Black Brandeis: Black History at a Jewish Institution

Brandeis has a very interesting and unique relationship to the African-American experience. Considering the founding legend of Brandeis, a university founded by members of the Jewish community partially in protest to ethnic quotas for Jews in the “higher echelon” universities of white America. The University has given itself a mandate as a school that centers social justice, social policy, and social progressivism as core principles that govern the school. Naturally, Black Brandeis students on a campus that purports to be a hub of social progressivism and social justice will have a very different experience from other PWIs considering the Jewish influence of the school, opposed to more “traditional” Euro-American mores.

The first Black student at Brandeis was a man named Herman Hemingway, who graduated from the University in the class of 1953. He was from Roxbury (as my family is as well). He was offered scholarships to Harvard and Boston College, but he chose Brandeis (a historically significant decision). Hemingway reflected positively on his time at Brandeis, identifying with the similar plight that Jewish community face(d) at the hands of broader American society. He was inspired and empowered to be able to make a change in the world due to the critical nature that Brandeis takes with the way the world is. Being at an institution populated by those deemed “undesirables” by the broader Euro-American social order must have been a humanizing place where he felt he could speak more freely. Although I’m certain it wasn’t paradise. It certainly isn’t now. Being from Roxbury [at the time] also gave him a curiosity and resonance with Jewish-life, considering at the time Roxbury was also heavily settled with Jewish people – where Black people and Jewish people lived in close proximity. I’m sure this close proximity gave Hemingway a curiosity about Jewish people that mere proximity could not satisfy. His decision to attend Brandeis was to explore a potential kinship, and experience a new frontier as a Black person within higher education. Being a so-called “minority” at Harvard or Boston College, Anglo Euro-American institutions, he was most certain he knew what he was going to experience. You can walk down the street in Roxbury to Dorchester or South Boston to the white Catholic neighborhoods to get a preview of how you’d be treated at Boston College or Harvard. There is no mystery as to your perception or treatment there. However, Brandeis was something quite literally, very new – institutionally and ideologically. I think this is still something that draws Black students to Brandeis, curiosity. How do broader white society and Jews differ in their treatment of Black people? Why attend a run-of-the-mill PWI when you can experience something new that very few outsiders to the Jewish community get to experience? Usually Black people are the ethnographed, being Black at Brandeis can sometimes feel like you are the ethnographer. It is a reversal of agency in terms of gaze and perception.

Herman Hemingway - First Black Graduate of Brandeis University

There are several HistoryMakers that went to Brandeis, including first and foremost our founder Miss Julieanna Richardson! Unfortunately, I was not able to find a video of the Honorable Miss Richardson because she tends to be the interviewer opposed to the interviewed. I think high priority should be placed on capturing Miss Richardson’s oral history within the archive, as she is most certainly a HistoryMaker one whom has had a significant impact on African-American history – a grand contributor whose historical, cultural and national significance will only grow exponentially with time. I am most proud to have her as a member of our Brandeis alumni community, especially as a Black woman, and a woman who has dedicated her life to the preservation of our history as Afrikan people in America.

Julieanna Richardson - Founder of the HistoryMakers and Brandeis alumnus 1976

Another HistoryMaker who is an alumnus of Brandeis University, and debatably the most prominent and influential is the Great Angela Davis. I was able to find Miss Davis by searching her within the Maker Directory because I and every other Black person at Brandeis know her name by heart. I searched all of Miss Davis’ clips and scrolled all the way to where she spoke about her educational experiences. Miss Davis states that her reasoning for attending Brandeis was largely because it was a Jewish institution – a common reasoning for most Black students. If they are to be subjected to a PWI might as well make it one that attempts to interrogate what it means to be a PWI. Miss Davis also states a large reason for attending was due to the fact that she loved the Boston area, and wanted to be at a co-ed institution. Miss Davis mentions that a large reason for her not enjoying Brandeis emphatically was because there were not many Black people enrolled, and Waltham was not as urban as she was accustomed to. Her experience was pretty isolating considering the lack of a Black presence on campus and the far-off nature Waltham had at the time to the rest of the Boston area. However, Davis mentions that a converse side to being one of the few Black people at Brandeis, it forced her to be enculturated into the culture of the Jewish community – to learn a way of life different from hers. The most impactful of her experiences was when she was able to witness Malcolm X speak at Brandeis.

Freedom Fighter Angela Davis - Brandeis 1965

Another HistoryMaker alumni from Brandeis is the U.S. congressman The Honorable Ronald Dellums. I was able to find Mr. Dellums by searching “Brandeis” in quotes. I was not previously familiar with Mr. Dellums, so his interview gave me a new insight about what Brandeis was like during his time there – beyond the famed experience of Angela Davis, one we all know. He was recommended to attend Brandeis by another Black alumni Dr. Louis Watts, who knew that the university would be a good fit for him, considering that he was said to have been spotted by Watts as a “…young leader” one whom needed “…to prepare yourself for leadership”. He was told that “They [Brandeis] will learn more from you than you will learn from them” and this is a true statement that is still applicable today. Brandeis still has much to learn from their Black student body today, as they did then. I was not able to find much about his time at Brandeis considering that he came to Brandeis as a PHD candidate much later in his life with a wife and an already formed life. He recounts Brandeis as being a spring board for his electoral career.

Refreshingly, I was able to find an interview that differed largely from the remembered experiences that I was encountering, those that were most positive and exploratory by nature, being in a new, white, Jewish environment. This is a trope that I’ve encountered a lot at Brandeis, a lot of Black undergrads come in expecting something, and get something entirely different. So, it was great to find an interview that reflected an oppositional, darker and realer experience at Brandeis, one not fettered by nostalgia. I was elated to find an interview with George Davis, Professor Emeritus at Rutgers. In his interview, recounting his time as a graduate student, he did not have a favorable opinion about Brandeis. He names that Boston being a very racist place was a big reason for his dislike of his time there. He was under the pretense that Boston, being a northern city, would have not been such a bastion for racism. He encountered the liberal-racism that we Black people in Boston know all too well - A distinct and particular flavour of anti-blackness. He was at Brandeis for all of 2 weeks before he got out of there. He studied “primitive religion” a major title that he himself names as having a negative racial connotation that he simply “didn’t want to deal with”. This critique of his is poignant because while he is talking about Boston’s particular culture of racism, he is strongly implying (practically declaring) that Brandeis too, was guilty of this strain of liberal-racism (and still is). If Brandeis wasn’t, it would have been a shelter for him in the broader Boston culture of liberal-racism – a crutch, not a hindrance. Him remaining at Brandeis for two weeks strongly implicates Brandeis as being a hostile environment as a Black Graduate student.

Malcolm X on the phenomenon of Liberal Racism

Another Brandeis Alumni I was able to find was author Terrie Williams. Williams states that “…it was a great experience being there” because it was a step outside her comfort zone. Williams majored in psychology and sociology and is very candid about having her first sexual experience at Brandeis (haha). She remarks that being at Brandeis was a very liberating feeling because it was her first time being on her own. She learned how to analyze people and come to her own understandings about judging character. She was able to hone her independent thinking skills and learned the life lesson of “taking things with a grain of salt”. She states that “sometimes people are afraid of your light” and sometimes “can dislike or be afraid of you for no reason”. Terrie did not name this as an explicitly racial experience, but more so, names it as a “spiritual” reasoning for not getting along with some people. I do not question Miss Williams’ ability to analyze or articulate her own experience or reality, but I would say that this abrasiveness people on campus toward her, fearing and disliking her “light” could simply be, the Boston-Brandeis liberal-racism strain. Overall, she seemed to have had a positive experience because she did not let the negative aspects diminish her ability to love herself and enjoy her time on campus as she pleased. This is an essential ethic of navigating any PWI. Don’t let the minor teeth-sucking, scoffs and glares of lesser bigoted people bother you. I truly admire her self-driven attitude and respect for self-sovereignty. She says that she navigated university and travel with a constant state of “butterflies” in her stomach. She was exhilarated to be in a new place with the ability to do and think as she pleased, regardless of the overall climate and student culture in regards to race. I admire her candor, attitude and general outlook on life, and I am also happy to have her as a member of our alumni community. I for one will take her words to heart.

Author, Philanthropist, therapist Terrie Williams - Brandeis 1975

I was able to find all of these interviews by searching “Brandeis” within the HistoryMakers Digital Archive. I manually perused the archive, finding topics that I felt best represented the diversity of Black experience at Brandeis – one as an undergrad, one as a graduate student, and one who fled Brandeis due to its racial contradictions.