Courting the Negro

Long before acceptance or rejection notices from prestige universities arrived at the homes of anxious applicants last week, it was clear that the most favored youths in the U.S. today are bright Negroes with good high school grades. "Admissions people used to talk about what the average College Board score of their entering class was," notes Amherst Admissions Director Eugene Wilson. "Then it was how many Merit Scholars you got. Now the status symbol is how many Negroes you get." Although the hot pursuit is dismissed by some of the quarry as a cynical and faddish courting of color, most of those chosen are vastly pleased.

Just five years ago, Yale had only about ten Negroes in its incoming class; this year it has accepted over 40. Columbia had only 16 Negro freshmen two years ago; this year it has accepted 56. Chicago, with a mere ten Negro freshmen two years ago, has accepted 75. Harvard, which never makes an official count of its students by race, nevertheless seems certain to add sharply to the 160 unofficially estimated to be on the campus now. The competition for the academically talented Negro, contends Stanford Psychologist Bernadene V. Allen, is "just as intense as it is for football players."

Early Doubts. "It's like a dream come true--it's almost unbelievable," says George Winston Lane, a senior at Chicago's virtually all-Negro Parker High School, who got letters of inquiry, many including application forms, from nearly 300 colleges. Modest and softspoken, George ranks fourth out of the 407 students in his class, is class president and a varsity wrestler. He considered bids from Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown and U.C.L.A.; he applied to Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola and Princeton. Accepted by all but Princeton, he chose Chicago because he plans to become a doctor and has a high opinion of its medical school. His two scholar ships, a National Merit Scholarship and an Illinois State Scholarship, will pay him a total of $2,500 a year. George credits much of his success to Parker Teacher Frank Ragland, who set up a non-credit "special activities" class for 30 students, drilled them on math and vocabulary. "He worked us to death," recalls George. "He also told us how things were opening up for Negro students in universities. We doubted him at first--but everything turned out to be true."

After Terry Hayes racked up the highest academic rating (3.93) in 30 years at Los Angeles' all-Negro Jordan High, Ivy League representatives rushed to his home, just three blocks from where the Watts riots began. Son of a pharmacist (both his parents have college degrees), Terry was president of his class, chief justice of the student court and a political science major. He is working for college money as a computer technologist at North American Aviation's Autonetics Division, and has been awarded full scholarships by both Harvard and Stanford. He hopes to become a diplomat, is torn between the two schools, but leans toward Harvard. An introspective boy who has never attended an integrated school, he worries about the competition he will face. "Up to now," Terry concedes, "I haven't really been challenged."

When a top Negro student happens to be a crack athlete, too, all of academe beckons. Dale Dover, son of a New York City cab driver, was a basketball star at Evander Childs High School in The Bronx and compiled an 89.4 grade average. He was eagerly pursued by Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, N.Y.U., Penn, Rochester and Oklahoma, visited most of those campuses, and still has unused airline tickets around the house. He applied to six schools, was accepted by all, has narrowed the final choice to either Harvard or Columbia. Dale took so many courses that he entered his senior year just one credit short of graduation and could have loafed. He didn't. "I like to catch the kids who are ahead of me," he says. He already has his lifetime vocational goals outlined. Successively, he hopes to be a professional basketball player, journalist, dancer, politician and actor. His intention, he says, is "to be a complete man."

Instant Negritude. Among the chosen Negroes who are not entirely uncritical of the fact that colleges now covet them, Cecilia McDaniel, an A student in Winston-Salem, N.C., sees her sudden popularity as a form of "reverse racism--an effort of schools to purge themselves of a longtime discrimination against Negroes." She was offered scholarships by Northwestern, Chicago and N.Y.U., probably will choose N.Y.U. because she is interested in drama, figures N.Y.U.'s Broadway-influenced drama department is "more practical" than Northwestern's. Judy Johnson, a bright, outspoken Richmond, Calif., girl, has been accepted by Stanford. She is deeply concerned with civil rights activities and has highly independent opinions (the Rev. Martin Luther King is "too religious" and Stokely Carmichael is "self-defeating"). Judy is disappointed that the colleges are apparently more interested in her color than her talent. She complains: "It's defeating to find out that after all your years of striving and attempting to excel in school, that it comes down to the issue of your race again--and the de-emphasis of the individual."

Some of the officials engaged in the pursuit of Negro scholars also have their doubts about how these students are chosen. "A great many colleges want to achieve instant Negritude," contends Benjamin McKendall, an assistant director of the College Entrance Examination Board. What they are really competing for, he argues, are "Negroes who act like white kids." Chicago Admissions Dean Charles D. O'Connell, on the other hand, is convinced that the competition for Negroes is nothing less than a sincere effort by colleges "to improve race relations and society." The colleges also benefit, he argues, since the Negro students "inject a note of reality" into higher education. "They're impatient with high-sounding but empty idealism; they give as much as they take out."

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