For Black History Month, we take a look at historic black Cornellians from a diverse range of perspectives. These historic figures were far from “woke.”
Jerome “Brud” Holland (1916-1985) served as Ambassador to Sweden under Richard Nixon and later won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Holland was the first black student to play on the Cornell football team. He served as President of Delaware State and the Hampton Institute. He served on the MIT Corporation Board and as a Cornell trustee. Cornell named a low-rise dorm after him. His son Joe Holland also played football at Cornell and filed to be a Republican candidate for NY Governor in 2018.
J. Congress M. Mbata (1919-1989) was born in Johannesburg South Africa. He served as secretary of the Transvaal African Teachers’ Association and helped organize various conferences on the education of blacks in South Africa. He immigrated to the US and became a founding faculty member of Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center (ASRC). For the first three years, the ASRC did not teach any white students, but Professor Mbata enrolled three white students in his history class in Spring 1973 establishing the precedent that the ASRC was open to all. Mbata ran the graduate programs of the ASRC with a high degree of academic rigor.
Samuel Pierce (1922-2000) served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Reagan. Pierce had both undergraduate and law degrees from Cornell. Pierce argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Martin Luther King Jr. and the New York Times in the important First Amendment case, New York Times v. Sullivan. Pierce also served as a Cornell trustee.
Ben Bluitt (1924-2000) was Cornell’s first black head basketball coach from 1974-1980. He rebuilt the program after racial tensions and a scandal involving NCAA recruiting violations. Bluitt committed to select players based solely on merit – not immutable characteristics like race. He was also the first black undergraduate to play on Loyola’s basketball team.
Lisle Carleton Carter Jr. (1925 – 2009) served as Assistant Secretary of HEW under the Johnson Administration and then as Cornell’s Vice President for Social and Environmental Studies and then as Chancellor of the Atlanta University Center. In 1977 Carter became the first President of the University of the District of Columbia, when it was formed by a merger of three other schools. Carter chaired the panel that reviewed the ASRC after its first five years. Carter served as a trustee of Georgetown Univ. and Dartmouth College.
Meredith Charles “Flash” Gourdine (1929-1998) won a silver medal in the long jump at the 1952 Olympics. He earned a PhD in Engineering Physics from CalTech and later held over 30 patents. Gourdine served as a Cornell trustee.
Thomas Sowell (1930-) is one of the leading black intellectuals in America. From 1965 to 1969, Sowell was an assistant professor of economics at Cornell. He left in the wake of the Straight Takeover. Sowell has spent most of his career at the Stanford University Hoover Institution. Sowell said, institutional racism “really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way that one tests hypotheses” and “it’s one of many words that I don’t think even the people who use it have any clear idea what they’re saying”.
Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. (1950-) is a historian known for his popular books and TV shows. Gates was a tenured history professor at Cornell from 1985-89, but left to teach at Duke and then Harvard. He opposes reparations. From traveling to Africa, Gates found a cultural and genetic continuity between the old and new worlds “that had been systematically denied”, and was struck that “most social problems we thought were race-based were class-based: race was a metaphor.” Gates won a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 1961 and Time Magazine named him one of “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997.
All of these men believed in “equality of opportunity” rather than “equity.”
All of these men were celebrated in their time for their achievements. As we celebrate Black History Month, everyone should appreciate that black thought is found all along the political spectrum.
Cornellians and Americans more broadly should resist efforts by those who try to claim Black History Month for their own political agenda.
Contrary to what President Joe Biden said, “If you don’t vote for me you ain’t black,” authentic black voices are diverse. There are black conservatives, black moderates,and black progressives. No one person or group can honestly claim to speak for all 42 million black Americans living in the United States.
We salute these pioneers and welcome students and faculty of all races and political outlooks to discuss their political views without harassment.
This article was written by a member of the Cornell community who requested to stay anonymous.
