'Prez' Talks Up a Breeze

One hot June evening 51 years ago, a scared young man named Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones stepped off the train at Grumbling, a tiny community in the pine woods of northern Louisiana. At 19, newly graduated from Southern University near Baton Rouge, he faced a formidable mission: to teach biology, chemistry and physics, shape up a football team, strike up a band, act as registrar, and help cut firewood at Grambling's 25-year-old school for black teachers.

Jones succeeded so well that in ten years he took over as president. Over the next 41 years, he saw his country school blossom into Grambling State University, legendary in pro football and a leader in remedial education. At 71, Jones is finally retiring this spring. TIME Education Editor Annalyn Swan visited Grambling to talk with him about his half-century in black education. Her report:

"Prez," as Jones is affectionately known by staff and students alike, is jovial and easygoing--given, as he says, to "talking up a breeze." A storyteller in the Southern tradition, he splashes his tales with emphatic "Oh, Lord's" and resounding laughs. As he drives around his 380-acre campus in a canvas-topped Oldsmobile 98, he waves to students and invites visits to his office. There, a small plaque on his desk proclaims LOVE YOUR ENEMIES; BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU. Says Jones: "I'm a front-row, 'amen' Baptist deacon."

When he first arrived in 1926 with a degree in science and men's tailoring and one homemade suit, he found Grambling to be just a few small wooden buildings lighted by oil lamps. Students often slept two to a bed, board was $10 a month, and both men and women residents worked on the school's farm to produce their food. The teachers' salaries were paid with proceeds from a touring minstrel show. Jones' band was a 17-horn affair--the brass bought on credit from Sears, Roebuck & Co. Many of its members also played football and would parade out for halftime shows in their football uniforms.

Luckily for impoverished Grambling, Governor Huey P. ("Kingfish") Long approved the school's efforts in 1928 to become state supported, and the first funds arrived two years later. But not until 1944 was the first B.A. degree awarded, marking Grambling's ascent from a teacher and trade school to a four-year college. Meanwhile Jones pioneered a field service that toured the backwoods, teaching such basics as hygiene and how to fix a harness. "We were asked off of some plantations," recalls Jones, "because they thought we were running their labor away. And [sharecroppers] did leave with the unit quite often because they wanted something better." On the side, Jones continued to coach baseball, as he still does, amassing over the years an impressive record of victories.

Today Grambling is best known primarily for its stellar football teams and its 150 alumni who have played in the pro football leagues. But the college stresses mind over muscle. About 40% of the faculty have Ph.D.s; most of the rest have master's degrees. Business is now the most popular major--even among athletes, who once specialized in physical education--as Grambling encourages them to prepare for life after sports. Too, Grambling became a university in 1974, qualified to grant master's degrees in education and sports administration.

More than 90% of Grambling's students come from poor families, and Grambling itself is not much richer. Modern six-story dorms have replaced the converted prison barracks that once housed students, and new classroom buildings have sprouted in what was once farm land. Yet Grambling still looks like a poor cousin of the originally all-white Louisiana Tech. University, only three miles away.

Jones refuses to express any bitterness about Grambling's second-string status, even joking over the years--for the benefit of white legislators--that they should support Grambling "because if you take out the r, then it's a sin." Nor does he complain about the competition of formerly all-white colleges for star black athletes. Says Jones: "They can get all the boys they want, but many were not gotten at all before." For Grambling, integration has meant an influx of white teachers, now about 30% of the faculty, but few white students (only about 40 out of 4,000).

Jones shies away from racial talk, offering instead the view that "we're all Americans, all immigrants." He speaks with pride of his own roots--a slave grandfather who bought his freedom and encouraged his children to get the best education possible--but Grambling does not put much emphasis on its black studies program since careers in the field are limited. Jones argues vigorously, however, that predominantly black colleges should not be merged with previously white state universities. Says he: "We understand the problems a young, often poor, black boy or girl faces. Put them in an institution where few understand their problems, and they are lost."

What will Jones do next? There will be speeches and official Government trips to observe schools abroad. Perhaps he will pay an extended visit to his two sons in Baltimore (his wife died in 1953); to date, he has never taken a vacation longer than a weekend. And. of course, he will always have his college. Right now, Jones is building a new house a mile away from his present residence on campus. He jokes that his faculty friends are planning "to beat a path to my door for dinner." If they don't, "Prez" will certainly beat one back to Grambling.

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