SANKOFA: WISDOM OF THE PAST ENSURES A STRONG FUTURE
The theme for our 50th Reunion is TRANSFORMING OURSELVES, TRANSFORMING THE WORLD. I’ve been thinking about what that even means given that some of us are back in the streets and, hopefully most of us are at least talking with our family, friends and neighbors and working our computers in the spirit of my favorite handmade protest sign held by a woman looking my age that said, “I can’t believe I’m still protesting this shit”.
Perhaps exploring our theme through SANKOFA will give to each of us some meaning of our theme. The word “SANKOFA” comes from the Akan people of Ghana and literally means, “to go back and get it.” One of the symbols for Sankofa depicts a mythical bird with its feet firmly planted forward and its head turned backwards. To the Akan, it is this wisdom in learning from the past which ensures a strong future.
Let me share some of the past I found through articles in the Mac Weekly as you remember who you were when you arrived at Macalester and who you were when you left.
The summer of `1967, before we even arrived, saw our cities on fire with Urban Uprisings.
Fall 1967 The organization Student Action for Human Rights announces its shift in emphasis to “Student Power” and “Black Power”.
We were talking about the Speaker Ban, mandatory Chapel every Wednesday and mandatory Convocation
WE WERE “GIRLS” THEN:
Dorm hours for “girls” was a hot topic and a committee was created to study the question of closed or open doors.
On January 24, 1969 Alan Peterson, President of Dupre Hall Council reported on a resolution favoring the distribution of birth control devices and information by Winton Health Services. He said Dupre Hall was taking the lead in combatting “Victorian prejudices”.
The Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student organization, had a regular column
Spring, 1968 Remember Harvey Rice, who was President when we arrived? Pauletta Hawkins led a meeting of Black & white students who discussed with him the need for the Black Liberation Affairs Committee and the experiences of Black students. She called the meeting “a farce”.
Martin Luther King was assassinated right before Spring break; followed by Robert F. Kennedy later in June
Fall. 1968 We returned to Arthur Flemming as President. And what a ride!
Weyerhaeuser Chapel opened in Jan. 1969
Jan. 24, 1969 Mark Linder reports that Community Council mobilized over 100 students to attend the faculty meeting that approved the CC & BLAC-initiated proposal for a program to expand educational opportunities. He went on to report a major CC project to educate the campus about institutional racism.
Feb. 14, 1969 James Holly, the librarian, becomes the Interim Coordinator of the EEO Program and said, “One of my frequently expressed criticisms of Macalester has been its avoidance of risk-taking. We have tended to play it safe . . . . Perhaps the best starting point is President Flemming’s statement last fall ‘This nation is in deep trouble’. One of the root causes is our built-in, white middle-class racism. .. . We must be honest with ourselves, recognizing that the burden of change is upon us, not the new students. . . .”
FALL 1969 – the first cohort of EEO students begin their first semester
VIETNAM
Can anyone forget Dec. 1, 1969?
Steve Ford shared his memories with me:
We sat on the floor at a Summit Avenue apartment. There was weed, wine, beer and cigarettes. It was reminiscent of a 50’s game show but not as slick – hosted by government lackies too old to worry about dying in Vietnam. Ping Pong balls numbered 1 – 365 lay waiting in a big, glass bowl. Jeff gets a low number and says, “That’s it; I’m applying to medical school. He did, and his life’s path was cemented. I start planning a conscientious objector deferment.
My own memory is my heart dropping as my brother Charles comes up Number 4. He had just transferred to Mac from Earlham College. We had a somber Christmas as my Mother counseled him to go to Canada.
We were the Macalester Committee for Peace; the Mac Committee to End the War in Vietnam and with the support of our administration we took over Grand Avenue.
And there was the Massive Anti-War Demonstration in D.C. in 1971. Paul Freeman thanked the 20 faculty and administrators who helped subsidize the bus trip taking Mac students to that historic event.
Spring 1970 – Janet Bushnell, Paul Strand, Peggy Schnell & I were at the College of Europe in Bruges along with so many of us doing study abroad.
During August 1970, Angela Davis was on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Fugitives.
Back on campus, we had four residential language houses.
Inner College was another experiment – We created a college within a college where about 30 students lived with Professor Al Greenberg and his entire family at Summit House, learned on their own with preceptors and didn’t take classes.
Macalester opened its campus during summers to the Upward Bound program, bringing inner-city kids to campus.
The Urban Studies Dept. was created.
We had psychedelic light shows in the Chapel.
We had a bunch of celebrities on campus: Ray Charles, Dick Gregory, LeRoi Jones, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ralph Nader, Alex Haley came every year to report on progress in writing his book “Roots”.
WALTER MONDALE AND HUBERT HUMPHREY taught here.
SPRING 1971
We were excited about organizing the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) with other campuses. The story about Ralph Nader’s visit to campus had the headline “THIS IS THE VANGUARD”
200 of us got on buses to Mississippi for voter registration during Spring Break.
AND . . . Arthur Flemming submitted his letter of resignation and all hell broke loose. There were well-attended press conferences held by the Black Liberation Affairs Committee, and by Community Council with Decker Anstrom blasting the Trustees;
We invited Flemming to be our graduation speaker & didn’t wear gowns. All 400 of us earning degrees on May 22, 1971 at 10:30 am.
Surely you haven’t forgotten the brunch at Alumni House for $2.25 per person and the All-Campus Picnic & Senior Activities on Old Main Mall for $1.50
We transformed ourselves, each other, and Macalester.
WHAT ABOUT RACE HERE AT MAC?
When we arrived at Macalester, three percent (3%) of Macalester students were non-white. Three years after initiation of the EEO Program, fifteen percent (15%) of the students were non-white. 126 African-Americans & 24 Native Americans had been admitted just through the EEO Program alone.
In contrast, by Fall last year, there are 45 fewer Black students and 16 fewer Native American students in the entire student body which makes the “Land Acknowledgement” rather ridiculous.
An informal group calling itself Alumni for Expanding Educational Opportunities including Mark Linder, Richard Cambridge, Joyce Darden, myself, alumni who were admitted through the EEO program and current Black students have been engaging in advocacy since 2019 for a 21st century effort to expand educational opportunities. You should know that in the Summer of 2020, BLAC sent a letter to President Rivera co-signed by all the students-of-color organizations pleading with the administration to take decisive anti-racist action.We are also joining Trustee Mike Davis in advocating for a commitment to educate the eleven Native American recognized tribes in Minnesota and Black descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S. and the Caribbean. I hope you will join us.
SO, WHO WERE YOU WHEN YOU LEFT; WHO ARE YOU NOW; WHO ARE YOU BECOMING?
We went out into the world believing we could transform it, too. During our 51 years since graduating, we who stopped the war in Vietnam have seen our country engaged in perpetual war. We who launched the War on Poverty and movements for Black Power, 2nd wave Women’s Liberation, Gay & Lesbian Rights, Environmental Justice, Welfare Rights, disability rights and United Farm Workers. Remember the Grape Boycott?
Now we see a War on Poor People; Mass Incarceration; the rise of White Supremacy; the War on Women now destroying constitutional protections we thought were fundamental and settled by Roe v. Wade – even transgender children are viciously targeted; corporations being granted personhood and 1st amendment rights; massive voter suppression; book banning and attacks on libraries, academic freedom, and public education. Immigrants dehumanized. An attempted coup including a violent attack in our nation’s capitol on January 6. In short, serious threats to democratic institutions and human rights of all kinds. Attempts to return us to the 19th century. And let’s not forget COVID-19 which has killed over 1 million Americans and traumatized all the rest of us who have any sense.
And some of us have become grandparents. We’ve experienced too many deaths. We’ve had success and failure in careers, marriages - everything. Our lives have been filled with unexpected adventures of all sorts. Really – we have lived many lives and, hopefully, there is so much more to come. And we reckon with the road ahead of us being shorter than the road we’ve travelled.
And for all that – here we are. And all that makes our celebration complex because we can’t ignore the breakdown of our democratic institutions, precariousness of the rule of law, obscene wealth disparity, the success of the politics of fear and white grievance, insane gun violence, and climate change threatening the very sustainability of earth, Russia reviving the Cold War & maybe this is the beginning of WWIII. And Christian Nationalist determined to impose a national theocracy. All that challenges us to continue transforming ourselves and transforming the world. This is not where we thought we would be.
So! As Holly Near sings in her song “I Am Willing”, “To be hopeless would seem so strange. It dishonors those who went before us”. And I would add – including our former selves.
As President Flemming said in the Fall of 1968, “This country is in deep trouble”. And I hope you remember that President Flemming never ended a meeting without thrashing out responses to his perennial question, “What are we going to do NOW?” We must each answer that question for ourselves as we leave this reunion and return to our lives in this deeply troubled country. And I don’t know about you, but I still believe in the words of that great 20th century philosopher Abbie Hoffman given a place of honor on the wall of Mark Vaught’s law office:
Sure we were young
We were arrogant
We were ridiculous
There were excesses. We were brash.
We were foolish.
We had factional fights.
But we were right.