Speech by Julius Coles at the 75^th Anniversary Celebration of the

Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

John F. Kennedy Center Library

Boston Massachusetts

May 13, 2006

Race Still Matters in America

I want to thank President Tilghman for her kind introduction and for the outstanding leadership she is providing to Princeton University. I also want to congratulate Dean Slaughter on the excellent leadership she has brought to the Woodrow Wilson School as Dean. In addition, I want to thank her for all of the effort that she and the other members of the Planning Committee have given to make this year of celebrations of the 75^th Anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School so successful. I have participated in many of the events held at Princeton, Atlanta, Washington and now in Boston! I must confess that I have been pleased with the level of Alumni participation and the quality of the discussion that has been had on a broad range of public affairs issues. These events have served to bond the many alumni with the school and the University community at large.

I also want to thank Margaret Clark for her kind invitation to serve as the speaker today at this important luncheon to award the Princeton Prize in Race Relations. I feel quite honored to be offered this opportunity to speak to you today on the subject “Race Still Matters in America.”

In 1993, Princeton graduate and current Professor Cornell West wrote the classic book entitled “Race Matters” and I quote:

“Black people have always been in America’s wilderness in search of a promised land. Yet many black folk now reside in a jungle ruled by cut throat market morality devoid of any faith of deliverance or hope for freedom”

West also pointed out in his book several additional problems that continue to plague the African American community including a widespread breakdown of the traditional family structure; the rise of chemical dependency; a decline in life expectancy; the surge in black incarceration rates; the exploding homicide rates among youths; and an increase in suicide rates.

There are many historical causes of these problems, but I will not try to discuss them today because of their complexity. Nevertheless, I feel very strongly about the fact that America even after more than 300 years of history has not been able to solve its racial problems. While there have been dramatic improvements in some aspects of America’s racial situation, such as the end of formal or legalized segregation of the races and the restoration of basic rights such as voting and full citizenship for all U.S. citizens regardless of their race, racial problems still remain and there is a widening economic disparity between the White majority and the minority populations of this country.

In reading the press release on the selection of Eun Jin Lee as the winner of the 2006 Princeton Prize in Race Relations for the Boston area, I was struck by her record of achievement of promoting better race relations. The release pointed out that Lee delivered a speech explaining her disappointment with students who segregated themselves by lunch tables with “Little Japan,” Little Korea, Little Germany, Little Mexico. She also sought to promote cross-cultural communication by starting “diversity zone tables to mix international and American students and mandated that only English be spoken at them.

Her many achievements and those of the other students being honored today have reminded me back to my own childhood and experiences of growing up in Georgia in the racially divided city of Atlanta where: Blacks lived in segregated communities; attended inferior Black only public schools; studied from out dated text books discarded from White schools; did not have access to public facilities, restaurants or theaters; had to drink water out of “colored water fountains” and used toilets only reserved for people of color; rode in the back of buses and trains; and were often insulted or humiliated by the majority White population.

A lot of people in the audience today cannot identify with this situation by virtue of the fact that they were not yet born during this period, or lived in White communities that had no minority populations or plead ignorance to knowing how bad the situation was in those days of formal segregation in our country. I cannot forget what I or other people of color experienced during this period of our country’s history.

I came out of this environment thinking and accepting the views expressed by the proponents of segregation at that time that I was a “Second Class Citizen” and an “inferior being.” This acceptance did not stem from the fact that I was not proud to be Black and thought that I did not have the intelligence to excel academically or in life. It came from the fact that I had grown up in a segregated Black world and did not have an opportunity to interact or compete with Whites and other non-Black students in the first twelve years of my education and early childhood i.e., I had no reference point but my own race to judge my ability.

While in high school, I was given the opportunity to see a play performed by Moral Re-Armament (MRA) about people of all races working and living together to improve the quality of life for all people in the world. The members of the cast came from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. I said at that point in my life that I wanted to be a part of this multi-racial world rather than the segregated world that had controlled my life up to this point in time.

In my sophomore year of college, I was given the opportunity to travel abroad for the first time in my life. In order to cover the cost of this program, the Morehouse student body decided to give me $1 each to send me to Africa as Crossroads Africa Volunteer to Senegal. This international experience opened a new world for me. It gave me the confidence that I could compete with students from the best schools who were in my Crossroads group. I discovered a continent of mainly Black people who were intelligent, confident and proud of their culture and heritage. It was a continent that I fell in love with and wanted to devote the rest of my life to helping the people to improve the quality of their lives.

My next life changing experience was to receive a Merrill scholarship to study abroad after the completion of my junior year in college. I was given a grant of some $3,000 from Charles Merrill, the Headmaster of the Commonwealth School in Boston, on the condition that I left the U.S. for a year. I could have traveled around the world or done anything I wanted to do. I decided to study at the University of Geneva. I not only studied in Geneva, but traveled all over Europe and North Africa from Moscow to Lisbon; Finnish Lappland to Greece, Morocco and Algeria; worked in a Quaker Work Camp in northern Finland assisting the veterans of the Winter War; and participated in a Quaker Seminar held in Sarajevo in what was then the country of Yugoslavia. What a mind opening experience. I learned that I could not only compete with the best American students, but I could equally do as well with some of the best students from around the world, including Russia, Japan, Thailand, Brazil, Germany, France, Jamaica, Ghana, Nigeria, India and Pakistan. I could associate with whoever I wanted; eat where I wanted to and just be another human being. What a life changing experience.

The next life changing experience was my acceptance into the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. My first reaction to seeking this great University for the first time was to say to myself after visiting the university and graduate college and having seen graduate students with their Black academic robes going to eat in the Graduate College dining room and others playing with their pet hamsters in the Graduate College court yard. I said to myself that I hope that this place does not turn me into a “freak” like some of the graduate students appeared to be.

In order to understand the Princeton University environment in the mid-1960's, I would like to quote from the recently published book by Carl A. Fields who was the first Black University Administrator in an Ivy League University - Princeton entitled “Black in Two Worlds.” In this book President Robert Goheen wrote in the forward:

“The first black student since the 18^th century to break Princeton’s color barrier was a carry over from one of the military officer training programs conducted by the University during World War II, and it may have helped that he was a fine basketball player. By 1961 when we had become sufficiently aroused to be actively seeking black applicants, only two had enrolled. To our surprise we discovered that various things in its history made Princeton a less-than-attractive prospect for many young blacks well qualified for enrollment, while for those who took the chance and enrolled it was proving to be a less-than-comfortable setting.”

Carl Fields further states in 1964, when I was admitted to the graduate school, that there were 12 Black undergraduates mostly in the freshman class and four Black graduate students out of a population of some 3,000 undergraduates and 1,000 graduates students. Before I left Princeton there were about 10 Black graduate students and about 30 undergraduates, including Africans and Carribean students. Out of these 10 students two of them are here today and have remained as life long friends: Dr. Badi Foster, President of the Phelps Stokes Fund and myself.

What was life like at Princeton in those days?

• Black students felt that they were in a struggle for survival. While we did not openly segregate ourselves at lunch or dinner, we frequented each others rooms and sought support and encouragement from each other.

• There was some open hostility shown toward us. There were even confederate flags flying in dorm room windows.

• Disparaging remarks were often made about the Black students abilities and perceived reasons for their acceptance at Princeton.

• There was no real social life for Black students. Very often we would travel from Princeton to New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington in search of a social life. White girls attending mixers at Princeton would often refuse to dance or socialize with us for fear of being stigmatized by the other White students.

• Nevertheless, my fellow Woodrow Wilson School classmates as well as other graduate and undergraduate students offered me friendship, academic help and support throughout my stay and sought to make my experience at Princeton one of the best in my life.

Forty years later Princeton has changed dramatically. The efforts made by President Goheen, who really opened the door for minority students to enter Princeton, will always admired by the Blacks who felt he exercised much courage in admitting Blacks into Princeton in the 1960's. His actions were followed by further gains in the admission of women and a larger number of minority students during the Bowen, Shapiro and now Tilghman administrations.

Princeton today is a very racially, culturally and ethnically mixed University.

• It has a student body with about 35% of the overall student population being from minority groups.

• While there still may be problems between the races, on the surface, the student population looks like an American University should look, especially one of America’s greatest University.

We as Princetonians should be proud of the achievements that our University has made over the past 40 years in the area of race relations and racial diversity. As evidence of this changed environment, I am also very pleased to note the high acceptance of minority candidates for the Class of 2010 and this year’s Graduate School entering class. These statistics become more important in view of the recent census data which states that one of every three U.S. residents is now classified as belonging to a racial or ethnic minority group.

The statistics regarding Princeton University’s ethnic composition of its entering classes as I understand them are:

• Out of 1,792 students offered admission from 17,563 applicants 52% were men and 48% were women; 44% are from minority backgrounds (including bi-racial or multi-racial backgrounds).

• The Graduate School admitted 1,122 out of 8,614 applicants who applied for admission in the 2006-2007 academic year; 23% of those admitted were from under represented minority and women applying to the fields of Science and Engineering. Over the past year, the Graduate College has also made an effort to reach out to African-Americans, Latinos and American Indians and students accepting admission from these groups increased by 110%. The number of under-represented students is expected to move from 19 last year to 40 this year.

• For the Woodrow Wilson School the entering Class of 2007 will include some 20 students of color out of the 65 accepting admission. If only US students are looked at, the entering class will have a minority enrollment of 35%, which is about the composition of the entering class for the past four years.

I would like to close my remarks with a quote in the afterword of Carl Fields book written by Dr. Foster. He states:

“The roles of institutions of higher education in vibrant democracies include the continuous process of welcoming the “stranger” by simultaneously reducing the barriers of exclusion and extending the circle of elites based largely upon merit. Welcoming the newcomer has never been easy or free from conflict. Indeed, the very markers of differentness may trigger fear, anxiety and a sense of loss. The challenge is to manage those markers of diversity in such a manner that both the university community as a whole and the individuals in particular increase their social capital and social imagination. Managing diversity in this sense is not a one-act drama. The markers of diversity may change, but the challenges of social inclusion are ongoing. Our will and capacity to sustain such an effort will be strengthened if we carefully reflect upon the past to identify both successes and failures.”

Finally, I want to encourage Princeton’s President Shirley Tilghman to exercise her wise and gifted leadership by continuing to take bold initiatives to increase Princeton’s racial diversity among students, faculty and the administration so that future generations will state that Princeton heeded the call for leadership in promoting better race relations and social justice to help ensure that the American dream of a truly multi-racial society can become a reality.