integration Rhodes

When researching the desegregation of Rhodes College, I discovered a senior seminar paper written by Jenna Sullivan that gave me a much better perspective on the school’s actions regarding the issue. The college had been based on Presbyterian values, which the Presbyterian church for a long time had been steadfast in its opposition to integration. The Bellingrath endowment that the school had been based in since 1950, also essentially allowed segregation to continue on the campus. There was a very interesting story that was brought up was the story of Hortense Spillers who was an African American who was interested in attending Southwestern at Memphis. What her experience shows was that the integration of Southwestern at Memphis was something that was meticulously planned and done in a complete PR move. When Spillers went on the Rhodes campus in 1961 she was greeted very nicely but told that the school would not be admitting any African American students until the fall of 1964. The paper by Jenna Sullivan talked about some of the Southwestern articles that were written having to do due with the integration of the college. Roger Hart’s article entitled “A Call For Courage” was arguably the most infamous of these editorials written by members of the school’s student body. He believed that the school should stop being a coward and le aside the financial burden that the school would face for integrating and do what was right. It was not until the school was going to receive a heavy grant from the Ford Foundation, which required that the school integrate, that Southwestern at Memphis even began to think of the subject. It was the responses to these articles that finally brought attention to the racism on the campus of Rhodes College. Sandra Sanders wrote an article talking about how Southern African Americans simply were not ready for integration, with the article causing outcries on the campus. Howard Romaine’s anonymous editorial entitled “A Southwestern Student Prays” was arguably a major turning point on the campus, with much more pro-integration activity going on after that. It was the Ford Foundation grant that convinced President Rhodes and the board of trustees to finally decide to integrate the school, with the school having some financial problems in the 1950s. The whole history of the integration of Rhodes College needs to be told and not the whitewashed version that has been taught as fact in the present day.