The Making of a Black Scholar: From Georgia to the Ivy League (Singular Lives)

173 Pages·2003·0.45 MB·English

by  Horace A. Porter

The
Making
of a Black
Scholar
SINGULAR LIVES
The Iowa Series in North American Autobiography
Albert E. Stone, Series Editor
The
from g e o r g i a t o t h e i v y l e ag u e
Making
by ho r ac e a . p o r t e r
of a Black
univ e r s i t y o f i o wa p r e s s i o wa c i t y
Scholar
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2003 by Horace A. Porter
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Richard Hendel
http://www.uiowa.edu/uiowapress
No part of this book may be reproduced or used
in any form or by any means without permission in writing from
the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to contact copyright
holders of material used in this book. The publisher would be pleased
to make suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been
possible to reach.
A portion of chapter 2 was previously published as “Affirmative Action: 1960s
Dreams, 1990 Realities” in the Chronicle of Higher Education (November 29, 1996); a
section of chapter 3 appeared as “Reflections of a Black Son” in Change: The Magazine
of Higher Learning (February 1977); a brief section of chapter 6 was included in “An
Encounter at New Haven” in Stealing the Fire: The Art and Protest of James Baldwin
by Horace A. Porter (Wesleyan University Press, 1989).
The publication of this book was generously supported
by the University of Iowa Foundation.
Printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Porter, Horace A., 1950 –
The making of a Black scholar: from Georgia to the Ivy League / by Horace A. Porter.
p. cm.—(Singular lives)
Includes index.
isbn 0-87745-835-9 (cloth)
1. Porter, Horace A., 1950 –. 2. Porter, Horace A., 1950 – — Childhood and youth.
3. African Americans—Biography. 4. African American scholars—Biography.
5. African American college students—Biography. 6. African Americans—
Education (Higher)—History—20th century. 7. African Americans—
Civil rights—History—20th century. 8. Columbus (Ga.)—
Biography. I. Title. II. Series.
e185.97.p67 m35 2003
973⬘.0496073⬘0092 — dc21
[b] 2002073257
03 04 05 06 07 c 5 4 3 2 1
For
my mother,
lillie mae porter
and
in memory of my father,
joseph porter
(1918–1993)
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
: : : contents : : :
A Note to Readers viii
Good-bye Columbus: Leaving Home in 1968 ix
1 : The Georgia Farm: 1950 –1959 1
2 : Three Georgia Schools: Claflin, Marshall, Spencer 18
3 : Scholarship Kid: My Freshman Year at Amherst 44
4 : Light Up the World:
Amherst College and Morehouse College 64
5 : Black and Blue: Graduate School at Yale University 80
6 : Inner City Blues: Detroit’s Wayne State University 98
7 : Paradise Lost: Dartmouth College, 1979 –1990 117
Reflections on Stanford University: “The Farm” 139
Acknowledgments 151
Index 153
: : : a note to readers : : :
While none of the scenes included in this book have been
fabricated, a few names have been changed to avoid potential
embarrassment to individuals or their friends and relatives. The
changed names are found in chapter 2: Mr. Mack, Mrs. Hattie,
Mrs. Franklin, Mrs. Flora Carson, and in chapter 6: Pearl Jones.
I have also attempted to avoid the invasion of privacy of
individuals living or dead — including my parents, siblings,
friends, former colleagues, and college and university
professors and administrators.
Good-bye Columbus
Leaving Home in 1968
I left my home in Columbus, Georgia, on the second of September
in 1968. It was a day marked by three extraordinary events in my
life: I boarded a plane for my first flight; I left the South for the first
time; and, that afternoon, I walked across the campus of Amherst
College. I was now “up North,” as my relatives put it. The trip to
Amherst from Bradley Field, the airport located between Spring-
field, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, was revealing in a
special, though simple, way. I heard everyone’s accent. People were
talking “proper,” as northern accents were labeled in Georgia. As
the taxi, a refurbished station wagon with suitcases strapped to its
top, headed toward Amherst, I sat among several white students,
listening to the small talk and staring out the window in awe. The
sky was gray and it started raining.
My introduction to New England was punctuated by my arrival
on the college campus. The dormitories were covered with ivy. Cer-
tain buildings, like the college’s chapel — a dozen steps leading to
its front with four gigantic white columns, a clock with golden Ro-
man numerals sitting high above it — symbolized a grand history.
An American flag on a white pole above the clock was fluttering
in the wet autumn breeze. And the whole college seemed self-
contained and isolated from its immediate surroundings. Later that
afternoon, a continental sense of distance between Georgia and
Amherst hit me. I stood — as I would do countless times there-
after — looking out from Amherst’s War Memorial at the top of a
hill, a concrete and marble circle of names and dates in honor of its
fallen sons of the two world wars.
From the top of Memorial Hill, I could see rolling green playing