"Racial Progress in Oberlin," continued...
President Wilkins’ general outlook in matters racial may be surmised from his reaction to a letter sent him by a black Toledo doctor. While visiting his parents, Oberlin residents, the doctor went with a friend to play at the Oberlin Golf Club. There the two were refused admittance because of their color. The doctor wrote a courteous, informative and questioning letter one page in length asking how Oberlin College could so violate its tradition by succumbing to racial intolerance. The President’s reply, in total, was as follows: “Thank you for your letter of October 16, which, however, I must receive as a matter of information since the Oberlin Golf Club is a privately organized club, and is not controlled by Oberlin College.”5
One should not be left with the impression that President Wilkins never put himself forward for equality in racial matters. When the wife of a former faculty member did not wish to allow an African American woman as a resident in Cranford, the non-College dormitory that she headed, Wilkins and Secretary Donald Love made it plain that she must accept the woman or the relationship between the College and Cranford would be terminated.6
The President’s decision not to lead in public ways left those who worked under him without adequate guidance upon how racial matters should be treated. No one received the brunt more than Dean of Women Marguerite Woodworth whose thinking revealed the same lack of leadership as Wilkins. Many of her problems arose at the Dormitory Director level, both College and non-College. Directors did not care to have more than two African American women students at a time lest a house be considered a dormitory for black students. For the same reason they objected to having students of color live at a house for two or three successive years. The Dean was also perplexed by the problems caused by white women students who engaged in interracial relationships. One example was a very friendly relationship between a white female student and a black janitor. “One of the most difficult duties of a Dormitory Director and a Dean of Women,” wrote Woodworth, “is to persuade a student, of a reforming temper, that relationships of this kind are unwise and that they serve no useful purpose.” 7
Many of the visible interracial relations were constrained by Dormitory Directors. In one instance, an African American maid, in response to a Director’s request that she aid the Red Cross, said she could not afford to give money but that she would be willing to donate her blood. The Director replied strongly to the maid that she did not want such blood in her veins. The Director again brought up the subject the next day and at length. The maid then complained to the Manager of Residences and Dining Halls, whose duties included immediate supervision of the Directors. The latter talked with the Director in question but found no race prejudice. Wrote the manager, “Her family always had colored servants and she had colored servants in her own home and never had difficulty in working with them.”8 Obviously, some education was sorely needed.
Such inconsistency in leadership kept interracial social relations in uneasy tension. In the summer of 1942 a white and an African American woman decided to room together to test the school’s policies. They were members of a committee appointed by the Summer Student Council to report upon Afro-Americans in Oberlin. In the first session the women asked permission to room at Talcott Hall during the second session and the matron acquiesced. The matron later left on her vacation and her successor stopped the women when they began to move into the same room. This matron said that since she had never encountered such a situation she considered it necessary for the students to seek the permission of the Dean of Women. The Dean refused permission for several reasons: she feared opposition from some parents of students and some alumni; she believed no African American or white woman had ever expressed a desire to room together in the previous five years; and she believed that roommates normally chose each other on the basis of congeniality, a factor not particularly present in this case. The Dean doubted that the experiment would result in other black and white women rooming together as a matter of course in the future. Dean Woodworth did say that she would discuss the matter with the school’s Prudential Committee if the women wished, but they did not ask for her to do this. The right of appeal could only be carried to that committee because the President and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences were gone for the summer.
Instead, two students went to Orville C. Jones, a faculty member of the Graduate School of Theology where interracial rooming had been allowed for years. Jones told them that they were within their rights to room together. He then went to see Miss Woodworth and told her what he thought. Jones, described by an emeritus member of the faculty as a radical, not intellectual, not well organized, a sketchy thinker, "and with all that a sterling sort," accomplished little except to upset the Dean of Women and nettle Wilkins for injecting himself into the matter. Three years later Professor Jones' daughter received the permission of Dean Woodworth to room with an Afro-American woman student.
The women, still in separate rooms, saw Carl Wittke, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, after his return in September, although they realized that only the President had authority to overrule Dean Woodworth's ruling. Wittke thought their desire to room together was unwise and explained why, but he also said that there was no regulation to forbid it and that they could decide for themselves. If they wished to do so, they were free to do so. They never did room together.
5R.F. Pulley to E.H. Wilkins, Oct. 16, 1940; Wilkins to Pulley, Oct. 22, 1940. Ernest Hatch Wilkins Papers, Box 64, Oberlin College Archives.
6Annual Report of the Dean of Women, Sept. 1, 1945, Administrative Records Box 20, folder P-Y, 1944-45: Correspondence: IV, Feb. 12, 1945, Donald M. Love Papers, Box 4, folder C-Carlson, OCA.
7Annual Report of the Dean of Women, Oct. 1, 1941, Administrative Records, Box 17, T-Z, 1940-41, OCA.
8Gladys Swigart to Carl Wittke, Jan. 30, 1942, 3, Dean of Arts & Sciences, Personnel Records, Series 6 “Labor Relations,” Box 1, 1941-49, OCA.