Abbott Lawrence Lowell - Excluding African-Americans From The Freshman Halls

Excluding African-Americans From The Freshman Halls

"We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man; but we do not owe it to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial."

African-American students had lived in Harvard’s dormitories for decades, until Lowell changed the policy. Freshmen were required to live in the Freshman Halls beginning in 1915. Two black students did live there during World War I without incident. When a few were excluded after the war they raised no protest.

The matter became the object of student protest in 1922, when 6 banned black freshmen, led by a recent alumnus who was studying at the Business School, protested their exclusion. Lowell wrote this explanation to Roscoe Conkling Bruce, himself an African American Harvard alumnus and the father of an incoming freshman: "We have not thought it possible to compel men of different races to reside together." Bruce’s lengthy reply underscored the irony of Lowell's position: "The policy of compulsory residence in the Freshman Halls is costly indeed if it is the thing that constrains Harvard to enter open-eyed and brusque upon a policy of racial discrimination." Lowell stood his ground: "It is not a departure from the past to refuse to compel white and colored men to room in the same building. We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man; but we do not owe it to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial." He accused Bruce of insisting on a change of policy and employed an argument about minority presence provoking prejudice that he also used about the same time in the Jewish quota dispute. "For the colored man to claim that he is entitled to have the white man compelled to live with him is a very unfortunate innovation which, far from doing him good, would increase a prejudice which, as you and I will thoroughly agree, is most unfortunate and probably growing."

When their direct appeal to Lowell failed, the students organized public support from alumni and the press. Of those who wrote to Lowell, blacks saw his position as unqualified racism. Whites either saw it as a violation of Harvard's traditions or applauded it in frankly racist terms. Most criticism saw Lowell's stance as a submission to Southern prejudice. One called it "the slaveholder’s prejudice" and another called Lowell’s policy a "surrender to the Bourbon South." One Wisconsin minister suggested Lowell allow the black students to live "voluntarily" in a segregated section of the Freshman Halls. Lowell replied that such a plan "seems to me to be something like the Jim Crow car, an enforced seclusion which is, to me, very repulsive." A faculty committee called Lowell's exclusion policy "a dangerous surrender of traditional ideals," and in March 1923 the Harvard Board of Overseers unanimously overruled Lowell. One of them, Franklin D. Roosevelt, wrote: "It seems to be a pity that the matter ever came up in this way. There were certainly many colored students in Cambridge when we were there and no question ever arose."

Despite an official policy of integration, what freshmen experienced thereafter is not entirely clear. Some black freshmen lived in the dormitories but believed that not all the Freshman Halls were open to them. One was granted permission to live outside the Freshman Halls even though he had not requested such a privilege. Harvard Dean Henry Aaron Yeomans, later Lowell's biographer, frankly admitted that he and Lowell as administrators found a way to accommodate themselves to the Overseer's stated principle: "The matter was settled in theory, and in practice no serious difficulties were encountered. The applicant who had raised the question decided to live elsewhere. A few others who applied at long intervals, were so skillfully located in the Halls that no susceptible feelings were hurt."