Racism on Campus

A Visual History of Prominent Virginia Colleges and Howard University

Stephen C. Poulson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000428759
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Drawing on content from yearbooks published by prominent colleges in Virginia, this book explores changes in race relations that have occurred at universities in the United States since the late 19th century. It juxtaposes the content published in predominantly White university yearbooks to that published by Howard University, a historically Black college. The study is a work of visual sociology, with photographs, line drawings and historical prints that provide a visual account of the institutional racism that existed at these colleges over time. It employs Bonilla-Silva's concept of structural racism to shed light on how race ordered all aspects of social life on campuses from the period of post-Civil War Reconstruction to the present. It examines the lives of the Black men and women who worked at these schools and the racial attitudes of the White men and women who attended them. As such, Racism on Campus will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and anthropology with interests in race, racism and visual methods.

1

Using Visual Sociology to Study Institutional Racism at Virginia Universities

DOI: 10.4324/9781003134480-1

This inquiry was inspired by a scandal in 2019 when it was discovered that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page featured a man represented in blackface standing beside another costumed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan—the KKK (see Figure 1.1). After this picture was discovered there was a rush of ad hoc investigations by news organizations that examined university yearbooks throughout the United States (Murphy 2019). It was quickly found that blackface, and other racialized imagery, was common. Along the way, pictures of prominent public officials in blackface—Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, for example—were also discovered (Carlisle and Kambhampaty 2019).

FIGURE 1.1 Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's personal page in the 1984 edition of the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook. The discovery of these pictures caused a scandal in Virginia (in 2019) in which many called for Northam to resign. Similar content was published in other annual yearbooks until the current president of the university, Dr. Homan, ended the “tradition” in 2014.

During this period I decided a more systematic exploration of annual yearbooks could be extraordinary useful in capturing institutional norms and changes associated with race relation at universities throughout the country. Given this potential, it was remarkable so few studies had previously investigated yearbook content (Panayotidis and Stortz 2008; Caudill 2007; Nehls 2002). As a result, with a group of James Madison University (JMU) students, I began content-analyzing yearbooks published by 11 prominent Virginia schools: The University of Virginia (UVA), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Old Dominion University (ODU), Washington and Lee University (W&L), Longwood College, Hampden-Sydney College, The University of Richmond (UR), Virginia Military Institute (VMI), George Mason University (GMU), James Madison University (JMU) and Virginia Tech (VPI). Most of these schools began publishing annual yearbooks in the 1880s and 1890s.

The work later became related to the Black Lives Matter protest that occurred in the United States during the following summer of 2020. While those protests began as demonstrations against police brutality, in Virginia, they precipitated a broader discussion about systemic racism in the state. While this is an academic inquiry, I became far more motivated to produce this text because of its direct relevance to ongoing debates taking place at public and private colleges in Virginia. The yearbooks examined in this study were first issued in the 1880s and 1890s, and they document the preoccupation that White Virginians at elite schools had with ordering race relations. They also indicate continuing racism and resistance to desegregation well into the 1960s.

The schools in this study include prominent public universities (such as UVA and VPI) and well-regarded private colleges (W&L, Longwood College and Hampden-Sydney College). Most of these schools began as same-sex institutions—JMU, for example, was initially founded as a state Normal School for women—that later transitioned into coeducational institutions. Originally, the intention was to also include the historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Virginia, but none had digitalized their yearbook collections for easy online access. But Howard University, considered a flagship HBCU located in nearby Washington, DC, does have a reasonably complete digital archive of its yearbooks, so this content was added in order to make a comparison between the White Virginia colleges and a prominent HBCU.

This study shows how academic life in Virginia—particularly the period in the late 19th century when these yearbooks were first issued—was intimately associated with a strict ordering of race relations between White and Black society. It documents how issues of race were often a preoccupation among the administrators, faculty, staff and students who matriculated at these schools. This ordering of race relations was reflected in the most mundane interactions of people on college campuses—most often when the almost entirely Black staff literally served and supported an entirely White student body and faculty. But even more so, race rules and racial caricature saturated all the routine acts associated with college life—from campus entertainment (during minstrel productions, when choral groups routinely performed in blackface, when the Robert E. Lee Literary Society sponsored public readings etc.) to campus sporting events (when the Virginia schools refused to compete against teams with Black players). Further, many of the prominent alumni of these schools—the men these yearbooks were often dedicated too—were often proponents, known nationwide, for maintaining racial segregation in the so-called New South (see chapter 2).

This study also chronicles the degree to which these institutions were culpable in incubating and maintaining racial norms in the South and nationwide. Often, institutions of higher learning are regarded as places where enlightened ideals are introduced and earnestly discussed among faculty and students. These institutions are thought of as places where social injustices are examined and then addressed—within the institution—with the goal of creating a more just and equitable society. While this was clearly the case at Howard University, there is really no indication that any Virginia institutions played this role associated with improving race relations until the 1970s. Of course, there were lonely voices on many of these campuses that pushed against the most egregious forms of racial hatred and bigotry, but what these yearbooks indicate is a deep and intransigent ordering of race relations that was actively maintained by faculty and students and then actively disseminated into wider society for most of these institutions’ histories. This was particularly the case for institutions with law schools, such as the University of Virginia (UVA) and Washington and Lee College (W&L).

Put simply, these institutions—with the exception of Howard University—were not usually vehicles of positive social change associated with race relations. They were, in fact, among the staunchest advocates for maintaining the status quo. They did not often institute racial reforms from within—they desegregated largely when forced by federal authorities, federal courts and professional associations in law and medicine. And even then, they did so grudgingly. In short, these institutions were, when compared to many of their peers nationwide, among the last to eliminate the most egregious forms of racism that existed on these campuses until well into the 1960s. And even when changes in policy were finally implemented—when a few Black students were admitted to these colleges (beginning in the 1950s)—there was still considerable resistance to challenging the informal race norms (e.g. desegregating fraternities) that remained on these campuses.

The importance of Virginia politics in American racial history

Virginia is an ideal state in terms of examining the broader racial history of the United States. Prominent Virginians such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are often credited with shaping a uniquely American system of democratic governance. One school in this study is named after James Madison. Another, the University of Virginia, was founded by Thomas Jefferson. Undoubtedly, events of national significance occurred in the state. Jamestown, Virginia, for example, is the site of the first successful American colony—and also where the first enslaved workers were brought into the region. Not far from there is the Yorktown Battlefield, where George Washington's improbable victory over General Cornwallis essentially ended the Revolutionary War. Afterward, beginning with George Washington and ending with Zachery Taylor, seven of the first 11 US presidents were Virginians.

But if the state has had an outsize influence on the early political events of the country, surely this influence extends to the problematic area of race relations too. For example, all seven of the early Virginia Presidents—from George Washington to Zachery Taylor—owned slaves too. Indeed, electing slave-holding Virginians has sometimes been characterized as strategy to help politicians in the slave-holding Southern states better accept allegiance to the national union. The last US president born in Virginia was Woodrow Wilson. During his lifetime Wilson was considered a progressive reformer despite the fact that he was also, as many White Virginians were during this period, an admirer of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). During his presidency his progressive politics did not extend to race relations, as he worked diligently to purge the federal government of Black public officials and Black professional staff (Yellen 2013).

Probably most associated with the creation of America's racial politics is the central role of Virginia politics before, during and after the Civil War. Indeed, Virginia has long been considered the demarcation point between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding states. It is the state where, in the cultural and political memory of Americans, “the South” begins. Richmond, Virginia—currently the state capital—was the capital of the Confederate states during the American Civil War. More Civil War battles were fought in Virginia than in any other state. Currently, Virginia has the most edifices—schools, buildings, courthouses, monuments, statues and the like—dedicated to leaders of the failed Confederacy (“Whose Heritage?” 2019).

The early yearbooks examined in this study were produced when historical narratives associated with the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” were particularly resonant throughout the entire United States (see chapter 2). This mythology later became explicitly linked to a political drive to legislate racial purity in Virginia. During this period the University of Virginia became a national center for the pseudo-scientific study of eugenics (Dorr 2008). This scholarship later became integral to the passing of Virginia's infamous 1924 Racial Integrity Act enacted to prevent miscegenation, more commonly referred to as “race mixing” (see chapter 2). Meant to preserve White racial integrity, it made inter-racial marriage illegal in Virginia until the US Supreme Court, in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, ruled it unconstitutional.

The other problematic racial history closely associated with Virginia was its response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision that desegregated American public schools. Two colleges in this study are located in, and a couple miles from, the community of Farmville, Virginia, whose segregated public schools were directly addressed in the Brown decision. Notably, rather than accept the Supreme Court decision the state of Virginia instead engaged in a campaign of “massive resistance” to school desegregation. In the case of Farmville and surrounding Prince Edward County, officials actually closed its public schools rather than comply with the court order to desegregate (see chapter 4). Some Virginia colleges in this study did not accept a Black student until 1968.

A brief note on yearbook portrayal of other ethnic groups

Other racial and ethnic groups are negatively portrayed in yearbooks, but space here does not permit a thorough examination of this content. This is particularly the case as relates to the portrayal of Native American and East Asian (mostly Chinese) peoples. And unlike Black Americans, the construction of Native American and Asian ethnic identity was done almost entirely in the absence of any meaningful contact with these peoples, as neither Native Americans nor Asian Americans have worked at or attended these schools in large numbers during most of the period examined. Despite this, there were periods when yearbook content did reflect a greater preoccupation with defining and characterizing these groups too. This was more so the case at the few colleges located in areas that once had prominent Native American tribal groups such as in the Tidewater region—an area of eastern Virginia proximate to the James River and Chesapeake Bay. While most tribes from this region had long been dispersed, it was clear that past history made the on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of color plates
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Using visual sociology to study institutional racism at Virginia universities
• 2 Jim Crow racism on campus: Post-Civil War Reconstruction to World War II (1890-1942)
• 3 Academic culture and race perspectives at Howard University before World War II (1914-1942)
• 4 Resistance to racial integration at Virginia colleges after World War II (1945-2000)
• 5 Social movement activism at Howard University and Virginia colleges
• 6 Conclusion and future questions: The case for reparations
• Index