Review of THE LAST NEGROES AT HARVARD
Eighteen men and their legacy
Ivy League Universities today are known as the epicenter of elite progressivism within academia. But prior to modern DEI movements that dominate today’s campuses, places like Harvard were actively hostile to people of color, especially Black men. Even today, Harvard’s Black student population remains steady at about 8%.
Back in Kent Garrett’s day, thought, the Harvard class of 1963 had just 1.5% Black men – the largest proportion to date, enrolling 18 Black men in total. Eighteen men who stood out, made changes, and graduated as Black – not negro – men.
In The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the Eighteen Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever, Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth recount Garrett’s years as a Harvard undergraduate from 1959-1963 where he studied, partied, and made history with his 17 Black classmates. Part memoir part history, Garrett shares his experiences as a Black man in an affluent, traditionalist, white man’s world during the civil rights era of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the tension between integration and segregation in the United States.
Many of Garrett’s experiences are what many would expect of the time. Arriving to campus on his first day, he and his family stood out among their vastly white peers, and white students were still permitted to reject sharing a dorm with their Black peers. He was referred to and described himself as a “Negro” rather than the terms “Black” or “African American” that are the socially preferred terms today.
But what stood out to me about the racial politics of the day as described and experienced by Garrett, were some of the striking similarities to current racial debates that continue today. Progressives also existed in this time, along with white supremacists and racists, but many African Americans, including Garrett, expressed resentment to white activists and integrationists that approached civil rights as a thing they were doing for them as though African Americans were incapable. There was also the tension of whether Black students were there because of affirmative action – that their race was the primary determinant to their admission to Harvard. And finally, the conflict over self-segregated racial affinity-like groups (on campuses and otherwise) and arguments of reverse-racism.
The Last Negroes at Harvard is an intimate look into the lives of a handful of men who entered Harvard as “Negroes” and left as “African Americans”, claiming their Black identity as their own on their terms. Malcolm X seems to have had a substantial influence on this change. Coming to campus during Garrett’s time there, Malcolm X spoke strongly to students about Black Nationalism and was actively against the term “Negro” as imparted on them. Garrett’s class worked to establish the African and Afro American Association of Students (AAAAS) at Harvard, with subsequent classes finally getting the administration to establish the AAAAS.
Kent Garrett showcases his and his classmates’ stories during a revolutionary time in American history. Being motivated late in life to figure out what his classmates had been up to since their days at Eliot House, Garrett embarked on a country-wide search over nearly a decade to gather these stories. A great read about a Harvard class that left a lasting legacy.
Published: February 2020
Format: Hardcover
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir by Katherine Johnson (2021)
The Years that Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us by Paul Tough (published in paperback as The Inequality Machine; 2019)
Becoming by Michele Obama (2018)
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