Hello.
To a certain extent, yes, W.E.B. DuBois did experience racism and
intolerance during his time as a student at Harvard.
DuBois considered himself an outsider at the school. He famously
remarked, "I was in Harvard, but not of it."
Probably the best source on DuBois's experience at Harvard is his own essay at:
"W.E.B. DuBois: Harvard in the Last Decades of the 19th Century"
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/DuBois/DUBOISP2.HTML
Here are a few key excerpts in DuBois' own words:
"Following the attitudes which I had adopted in the South, I sought no
friendships among my white fellow students, nor even
acquaintanceships. Of course I wanted friends, but I could not seek
them. My class was large, with some 300 students. I doubt if I knew a
dozen of them. I did not seek them, and naturally they did not seek
me. I made no attempt to contribute to the college periodicals, since
the editors were not interested in my major interests. Only one
organization did I try to enter, and I ought to have known better than
to make this attempt. But I did have a good singing voice and loved
music, so I entered the competition for the Glee Club I ought to have
known that Harvard could not afford to have a Negro on its Glee Club
traveling about the country. Quite naturally I was rejected."
"I was happy at Harvard, but for unusual reasons. One of these
circumstances was my acceptance of racial segregation. Had I gone from
Great Barrington high school directly to Harvard, I would have sought
companionship with my white fellows and been disappointed and
embittered by a discovery of social limitations to which I had not
been used. But I came by way of Fisk and the South and there I had
accepted color caste and embraced eagerly the companionship of those
of my own color..."
"In general, I asked nothing of Harvard but the tutelage of teachers
and the freedom of the laboratory and library. I was quite voluntarily
and willingly outside its social life. I sought only such contacts
with white teachers as lay directly in the line of my work. I joined
certain clubs like the Philosophical Club; I was a member of the
Foxcraft dining club because it was cheap... Naturally social
intercourse with whites could not be entirely forgotten, so that now
and then I joined its currents and rose or fell with them. I escorted
colored girls to various gatherings, and as pretty ones as I could
find to the vesper exercises, and later to the class day and
commencement social functions. Naturally we attracted attention and
the Crimson noted my girl friends; on the other part came sometimes
the shadow of insult, as when at one reception a white woman seemed
determined to mistake me for a waiter."
source:
"W.E.B. DuBois: Harvard in the Last Decades of the 19th Century"
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/DuBois/DUBOISP2.HTML
Additionally, I've located an extensive discussion of this issue in
the book, "W.E.B. Dubois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919" by David
Levering Lewis. Lewis' book offers some additional insights on the
subject.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805035680/
"... Du Bois was never capable of mixing comfortably with his white
classmates. The first few efforts he made left bruises. There was the
glee club rejection his first year and mention of other club rebuffs.
He would have given his eyeteeth to write for the Harvard Monthly but
was certain that the editors 'were not interest in [his] major
interests.'"
source:
page 97, "W.E.B. Dubois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919" by David
Levering Lewis, read using "search inside" at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805035680/
"Harvard was more of a mirage than an oasis of racial sensitivity, but
the Anglo-Saxon Protestant goodwill of its president and much of the
faculty was genuine. The place was saturated by snobbery, certainly,
with some egregious acts of racial and social superciliousness
committed by professors rather than students."
"And yet the fact that he was a young black man endowed with such
acute social insight did make Du Bois's lot a great deal harder than
outsiders who were white... He saw himself driven into lonely
defensiveness by the times. He was not one to be deceived by surface
civility to turn a resigned or placatory face to institutional
discrimination. Indignation -- constant, intellectualized, and
eloquently verbalized -- must have been regarded by him as the only
face worthy of being presented to a white whose philanthropy was at
best incidental and capricious, and at worst serving increasingly to
segregate and emasculate his race."
Source:
Page 98, "W.E.B. Dubois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919" by David Levering Lewis.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805035680/
Nonetheless, it's worth noting that Harvard selected Du Bois to be one
of only six student speakers at the 1890 commencement.
"Du Bois graduated cum laude on June 25, 1890, with a concentration in
philosophy...
The selection of Du Bois as one of the six student commencement
orators was intended as another signal of the university's evolution
into a national institution."
Page 98, "W.E.B. Dubois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919" by David Levering Lewis.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805035680/
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search strategy:
amazon.com, dubois harvard students
google: "I was in Harvard, but not of it."
I hope this helps. |
