Book Reviewed: The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard by Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth

Champions of Change

In 1959, Harvard University recruited eighteen African American men to its undergraduate program as a symbolic gesture of affirmative action, a term that did not exist at that time. Author Kent Garrett, one of these kids recalls and recollects his experiences at the famous school and brings us into the same page; how it was like to be black at Harvard at that time. In fact, they were referred to as negroes but later would change the term to African Americans. This book is an autobiography and personal recollection when civil rights movement began to advance in the south and started to shake the conscious of people around the nation.

This is an outstanding story of bright young men who changed the course of history at Harvard. This stirring memoir of love and resilience proves that there are no limits for living joyously despite the fact society treats you unequally. The author is a fierce advocate for equal opportunity, and his life-story is an inspiration to all young men. He renews hope and offers fresh strength. Author Garrett’s work offers insights to a journey only 5% of applicants get to experience. It unearths curiosities that will rock the Ivory Tower and change perceptions forever.

Muriel Sutherland Snowden, a black woman who graduated from Radcliffe in 1938 could not attend classes at Harvard, at that time women were barred from taking Harvard classes. Her experiences at Radcliffe was like the author Kent Garret at Harvard who apparently had a good life at the famous university. It is possible that Garrett might be cleverly hiding racist and other intolerable experiences on campus. Snowden admits that her background of growing up as a black child in a white community and attending all-white schools had made her assimilation at Radcliffe easier! Is that possible?

Activist Richard Theodor Greener was the first African American who graduated from Harvard in 1870. His admission was "an experiment" by the administration and paved the way for many more black graduates. The famous black activist and scholar W.E.B. Dubois earned his PhD from Harvard in 1890. The darkness in the legacy of Harvard, in terms of race relations, stretch as far as its 384 years of iconic history. The greatest university in the world sometimes dos does not live up to its reputation since the university was built partly on slave labor. In a recent message, dated Nov 21, 2019 from Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, a number of activities were planned to promote racial healing on the campus: memorials commemorating the lives and contributions of slaves were installed at Wadsworth House and Harvard Law School; a faculty committee initiated research on the university’s historical ties to slavery through work with the Harvard Archives and other university collections; conferences with peers from across higher education; and numerous classes, seminars, exhibitions, performances, and discussions took place across the university campus.

What exactly is goodness? Where is it found in the literary imagination? Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison pondered these perplexing questions in her Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University in 2012. She observed that it is commonly found in society and among black population that has responded to centuries of brutality with creativity.