In the early part of the new century, not much in the way of admissions to higher education institutions changed. On the whole, during the period between 1900 and 1945, college was not an option for most Americans. This was especially true for black citizens. The majority of black people lived in rural areas of the South, and many still worked as sharecroppers or other capacities in agriculture. That period saw high rates of lynching and other forms of racial violence, but it also observed the solidification of a black middle and elite class.5 In some ways, members of the black elite had the opportunity to enjoy the privileges of their white peers that included taking advantage of higher education. In other ways, even the black elite could not be fully human. By that time, the institutions most available to black learners were the HBCUs: Howard, Hampton, Fisk, Morehouse, Spelman, Tuskegee, Wilberforce, Lincoln (Pennsylvania), and Florida A&M were among the top choices for the black college bound. What today are called predominantly white institutions (PWIs) comprised less of an option to black students, particularly those not from elite socioeconomic backgrounds. As historian Robert Harris Jr. observed, by 1910, only fifty-four black students (men and women) graduated with their bachelor’s degrees from elite PWIs, which included universities such as Columbia, Yale, the University of Chicago, Harvard, Stanford University, University of Michigan, Penn, and Cornell. Black graduate and professional students by and large looked to the Ivy League for their degree options. As of 1939, thirty-five black students graduated from Columbia, twenty-eight from Penn, twenty-five from Cornell, twenty-five from Harvard, and ten from Yale.6
At that historical moment, considering the educational options at the secondary level for most black people, even fifty-four black undergraduate degree earners in 1910 was miraculous. In terms of public secondary options there were a finite number of schools that prepared black students for work at elite higher education institutions. Of those secondary schools, the M Street School (later renamed Paul Laurence Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C., is one of the most (if not the most) acclaimed. With its faculty holding an impressive number of advanced degrees, the black prep school in D.C. trained some of the most influential black figures in the history of the nation. Of its early graduates, 80 percent earned degrees at the collegiate level.7 Many went from the M Street School to the Ivy League. Famous black educators such as Carter G. Woodson (alumnus of Harvard), Anna Julia Cooper (alumna of Oberlin), and Mary Church Terrell (alumna of Oberlin) worked as teachers or administrators at the prep school.8
Although Dartmouth and Harvard had accepted black students earlier, Cornell became an attractive educational home for black college students. Unlike the other Ivies, Cornell did not get its start until the nineteenth century, at the close of the Civil War. When founded as a land grant institution, Cornell’s founder and the new president indicated that the university should provide educational opportunities to all students regardless of religion, gender, and race. That was a departure from most of the Ivy institutions that started with religious underpinnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Where informal quotas for black students existed at places like Harvard and Yale, there were seemingly none at Cornell. Black students who could afford it attended at will. Between 1904 and 1943, nearly 150 black students matriculated at Cornell.9 For Cornell’s short history, the number of black matriculants was notable in contrast to other institutions in the Ivy League.
Aside from the fact that the institutional mission was more liberal than those of its peers, Cornell featured other qualities that made it alluring to black students. That it was in the North was a positive attribute. Before the Civil War, enslaved people running for their freedom to Canada used Ithaca, New York, as a stopping point. Despite the cold winters and remote geographic location in the Finger Lakes Region, a free black community developed. Ithaca’s location gave the town an appeal that New York City or Philadelphia did not have: very few distractions. That was an advantage for serious black students who could use the off-campus community for support and the quietude to study.
Cornell and its affiliates were not always welcoming. In 1900, a white student from West Virginia withdrew from the university in protest of two black students who were enrolled in his agriculture class. His southern sensibilities and rearing, he said, made him uncomfortable with black people being in the classroom. He knew his parents would not appreciate the fact that he sat in the same learning space and swam in the same pool with black students.10 The white student who withdrew was not typical of all Cornell students, but his behavior represented an aspect of life that black learners had to endure at elite PWIs.
Segregation, as restrictive and insidious as it was, forced black people to innovate in many ways. In 1905, men could not live on campus at Cornell. Most white homeowners would not board black renters so housing became an issue for black students. Black families like the Nelsons, Cannons, Newtons, and Singletons worked service jobs in town and on campus while supplementing their income in other ways. Edward Newton and William Cannon worked in fraternity houses on Cornell’s campus. Archie Singleton worked as a butler for a prominent white businessman in Ithaca and Singleton and his wife owned a business.11 These families opened their homes to black student boarders. The situation provided additional income for the black homeowners but also a secure place for the students to live.
Since enslavement, people in black communities revered formal education and they attempted to assist black learners who sought it. As historian Kevin Gaines put it, “African Americans have, with almost religious fervor, regarded education as the key to liberation.”12 In that way, those homes became more than support centers that allowed students to be human; they were incubators for black civil rights and intellectual leadership. The students appreciated the hospitality their hosts showed. “The social life among our group was carried on in the many comfortable homes of the Negroes [in Ithaca]. Nearly every Friday night, we were welcomed at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Cannon where we could meet their charming daughter and the other young women of the community. We were allowed to dance and good eats were always served us,” remembered Cornell alumnus George Kelley (class of 1908).13
While black students dealt with social isolation on campus in Ithaca, further north black leaders convened to address the rights of black people in general. Racial violence and political disfranchisement threatened African Americans wherever they resided. In Niagara Falls, Canada, black Harvard alumni Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter (Du Bois PhD and Trotter BA in 1895) organized a group of nearly thirty other progressive activists. By the end of the 1905 meeting, the group declared that their race deserved total freedom, which included the right to participate in the democracy and to be treated as social equals in all realms of society. Many scholars agree that the Niagara Movement was in many ways a precursor to one of the most influential civil rights organizations in the twentieth century: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Students with a desire to attend Cornell and other Ivy institutions were well aware of the glacial pace of racial progress and understood that by achieving education they helped uplift the community. They also instinctively knew that they would not be able to depend on the liberal notions of white administrators to succeed. Even though some elite universities allowed excelling black students to attend, those places were often all but welcoming. In the early twentieth century, Harvard’s president Abbott Lowell provided insight regarding the position of many liberal elite administrators: “We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man; but we don’t owe to him to force him and the white man into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial.”14 Some race leaders (particularly those who participated in the Niagara conference in 1905) agitated against that attitude. Booker T. Washington, who received