"Racial Progress in Oberlin," continued...
The big band craze continued through the war years. Greer gave up “Swing Spot” due to the difficulty of digging up fresh and interesting material, but the column was later continued by others. It seems not incorrect to state that the kind of music supplied by these dance bands received little support from some faculty members in the Conservatory of Music. In spite of this obstacle, this music was heard in Finney Chapel at the first swing concert ever given there, October 6, 1944. A sextet of area African American musicians, led by pianist Frank Williams, an Oberlin High School graduate who in the 1980s would earn a degree at the Conservatory, played the “One O’Clock Jump,” “I Can’t Get Started With You,” “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,” and other standards of the period. The Review sponsored the event, comparing it to Ellington’s concert at Carnegie Hall the previous year. Admission of eighteen cents per ticket was charged, but the Review “graciously” invited Conservatory faculty members to attend as its guests. “Holy Smokes! Jazz Concert in Chapel,” declared the Oberlin News-Tribune. A precedent had been set and the “first big band swing concert” followed in June 1945, when a campus dance band, The Bluejacket Commandos, performed.11
Another area of dispute in social affairs was dating. A substitute Director at a women’s dormitory reprimanded a male student, whom she assumed to be white, for holding hands with an African American woman and the man, who was black in heritage if not in color, received a letter from President Wilkins in which he apologized for the Director’s statements.
The arrangements for some dances caused embarrassment because students signed for their dates. Preparations for a 1942 “Frosh-Upper-Class Shindig” brought several unpleasant moments. When a black woman signed for a white man, the latter proved not anxious to have the date. The student social committee asked the Dean of Women for advice and she suggested that the boy refuse the date. She said that the girl should be given a list of only those African American men who had not yet been signed up should she again approach the social committee. The student council committee considered this to be a proper response. But later the chair of the social committee told a white student, when only African American men remained on the list to be signed for, that she should not sign for a black man for the dance. Another white student was also told that she could not sign for a black student although she wanted to do so since all of the white men had been signed for. The Chair wrongly took the Dean’s action in the previous matter as precedent for her action.
An investigative committee formed by student council to document incidents of administrative inconsistency in racial matters did not believe that administration pressure had played a part in the dating signup troubles, but it did think that the Shindig Committee’s policy was one of discouraging interracial dating. All council members, except one, were certain that social discrimination was the implicit policy of the administration and they requested a statement from the administration that there would either be, or not be, discrimination. The council’s committee had found the application of rules by administrators, faculty, dormitory matrons and students inconsistent. Early in 1943 a joint faculty-administrative committee issued a statement that the College had no policy regarding students of different races and that rulings by the Deans followed procedures that apply to all. President Wilkins was reported as saying, “rulings will not be made on racial grounds.” Student council now considered that, at the least, there was something to hold the administration to.12
One group that openly tried to improve racial affairs was the Y.W.C.A. The General Secretary reported that they had an African American and a white as co-chairs in 1942-43 for their community center committee and that blacks had been involved in worship, community service and the recreation office. The Secretary said that Oberlin was unprejudiced in theory, but “not entirely in practice. Negro students do not always feel free to participate in campus affairs. Proportion of 1450 to 50.”13
In the town of Oberlin African American men were refused service by the four regular local barbers, all white. At night African Americans patronized the home of a part-time barber or on Saturdays they went to an African American shop whose owner worked in Elyria during the week. On May 4, 1944 a number of students at the Graduate School of Theology, in two groups, proceeded to two of Oberlin’s four barbershops. When chairs were vacant an African American student in each group stepped out to sit down. The barbers would not cut their hair. A peaceful sit-in of perhaps an hour followed until the barbers closed their shops. A week later publisher Charles Mosher slapped the wrists of the students by editorializing that they had only increased racial tension. He then suggested that the course to follow was to purchase one of the local shops and operate it bi-racially. Mosher pledged his financial and moral support if this could be done.
One of the Theology faculty members who supported this cause was the Rev. Walter M. Horton. Ten days after the sit-in, while serving as a replacement for the minister of First Church, Horton spoke from the pulpit against the segregated barber shops and both the Oberlin News-Tribune and the Oberlin Times printed his sermon in full. Horton said the practice of segregation was a reversal of Oberlin’s most sacred traditions and that the community was to blame, not the barbers who ran the shops. Horton favored following Mosher’s suggestion to get an interracial shop in operation, and he stated that he would henceforth refuse to patronize any barbershop in Oberlin, or elsewhere, unless its services were multiracial.
11 Review, Sept. 1, 29, Oct. 6, 1944, June 1, 8 1945. News-Tribune, Oct. 5, 1944. Times, Oct. 5, 1944. Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Oct.-Nov. 1944, p. 6.
12 “Report to the Student Council of the Special Committee …,” Nov. 27, 1942, Records of the Student Senate, Box 3, folder Interracial Committee, 1942-51,OCA. Review, Nov. 10, 17, Dec. 1, 1942, Jan. 5, 8, 1943.
13 Annual Report of the Y.M.C.A. for 1942-1943, 29/1, Box 2, OCA.