Last year, Cornell Review observed Black History Month by celebrating a group of accomplished Cornellians who were not “woke.” This month we will go in depth about another historic black Cornellian, Pearl E. Lucas.
Noted black intellectual and former Cornell professor Thomas Sowell summarized:
One of the few people who came through the Cornell debacle with flying colors for courage and integrity was a slender young black woman named Pearl Lucas, an assistant dean who refused to kow-tow to the militants or to go along with the cant of the administration. She was fired on trumped-up charges, ruining her career.
Prior to arriving at Cornell, Pearl E. Lucas was already a civil rights pioneer and hero. Lucas held a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from the City College of New York and studied at New York University, Columbia University, and Exeter College of Oxford University.
When Prince Edward County, Virginia closed its public schools to avoid integration in 1963, Lucas taught the displaced black students in a “freedom school” that she co-founded. In 1967, under the Drew Foundation, she helped establish an international Montessori primary class in a Harlem public school. Her work was featured in a CBS News report.
Cornell Context
Cornell President James A. Perkins established the Committee on Special Educational Projects (COSEP) in 1963 to help students who have been “disadvantaged by their cultural, economic, and educational environments.” As originally envisioned, it was not for just black students but rather all historically underrepresented groups. It was funded out of the President’s Office rather than the individual colleges.
Today, COSEP’s function roughly corresponds to that of the Multicultural Student Leadership and Empowerment Office and the Office of Minority Educational Affairs. COSEP sent recruiters to inner-city high schools to encourage students to apply to Cornell, but all admission decisions were left to the individual colleges. COSEP tried to make minority students feel welcomed on a campus that was much less diverse than present-day Cornell.
From the beginning of the program, COSEP and Cornell’s individual colleges fought constant turf wars on every issue, from minority admissions to counseling of minority students. Sometimes individual colleges even rejected applicants recruited by COSEP. The colleges assigned each freshman a general faculty advisor and, after the student picked a major, a second faculty advisor for his major field.
Each college had a few full-time Assistant Deans to handle students struggling academically and students considering taking a leave of absence. In contrast, today more student advising is done by full time professional staff instead of individual faculty members.
In 1969, the Trustees’ Robertson Committee recommended “that all academic advising be removed from the COSEP office and go back to the advising offices of the individual colleges.” Recognizing that almost all of its faculty advisors were white, Arts & Sciences recruited Lucas to serve as an Assistant Dean. COSEP, which wanted to be in charge of all counseling to minority students, viewed the fact that Arts & Sciences had hired a black Assistant Dean for student counseling as an existential threat to their purpose on campus.
Lucas became the embodiment of the battle over black leadership and separatism. On the other side of this battle was James Turner (Director of the Africana Studies and Research Center (ASRC)). Turner sought to establish a semi-autonomous black-only parallel university at Cornell to separate everything based upon race. The ASRC invited national leaders of the Black Power movement, such as Stokley Carmichael, to campus to show support and to lead demonstrations. In contrast, most of Cornell, Lucas included, sought to integrate black students into all aspects of Cornell.
The Transgression
Lucas arrived on campus for the Fall 1968 term, just months before a group of black students took over Willard Straight Hall. Black students appeared to accept Lucas during her first year as an Assistant Dean. Yet, around Nov. 17, 1969, Everett Dickson ‘69 organized a written petition asking Lucas to resign by the end of Thanksgiving break or otherwise for Cornell to fire her. In the days before the internet and change.org, written petitions were the primary means of expression for campus groups seeking change.
Although Arts College Dean Alfred Kahn said the reasons given for seeking her resignation “are not clear”, the petition included the following grievances:
- In fall 1969, Lucas distributed an article to incoming COSEP students that advised black students against concentrating or majoring in Black Studies. Instead, the article argued students should pursue a wide variety of fields which might interest them, such as STEM.
- With Kahn’s approval, Lucas also sent out a letter to all COSEP students in the Arts College inviting them to visit her and get to know what services the Arts Advising Office had to offer. Kahn later clarified that black students could choose to seek advice from any Assistant Dean.
- As a secondary matter, Lucas was criticized for “demonstrat[ing] an inability to maintain political neutrality” in performing her job.
The petition had signatures from 79 Arts College students, 47 students outside the Arts College, and two others. Kahn then contacted the petition signers pointing them to a student-staff grievance procedure. He met with five black students in November to discuss their options. Kahn told the Sun that, as of Dec. 8, no student had filed an official grievance against Lucas.
The Deadline Passes
When Lucas did not resign, the Sun printed an open letter to Dean Kahn from four left-wing professors on Dec. 1 claiming that the hiring of Lucas without consulting black students was an example of “institutional racism” which should be reversed by removing her from her role advising black Arts College students.
The Sun ran an editorial on Dec. 3 proposing that Lucas retain her post, but that any black student who did not want her as their advisor be reassigned to someone else. However, the editorial missed the power play between COSEP and the colleges. Lucas was also working on a Masters Degree in History, and two conservative history professors published a letter in her defense on Dec. 9.
No students filed a formal complaint against Lucas, and the Afro-American Society (the political group that took over Willard Straight Hall) stayed out of the controversy. Lucas continued in her role as Assistant Dean.
Trumped Up Charges
On April 1, 1970, arsonists burned the ASRC building, and black students responded with weeks of protests, vandalism and violence. In the weeks that followed, there were high-level discussions between the Administration, James Turner, senior faculty, the Constituent Assembly and key trustees on a wide number of issues.
On April 6, Arts College Associate Dean Robert Scott dismissed Lucas as Assistant Dean for leaving campus over Spring Break without permission. In turn, Lucas claimed that she had cleared her vacation plans six weeks in advance. She filed a grievance to appeal her dismissal.
Lucas wrote, “I have attempted to respect the dignity of black students and their right to act according to their own volition rather than seeing them as intellectually inferior human beings who are to be manipulated in a power play.”
In the end, any dispute over Lucas’ career was overshadowed by larger political issues such as opposition to the draft, the Vietnam War, and a nation-wide student strike to end the war.
Lucas’ Grievance
On May 4, 1970, Cornell Director of Personnel, Diederick Willers heard Lucas’s grievance appealing her dismissal. She was represented by Law Professor Robert A. Pasley and ILR Prof. Frederic Freilicher. On June 1, Willers reinstated Lucas.
Resigning As Assistant Dean
Lucas resigned at the end of the 1969-70 academic year, completing two years of service. Together with Sowell, in late 1970, Lucas publicly criticized COSEP’s role in minority admissions, which drew a public reply from COSEP.
Lucas continued to work on a Masters degree in the Arts & Sciences History Department. While still a student, Lucas was appointed to serve on the US Dept. of Health Education and Welfare’s Advisory Council on Graduate Education.
Afterwards
Lucas graduated with a Cornell Masters degree in 1974. Lucas later served on the staff of the New York City Board of Education and as Director of the Head Start Program in Dutchess County, New York.
After serving as Dean of Arts & Sciences, Alfred Kahn served as Chairman of the New York Public Service Commission from 1974-77 and then as Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board 1977-78. President Carter then appointed him as White House Inflation Czar.
James Turner continued to serve as ASRC Director. In 1986, Turner stepped down as Director but remained as a faculty member. He served as ASRC Director again in 1996-2001.
Initially, the ASRC was funded as a part of the Provost’s Office. However, in 2010, Day Hall decided to make the center a department within the College of Arts & Sciences, where it would be funded under the same formula as other academic departments – in large part based upon the number of credit hours taught.
After the decision to move was announced, Turner attempted to organize protest marches opposing the move. But the administration stood fast. Prof. Robert L. Harris, Jr., who served as ASRC Director after Turner, resigned in July 2011, when the move to Arts became effective.
Minority financial aid was placed under a new Associate Dean of Financial Aid (outside the COSEP office) in 1976. A Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Minorities at Cornell recommended, “Since the college is the place where teaching and learning activities are concentrated, the academic life of minority students must be college- rather than University-based. Further, the University must take an active role in ensuring that the colleges fulfill their responsibilities for the educational activities of minorities.” The COSEP program was shifted from being controlled by a committee of liberal white faculty to being controlled by Day Hall, and ultimately it was folded into broad-based DEI efforts.
In conclusion, an attempted power grab by COSEP (and a most notable early effort at “cancel culture”) failed in Fall 1969. Pearl Lucas prevailed in her view that black Cornell students should be encouraged to take full advantage of all that Cornell has to offer. Though concurrent events overshadowed the battle at Cornell, Lucas’s bravery is admirable nonetheless.
