining a thriving African American studies department. Harvard has put tremendous resources into their own department. Of course, Harvard has more money than we do, but we should be making a concerted effort. Yale now has a large African American alumni population, who are getting to the age where we want to give back to Yale. We will be telling the university that these things—the endowment of the House, the strength of the African American studies department—are important to us.
Many of us are involved in university activities. I’ve been president of the Yale Club of Chicago, and I’ve served as an officer of the alumni association. People ask me why I do it. I believe that if the opportunity is there for someone who has the consciousness—who loves Yale dearly and loves the idea of a strong African American presence at Yale—if that person does not get involved in mainstream Yale activities, then we will never have the capacity to weave the African American presence seamlessly into the fabric of the university. It’s my Yale, too.
Retrospective
interview with Ngozi Okorafor-Johns '95
The House was always a place where African Americans and Africans could congregate and be comfortable. At the House you could go to BSAY outreach meetings and meet like-minded folks, you could hear the gospel choir, you could see minority theater—it was a wonderful place. When I walked into the House, there was always something cooking, always something going on: it was a politicized place where we talked about race, gender, and other issues important to me.
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The racial polarization in the suburbs of Chicago was nothing compared to what I saw in New Haven. |
I was the liaison from the House to New Haven for three years. It was incredible: I came from the suburbs of Chicago, and the racial polarization there is extensive, but it was nothing compared to what I saw in New Haven. The juxtaposition of old, wealthy, elite Yale and poor, violent, economically depressed New Haven was astonishing. And this was my freshman year! But I was lucky, because I joined the mentoring program at Dwight Hall, and because I had a “little sib” through that program, I was introduced into the New Haven community and accepted. The skills I learned through that connection I was able to use in my work at the House. That was a wonderful job. I wish I had that job today.
I work in a large law firm now, but as many hours as I bill at work, I put an equal number into community service—into giving back. When people ask me today, “How was Yale? Did you like it?”, I look back on so many communities and activities and involvements. I have nothing but love for Yale. It made me what I am now.
Genesis
interview with Craig Foster '69
The impetus for founding the house resided in different concerns for different individuals. It ran the gamut, from highly political to simply social—Yale was all-male at the time, and if you wanted to meet black women, you had to have a place to hold social functions. But one of the common reasons was just that it gave us a place to congregate, to express our various social, cultural, and political aspirations, much like the Catholic community at Yale has St. Thomas More.
The Yale administration, while it should be commended for deciding to let in “Negro students,” didn’t recognize that with growing numbers there would be more than just individual students; there would also be a black student community. By the time the freshman class of 1970 came in, we were approaching a hundred black students—sufficient that we were starting to find each other and hang out together. We started exercising our youthful zeal in pursuing what we thought was the legitimate goal of a place to congregate. And it is still a legitimate goal. It’s gratifying to see that the House is still in existence and has a mission, after 35 years.
Future
interview with Craig Foster '69
Three of the founders of the house—three young men who took on extraordinary intellectual and political leadership at a young age—died young, one of cancer, one of heart disease, and one of an aneurysm. They were Don Ogilvie '68, '78MPPM, Armstead Robinson '68, and Glenn DeChabert '70. We want to raise an endowment for the House so that we can honor them with a living kind of memorial: a forum that encourages interaction among the various racial and ethnic groups on the campus.
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Yale can get people outside their comfort zone, forming friendships and working together. |
We want to counteract the natural tendency toward too much balkanization. People like to retreat to their comfort zone—but one of the great values of a place like Yale is to get people outside their comfort zone, forming friendships and working together. The Afro-American Cultural Center should be a leader in this effort. African Americans are the group that is most often accused of self-segregation. It’s very powerful for this group to take the lead in reaching out. And more than that, the House has always been a place where issues of diversity are freely raised and freely discussed. We have experience of what it means to be diverse.
There will be four parts to this living memorial. One will be a speaker series that brings some of the most important people of our time to the Yale campus to debate social issues. The debates of several decades ago between William F. Buckley Jr. and William Sloane Coffin turned into legend. We want to bring some of that magic back.
The second part will be basic training for leadership in a diverse world. It won’t be too long before there is no majority race and no majority group in this country: we are becoming a pluralistic society. You may think you are training at Yale for leadership. But how do you govern, how do you lead, in a diverse country and a diverse world if you spend your time in that comfort zone?
We’ll also underwrite “do something” missions. Students will go on missions during the summer and winter breaks and after graduation to help others, preferably in a culture new to them. But these will be group missions—small groups of people from different ethnic groups working together so that, to be effective, they have to learn from each other.
And finally, we want to sponsor ad hoc discussion groups within the colleges. Often, people live together as students and like each other, but they don’t talk about anything of substance. This is a waste of the opportunities at Yale. We want to get them talking and learning from each other.
The leaders who step forward in any racial or ethnic group today will need to have these kinds of skills. This is the right role for the House, and it is exactly the right memorial for our founders.  |
