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Article from The Phoenix October 28, 1975

BY ASHIA TROIANO

In print | Published February 19, 2009

This article is the third of a four part series celebrating Black History Month. Accompanying this article is a 1975 Phoenix article describing the new position of equal opportunity officer.

After the crisis of 1969, Swarthmore added a handful of black professors to the faculty. By 1975, two of them, Kathryn Morgan and Charles James, were up for tenure — the first African Americans ever to be on a tenure track at Swarthmore.

Morgan joined the history department in 1970, specializing in oral history and folklore, and James joined the English department three years later, offering courses such as the Black American Writer, The Ironic Spirit and Contemporary African American Writers. “I came from a tenured position at SUNY and was hired at a senior rank when I got here … To leave a tenured position was significant,” James said. “I was hired without tenure. I wasn’t worried about it, but I was told that I’d be considered for it within three years. Turns out I was considered my second year. Turns out Kathryn was being considered at the same time. Turns out I got tenure, she did not.”

There was a storm of protest in response to the committee’s decision to deny Morgan tenure. “It was a hullabaloo among students,” James said. 

While many of the students screamed racism, some felt that the decision to not grant Morgan tenure was a professional one. “From my impression, the history department did not want a folklorist. They were not enthused about her being a full-time faculty member,” said Fred Pryor, current senior researcher of economics and a former professor of economics. 

The college also maintained that their decision was based purely on Morgan‘s work. “I said to [Morgan] ‘I don’t like the odor of this’ … I felt very awkward about the way it all unfolded. I was assured that there was no strategy [by the college],” James said.

After being denied tenure, Morgan joined three white female professors in a lawsuit they had already started against the college. According to “Disturbing the Peace of Racism: An Oral History of the Oral Historian Kathryn Morgan,” an interview Morgan did with Laura Markowitz ’85 for the Swarthmore Bulletin, her attorneys advised her to focus solely on her gender and not her race when on the stand — this was a case about sexism, and bringing racism into the picture would cost them the case. Morgan ignored the attorneys. “I cannot — under any circumstances — separate myself into a woman, just a woman, when I’m a black woman,” she said in the Markowitz interview. 

Whether in the classroom or the courtroom, Morgan never hid her identity. “I was letting them know I was someone who would disturb the peace of racism,” she said in the Markowitz interview. “This is me, and I am going to be like I am. If you want black people who look like white people, who act like white people, get a white person!”

Morgan was the only woman in the suit to win, but the college offered her tenure before she testified. “The decision [to deny Morgan tenure] was reversed … I would venture to say its not routine when decisions of the Tenure Committee get reversed. It’s significant when that happens … Sometimes they’re controversial. Kathryn’s was controversial,” James said.

While some members of the faculty were not thrilled by the history courses Morgan was teaching, both she and her courses were very popular among the students. “She would walk us through the scholarship and literature,” Associate Professor of political science Keith Reeves ’88 said. “She has a very infectious smile; she’s sharp, keen and always a people person. She never fails to ask about my twin, people in our classes, what I’ve been working on.”

Years ago, Reeves started his family tree and can now trace his maternal lineage back to the 1800s. He attributes this to having taken Morgan’s classes. “We didn’t pay attention to the scuttle; we got as much out of the program as we could. We felt empowered and valued as a result of taking her class,” Reeves said. “She placed her own commentary and her own perspective in a broader context. Her projects and assignments compelled us to go back to our parents and grandparents to get a broader sense of our families’ background and trajectory. She provided us with the underpinnings to have that conversation (with our families).”

“She covered topics no one else did, which was oral storytelling and why it’s important. That involved family stories and how they’re passed on,” English department Chair Peter Schmidt said.

Schmidt co-taught a course with Morgan called Native American Literature. “Most of it was focused on different story-telling literature … We wanted to stress the folklore. She thought a lot about what is written down and documented … Oral history is sometimes more accurate,” Schmidt said.

Both Morgan and James, along with another professor in the history department who came a short while after Morgan, Jerry Wood, were some of the most invested faculty in sustaining the black presence at Swarthmore. For a time, it was decided that the black studies program would not have one set director and that the position would be rotated. “It was almost as if it had taken some clout out of the position. As a result, Kathryn, Jerry Wood and myself took turns coordinating the Black Studies program. There were a number of white people who did as well,” James said. 

Of the three, Schmidt said, “They were the pioneers — they came in at a crucial time. They passed the baton to folks like Sarah Willie and Allison Dorsey.”

In addition, Morgan, James and Wood were crucial to increasing the number of black faculty on campus. 

“We would seldom ever have more than five blacks on the campus. People came in temporarily. People came and went, but we’d never get above that magic number five [permanently],” James said. Of the 171 tenure-track faculty today, 28 are minorities and 11 of them are African American — nine with tenure already.

James notes that President Alfred Bloom reaffirmed Swarthmore’s commitment to its black students. “He agreed that someone would be specified as Black Studies Coordinator.”

James remembers that the black students were also very involved in maintaining an active presence on campus. In fact, part of his interview was to meet with members of SASS in the Black Cultural Center. “It’s particularly significant not to lose track that it was a national movement.

Students in institutions all over the country — Berkeley, Columbia — started being very demonstrative, making demands,” James said. “It wasn’t odd for me to see those students have that kind of clout. It wasn’t arrogance, but they felt they had some say-so, some influence … They were acknowledging their instrumental role in getting people like me and Kathryn here.” But Morgan’s, James’ and Woods’ contributions to the college go beyond heading black studies or attracting more black professors; their work has influenced many of their students in profound ways.

Reeves said that he never considered academia until Richard Rubin, former part-time professor of political science and public policy, advised him on it.

“Rubin began to explain to me about academic life — that I could have a great impact. I thought about Kathryn Morgan and Chuck James — they were making an impact,” Reeves said. “I take seriously the mantra that kids will be what they see. Kathryn Morgan is the embodiment that African Americans could enter academia… and teach in the most elite institutions. She is a great model, and I also think about Jerry Wood [and] Chuck James.”

In April, the black studies department will host a series of Thursday Poetry Festivals celebrating the life and work of Morgan, in which there will be readings from both Morgan’s poetry and from professional poets.

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