African Americans at William & Mary

This page includes material previously assembled in subject files and FAQs about African Americans at William & Mary. This information includes "firsts" as well as ongoing data and material.

Students

See African American Students.

Administration and Administrators

"In 1974, the office for Minority Student Affairs was established to serve African-American students at the College and, eventually, the office evolved into the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) as the population it served began to expand."1

1977: 2 African American faculty members

1978: The first African American member of the Board of Visitors was Henry T. Tucker, Jr. '72, appointed in 1978.

1982: 2 African American faculty members

1983: 7 African American faculty members

Lillian A. Poe: A native of Newport News, VA, Ms Poe was a graduate of Hampton Institute and received her masters from the University of Virginia. She entered William & Mary doctoral program in 1969. Ms Poe was the first William & Mary student to receive an Advanced Study Fellowship for Black Americans from the Ford Foundation in 1971. She spent one summer at the University of Singapore under a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship. In 1970 Ms Poe became the College's first black administrator serving as Assistant to the Dean of Admissions while completing her doctorate course work. Her dissertation in history was on the life and career of the controversial black minister Elder Michaux, founder of the Church of God movement in the early 1900's in Newport News.

Faculty

• Hugh M. Gloster

The first black to teach at W&M in any capacity was Dr. Hugh Gloster, from Hampton Institute, who was engaged in 1955 to teach English to Japanese students in a summer program for foreign students. Dean Gloster went on to be president of Morehouse College.

• Trudier Harris

Professor Harris graduated from Stillman College with a B.A. in 1969 and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University. She was an Assistant Professor of English at William & Mary, the first black at the College in a tenure line. In November, 1974, at the Virginia Folklore Society meeting at the University of Virginia Ms Harris presented a paper on Henry "Doc" Billups, who was the bellringer at William & Mary for 65 years (the paper is in SCRC, the Archives). She researched Billups and his life in Williamsburg on a faculty research grant during the summer of 1974. In 1975 Ms Harris was awarded a summer research grant for "Black Folklore in Williamsburg: Uniqueness of Content."

• Louis J. Noisin

Professor Noisin, an anthropologist from Haiti, joined the William & Mary faculty in 1972 and taught in Anthropology for several years. Professor Noisin was the founding president of L'Universit Roi Henri Christophe in Haiti.

• Nancy B McGhee

Professor McGhee graduated from Shaw University. She received her masters from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She was the Chairwoman of the English Department at Hampton Institute from 1967 to 1973 and Director of the Institute in the Humanities at Hampton from 1964 to 1969.

Professor McGhee taught at the College in 1970-71 and rejoined the faculty as a visiting professor of English in 1979-80. Her teaching specialties include American Literature and Black Literature. She has received a Rosenwald Fellowship, a G.E.B. Fellowship and an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Shaw University. Her publications include "Langston Hughes: Black Genius", "Stony the Road" and "The Slave Narrative in Retrospect" in the Ethnic Studies Journal, 1976.

Alumni

The Hulon Willis Association of the Alumni Association was organized in 1992.

Africana Studies

In 1997, the Black Studies Program was established. The program was changed to the Africana Studies Program in 2009.

Courses

According to Robert Fehrenbach, emeritus professor English, he and Ed Crapol, emeritus professor of History, co-taught "The Black Experience" for two years in 1970-1972. --email from Joanne Braxton, 16 December 2012. (Check Schedule of Classes for course specifics.)

English

According to Carl R. Dolmetsch, emeritus professor of English, Nancy McGhee taught the first course in Black Literature at the College of William & Mary in 1969-1970, the last year of Fraser Neiman's chairship, and Carl had her repeat the course during his first year as Chair, 1970-1971. The arrangement came about through Fraser's wife, Stella, whose classmate at Brown was Charles Nichols.

"Fraser had thought when he became Chair (and others in the department agreed) that it was time to have black literature taught here, When Nichols came to the Neiman house for a party he brought his former Hampton colleague Nancy McGhee and she and Fraser talked. Nichols recommended McGhee for the course, and it happened, continued by Carl the next year (Carl had come to know Nichols in Berlin where was Director of the John F. Kennedy Institute for American Studies at the Free University of Berlin where Carl had been invited by Nichols as a Fulbright Visiting Professor). Nichols had returned to Brown, and was in Virginia on a speaking tour).

"Carl mentioned that as Chair he thought there should be a permanent position in English for black lit, and he was instrumental in recruiting Trudier Harris, whom he recognized as stellar from the getgo and knew we would not be able to retain her--he thought every time she came into his office she would have a job offer and of course finally she did, from UNC, with whom, Carl told her, W&M could not compete." --email from Terry Meyers, 24 July 2012.

History

The 1969-1970 course catalog includes the class "The Negro in the United States Since 1861" course 466 taught by Department of History Professor Helen C. Walker. Description: "An examination of the role of the black man in American society from the Civil War to the present. The course will consider political, economic, and social developments within the black community, as well as problems in black-white relations."

According to an intern in the Virginia Division of Legislative Services in the Civil War Commission in July 2009, the College of William & Mary was one of the earliest, if not the first, college or university in Virginia to offer African American history courses before the late 1970s.

Slaves Owned By the College

The College of William & Mary had long-standing connections to slavery in the United States including owning slaves on campus and using others to work an 18th Century tobacco plantation the College owned. Its antebellum president Thomas Roderick Dew was a leading proponent of slavery as were members of his faculty.

Material in the Special Collections Research Center

• Guide to to African-American Studies Resources in the Special Collections Research Center
• Guide for doing research related to the College of William & Mary
• SCRC Collections Database: search by names, organization, subject, event, etc.
• Search the W&M Digital Archive for additional material.
• The Flat Hat student newspaper; search the index available in the Special Collections Research Center's lobby by person's name, student group name, event, or topical heading. There is a partial index for the years 1911-1975 by Sebastian Kreindel also available online.
• Colonial Echo yearbook
• Student Organizations Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary.
• Office of Student Diversity Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary.
• Stony the Road We Trod Project, Oral history interviews by Jenay Jackson, 2005.
• Office of the President, Alvin Duke Chandler Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary.
• Office of the President, Davis Y. Paschall Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary.
• Office of the President, Thomas A. Graves Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary.
• Office of the President, Paul R. Verkuil Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary.
• Alumni Association Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary. Among the records are some relating to the Hulon Willis Alumni Association, named for the College's first African-American graduate. This organization serves alumni of color.
• Black Studies Program Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary. This collection has fliers, catalogs, and other materials created by the College's Black Studies program.
• Grassroots Theatre Oral History Project, 1995-1996, in Department of Theater, Speech, and Dance Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary. The students interviewed many African American Williamsburg residents in the 1990s about memories of race relations in earlier years.
• List of Slaves Owned by the College, 1780, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary. Researchers should use the transcription of this list available in the University Archives Subject File, folder "Slaves Owned by the College."
• Office of the Bursar Records, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, William & Mary. The early bursars accounts (Acc. 1983.122) cover the years 1745-1770, 1743-1770, 1770-1786, and 1850-1875, and include numerous mentions of slaves brought to the College or owned by the College.

References