Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:01:33 -0500
 

       

 

From: "Lyle B. Snider" <snider@tgtel.com>
To: <llee2@swarthmore.edu>, <hartj@indiana.edu>
Subject: Alumni Discussion Forum on Race Relations
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 21:09:39 -0400

Dear Lisa Lee & Jeffrey Hart,
 
I wrote the following piece for the Alumni Discussion Forum on Race Relations, but now I can't remember my username or password. Since my wife and I leave tomorrow to wend our way toward Swarthmore, I am sending this along to the 2 of you in case Lisa can find a way to post it on the Discussion Forum or Jeffrey has time to send a class e-mail. The Alumni Discussion Forum does not appear to be very active, so maybe there is another venue for it. Mary Schmidt Campbell wrote a very good perspective on this topic in "The Meaning of Swarthmore" paperback that we received a few days ago. See you Friday!  Lyle
 
Lyle B. Snider, Class of '69
224 Eversole St.
Hazard, KY 41701
(606) 436-8860
(606) 438-2758 cell
 
SNIDER REMINISCENCES OF SWARTHMORE RACE RELATIONS, 1965-69

I seem to be one of the few people participating in this on-line forum, but I am proceeding to post this since I started writing it about a month ago. Paul Peelle suggested that I participate in the “Remembering the 60’s” Alumni College to discuss my War Tax Resistance in the early 70’s, but I realized that “Race Relations” was a much more important part of my Swarthmore life than the Peace Movement. These personal reminiscences take the form of several vignettes that occurred over 35 years ago. Since I have a terrible memory for names and a tendency to rework events to make a good story, I welcome corrections.

In addition to Swarthmore’s long-standing welcome of students of all races to its campus, a wide range of other events set the stage for our Swarthmore experiences related to race relations that include the sit-ins, public school desegregation efforts, freedom riders, John Woolman’s efforts to convince Quakers to release their slaves in the late 1700’s, many subsequent Quaker Service Projects to reduce racial discrimination and its aftermath, and the almost entirely white race of Quakers in the U.S. Further discussion of this background is well beyond both my skills and this venue.

Prior to my arrival at Swarthmore in the fall of 1965, I had grown up in an area of New Hampshire where there were no permanent black residents. I remember only one 2-3 interactions with black people before my senior year in high school. During that senior year, my formerly all-white boys prep school recruited a black Upward Bound student to enter the sophomore or junior class. I did not have too much interaction with him partly because I was one of only a handful of day students that missed the most of the school’s residential social life. Although I had read several books about the experiences of black people, I arrived at Swarthmore only vaguely aware of and in support of the Civil Rights movement. I believed that the elimination of racism was one of the most important challenges facing the U.S., but was largely ignorant of the implications of those beliefs.

FRESHMAN ORIENTATION & FALL, 1965. I met my black classmates during orientation, but I remember interacting with only one black student on a regular basis. I pledged and joined the TAO fraternity that had no black members, though it did include most other racial and ethnic groups on campus. I can’t remember if TAO seriously tried to recruit a black student when I was leading the pledge drive the following fall.

UPWARD BOUND COUNSELOR INTERVIEW, SPRING 1967. SOPHOMORE YEAR. My interview with Don Cheek, the Director of the Chester/Swarthmore College Upward Bound (UB) Program and several Swarthmore students/UB counselors (including Debbie Frazier/Malinowski, ‘69) was a painful and enlightening experience. Very early in the interview, Dr. Cheek aggressively suggested that I had little to offer that summer’s impoverished, mostly-black elementary and high school UB participants from Chester. He suggested that my middle-class privileged background as a good student from all-white New Hampshire was useless in mentoring the UB participants that coming summer. I had never been confronted in such a direct manner before by an adult, and I was totally unprepared. I stammered out a few attempts to suggest that my academic skills and love of sports might be relevant, but he seemed to angrily reject my suggestions. I left the interview feeling quite humiliated, and the expected notice that I was not selected to be an UB counselor that summer followed shortly thereafter. When Debbie told me later that I had made a good impression during the interview, I was flabbergasted, since it felt like an abject failure to me. Although this experience was painful, it led to some much-needed soul searching about my attitudes of superiority in relation to those less fortunate than myself.
 

MEDIA FRIENDS MEETING PLAYGROUND PROJECT, SUMMER 1967. On the basis of my stressful but “good” UB interview, I was invited to participate in a program to creatively respond to the growing vandalism suffered by the Media Friends Meeting and Friends School at the hands of its school-age neighbors. When the Media Friends Meetinghouse was first built in the late 1700’s or early 1800’s, the town’s leaders (including Quakers) lived all around it. By 1967, it lay across the parking lot from the Delaware Co. Courthouse, and its neighbors were mostly black low and middle-income families. The membership of the Friends Meeting was almost entirely white as was the enrollment at its Friends Elementary School. The most important people guiding the project were Margaret Yarrow, who lived in Swarthmore and was a member of the Swarthmore Friends Meeting; Bob Woodson, the director of the Media Fellowship House; and the local black teacher/coach who was hired to lead the project. In a period of 1-2 months, another 2-3 white Swarthmore students were hired as project counselors, including my fiancé, Sue Tripp.

Although I probably thought that it would be good to have at least one black counselor, I don’t remember making a substantial effort to do so, and was hindered by my lack of frequent interactions with black students as well as the distraction of other student activities (organic chemistry, the baseball team, courting my fiancé, etc.).

 The Project’s three main goals were: 1) to provide enjoyable and enriching experiences for the Meeting House neighbor children, 2) to build bridges between the Meeting and its neighbors (both adults and children), and 3) to reduce Meeting House vandalism by its neighbor children. The Project operated for 6-7 weeks from noon until ~ 8 PM for kindergarten through 8^th grade children. Swarthmore College also contributed to the Project by paying me to work with its Grounds Dept. 2-4 weeks in the summer before and after the project to supplement my income. I learned a tremendous amount from the participants that summer, especially since I had no previous experience in youth teaching and leadership. Although the children had some fun that summer, I can’t say if there was any increase in learning or decrease in vandalism.

MEDIA FRIENDS MEETING PLAYGROUND PROJECT, SUMMER 1968. By the Spring of 1968 when we planned for the following summer’s Playground Project, I recruited recommended 3 other white Swarthmore student counselors for that summer’s Program. (This group did not include my wife, Sue, who found other employment that summer.)

My meager efforts to recruit a black counselor were even further hindered by the decrease in my casual spontaneous interactions with black Swarthmore students during that semester. The black students were devoting a great deal of effort to discussions within their black student community to develop both a black Swarthmore student identity and their new organization, SAS (Swarthmore African Students???). It appeared that most of the black students had little time for or interest in interactions with the non-black students during that phase.

Sometime in March or April that year, Bob Woodson (Media Fellowship House) called Margaret Yarrow and me to ask us to come to the Fellowship House to meet with two black Swarthmore female students about the upcoming summer’s program. After very brief introductions, one of the black women opened the discussion by angrily confronting Margaret and me about our racism in selecting an all-white counselor staff for a summer program that served children who were almost all black. I probably offered some lame excuses for the all-white prospective counselor selections. Although Margaret and I were quite clear in our own minds that the black students’ concerns were fully justified, we were reluctant to make absolute commitments in the meeting to hire black students since we had already issued invitations to white students. Mr. Woodson was very helpful in brokering a compromise. The black students offered to recruit 2 black Swarthmore women students for the summer program, and Margaret and I promised to make every effort to find positions in the program for them.

Very shortly after the meeting, Margaret and I had a very brief conversation in which we decided to tell the 2 white Swarthmore women students that the counselor positions were no longer available to them. I then explained the situation to the white women students and informed them of our decision. I also offered our apologies for retracting the employment offers, and was grateful that the women were very understanding. Shortly thereafter, I had a brief meeting with one of the black women from our initial meeting at the Fellowship House to learn the names of the two black students that she and other black Swarthmore students had recruited for the counselor positions. I then contacted those women as well as the white man who was also counseling that summer to schedule counselor orientation and planning. After this rather rocky and confrontational start, the rest of the summer program went pretty smoothly. 

1968 FALL SEMESTER. This semester, Swarthmore students were invited to take a Black Literature course at Lincoln University to be taught by a well-known black author, Saunders Redding. Five Swarthmore students signed up for the course: 2 blacks and 3 whites (one of whom was me). The course that met once a week in the evening involved a ~ 30 minute drive each way to and from Lincoln University. Since very few students were allowed to have cars on campus at that time, we had to sign up for the one of the student cars from the pool of cars for student use. The other two students and I assumed that all five of us would ride together in one car, partly to save the hassle and expense of reserving another car, and partly to share our perspectives on the course with each other during the ride to and from the class. We were disappointed and moderately insulted when the black man taking the course firmly informed us that he and the black woman would be riding in their own car rather than sharing a car with us.

Although these reminiscences stop just short of the black student occupation of the Admissions Office that occurred late in the 1968 Fall Semester, I don’t have the time or energy to describe my perspective of that event before our reunion later this week.

 

    http://www.indianapolissymphony.org/about/press/article.aspx?pressReleaseID=99
       

           

           

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:27:04 -0800
From: "Nancy Bekavac" <Nbekavac@ScrippsCollege.edu>

Dear Jeff -

I hope you will post this.  I have no other info, except that this was apparently quite sudden.  I saw Bernie last June during Reunion and he was as always * wise, mordantly funny, fascinating and good-humored.

In grief,

Nancy

############

Dear Friends

        I write with the terribly sad news that Bernard Saffran, Franklin and Betty
Barr Professor of Economics, passed away this morning.

        Bernie was one of the most remarkable and beloved individuals ever to be a
member of the Swarthmore College community.  His influence will live on
through the generations of people he touched and through his profound impact
on the intellectual vitality and educational power of this institution.

        I will advise you of memorial plans as they are set.

        Warmly,

        Al Bloom
-----------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 00:21:17 -0500
From: "Terry Weisser" <tweisser@thewalters.org>

Hello Jeff,

Just want to add to the information on Michael Quick and the documentary, "Search for the New Jerusalem."  The documentary centers around a recent discovery that a large painting in the Walters Art Museum and two other fragments together form a larger painting ("The New Jerusalem").  "The New Jerusalem" was thought to have been destroyed when a wall collapsed at Madison Square Garden in the 19th centrury.  The work confirming Michael's theory was carried out by Eric Gordon, a conservator on my staff at the Walters.  It was great to have Michael visit my laboratory and to see his face light up when the fragments were brought together for the first time--everything lined up perfectly.  The three parts of the painting and the documentary are currently on view at the Walters.

Terry Drayman-Weisser
Director of Conservation and
Technical Research
The Walters Art Museum
Baltimore, MD
-------------------------------------------------

Joanne Luoto, M.D., M.P.H., joined the Contraceptive and Reproductive Evaluation Branch in 1995 from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, DHHS. Dr. Luoto is board certified in preventive medicine and received her M.P.H. in public health administration from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. She focuses on research evaluation of contraceptive methods, including responsibility for spermicide contraceptive efficacy trials, evaluation of colposcopy, the steroidal contraception and risk of HIV study and substudies, research on intrauterine devices and acquired tubal infertility research, and the studies of hormones, cervical ectopy, and STI acquisition. She frequently represents the Branch with other organizations dealing with barrier contraceptives, is actively involved with condom relabelling activities at the FDA, and sponsored a workshop on critical issues in condom study design in 2002. Dr. Luoto received the NIH Director's Award in 2003 for her work establishing a network of interrelated studies of women's HIV risk and steroidal contraceptive use in Africa.

Source: http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/councrhb/sub6.htm
-------------------------------------------------

Ms. Helen Lom, Director-Advisor, Brand Development, Sector of Trademarks, Industrial Designs, and Geographical Indications, also Focal Point for Gender Mainstreaming from World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

Ms. Lom, an attorney, has a 24-year experience at WIPO in various areas of industrial property, including normative, legislative and promotion activities. Ms. Lom is a national of the United States of America and the Czech Republic and is fluent in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Czech. She is admitted to practice in the United States of America (New York and Colorado).

Before joining WIPO, she was a member of the New York and Colorado State Bars, and practiced law with a major international corporate law firm in New York (1976 to 1979). She also taught comparative law in and pursued social-legal research at the Institute Brasileiro de Administraçâo Municipal Pontificia and the Universidade Católica in Brazil as well as at the Universidad de Costa Rica in Costa Rica. She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Czech.
---------------------------------------------
For a recent article on Dan Nussbaum, see http://www.gardner-webb.edu/news/news174.shtml
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There is a press release about Audrey Melkin: http://www.atypon.com/052803.php and there is an article written by her on on-line content at:
http://www.atypon.com/PersonalView.pdf
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Jeff Hart

2121 E. Woodstock Place

Bloomington, IN 47401

tel: (812) 855-9002 (office)

email: hartj@indiana.edu

Swarthmore archive page: http://php.indiana.edu/~hartj/Swarthmore/archive.htm