Influences on Higher Education, the University of Idaho, and the Civil Rights Movement

Derek Higgins

The train pulled out of the station in Moscow, carrying the body of a University of Idaho student whose life was cut way too short. Accompanied by an ROTC honor guard, the destination was back home, to a mother who was also a trailblazer at the U of I. The color of Berthold’s skin made no difference in the way he was honored at the university, with an obituary in the Argonaut and a full-page remembrance in the university yearbook, The Gem of the Mountains. He represented a bridge between the past and the future, and his untimely death ended a potentially promising chapter in the history of Black individuals at the university. While the early years at the U of I had few African American students, the students that did attend were still valued as members of the institution.

The treatment and inclusion of African American students at academic institutions has been investigated at many different colleges and universities by numerous scholars over the past half century. Many of these studies originated in the southern United States, focusing on schools in former parts of the Confederacy, and they focused on how the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s contributed to desegregating these institutions of higher learning. Looking at the ways in which colleges and universities, specifically ones within the footprint of the south, have dealt with these issues, presents a good opportunity to examine how the University of Idaho fits in the bigger picture.

Studying the impact that race and racism had on the Black experience at the University of Idaho during the twentieth century is an integral exercise that will show how race and racism at the University of Idaho compared to the larger trends in higher education in places such as the southern regions of the United States during the same time period. The importance of understanding how the Black experience at the University of Idaho either put the university at the cutting edge, in the middle, or behind other universities in tackling the issues of race and racism, while influencing the inclusiveness of campus life, is essential to establishing a much fuller and clearer picture of campus life during these pivotal times.

The graduation of Jeanie Hughes, the University of Idaho’s first Black graduate, in 1899, showed evidence that admissions were not segregated at the University of Idaho in the late nineteenth century, and subsequent decades showed evidence of Latinos, Asians, and Asian Indians being admitted to the university on a regular basis. Despite this, the University of Idaho yearbooks featured racist caricatures and Greek houses, such as the Fijis, often dressed and performed in blackface during talent shows and similar activities.¹ At the University of Idaho, the black student population and influence only became relevant with the advent of Black athletes competing in sports such as football and basketball in the post WWII era.

By the 1980s and 1990s, diversity at the University of Idaho was better, but still lacking compared to the rest of the school’s student population. Dan O’Brien, the “World’s Greatest Athlete” in the mid-1990s, was representing Idaho in Track and Field.² Lionel Hampton’s influence and support of the annual jazz festival led to a deep-rooted connection between the university and Hampton.³ With the racial turmoil and upheaval that encompassed the past year, diversity on campus and the growing influence of groups such as the Black Student Union and the Black Faculty and Staff Association have been placed front and center at the university. Building upon a movement that installed Mark Edwards as the first director of diversity and community for the University of Idaho in 2006, the university is working towards reconciling the spotty record of diversity and inclusion it has incurred since its founding.

The First Black Student and Her Legacy

Categorizing the Chrisemons as Exodusters may not be the most appropriate description of the family, but their travels across the country coincided with the first great mass migration of African Americans after the Civil War. The Great Exodus was characterized by thousands of black Americans moving westward from states in the South and from eastern parts of the country.⁴ Most often the individuals and families that moved across the Mississippi river into Kansas and Indian Territory (Oklahoma) are best known as the Exodusters, but the Compromise of 1877 set events in motion that would eventually see a first great wave of black migration, and then eventually a much larger second wave, beginning in the 1910s, involving millions of Black Americans. This was but the beginning of a larger population shift of African Americans out of the south that extended from the late 1870s through the 1960s.⁵ The Chrisemons, Lewis and Louisa, followed this path of westward migration, as evidenced by the dates and locations of their children’s births. Jennie Eva Hughes (born to Louisa and Alexander Hughes on July 20, 1879, in Washington D.C.) was the oldest child. Not long after Jennie was born, her mother married Lewis Chrisemon and they traveled westward to Pennsylvania where Gertrude was born (1884), then to Indian Territory where Lousinda was born (1888), and finally to Idaho where Carrie was born (1891).⁶ Arriving in Idaho, the Chrisemons were a rare thing, for the state had only 201 Black residents according to the 1890 census.⁷

They settled in Moscow, the sleepy town that would eventually be granted Idaho’s flagship university in 1889 by Governor Edward Stevenson, in part to keep the northern panhandle part of Idaho from breaking away and joining the state of Washington.⁸ Becoming the first black family to settle in Moscow, Lewis Chrisemon went into business as “either a restaurateur, a barber, or perhaps both.”⁹ The Chrisemons was not the first black family to settle in Latah County, though, as that title has resided with the Wells family. Joe and Lou Wells lived near Deary and ran a successful “lodging house for loggers and homesteaders.”¹⁰ Both were well respected, and Lou was quite famous for her abilities as a cook and host. Joe was a logger, and while this profession did not exclude Black people, most loggers he would have encountered would have been immigrants from Europe. Both families were probably excluded but neither one expressed great concern about their safety while living in the area.¹¹ Most of the time, Black people in remote western towns tended to be treated more “normally” by the white residents.¹² Many white people in these towns had not been exposed to the kinds of racism and Jim Crow segregation that were present in the southern and eastern United States. Since most of the people living in Moscow or the surrounding communities probably had never encountered Black people before, their opinions would only truly be formed by their encounters with families like the Chrisemons and the Wells.

The University of Idaho did not officially open for classes until the Fall of 1892 and conferred its first four degrees in 1896 to four students: two women and two men.¹³ The year 1896 also saw the enrollment of the university’s first Black student, Jennie Eva Hughes. While some schools in western states restricted black students attending public schools, Moscow did not. Jennie Hughes graduated from Moscow High School in 1895 and enrolled at the University of Idaho shortly thereafter. Historian Keith Petersen writes that,

“Margaret McCallie was a year ahead of Jennie and remembered her as ‘that lovely colored girl,’ who was one of the few women students not belonging to the YWCA, even though her classmates urged her to join. Jennie hesitated because she did not belong to a church.”

Jennie Hughes joined nearly everything else she was eligible for, however, and accumulated an admirable academic record. In 1898 she won the Watkins Medal for Oratory, the university’s most prestigious award. The following year she received her Bachelor of Science degree.¹⁴

Sometime around the time she graduated, Jennie met George August Smith, a Georgia native, and the two were married shortly thereafter. Jennie and her husband George moved to Wardner, Idaho, a small mining town near Coeur d’Alene. George prospered in his mining speculation, owning multiple mines, and putting the family in a good position financially.¹⁵ Jennie gave birth to four children while they lived in Wardner. The oldest son Berthold was born in 1901, only daughter Amie in 1904, and Jennie’s two youngest sons, Leonard and Ralph, were born in 1907 and 1911, respectively.¹⁶ The rough and tumble life in a mining town did not suit everyone though, and the family eventually moved to Spokane, Washington, in 1912, to go to a larger urban center where Jennie believed raising their children would be better. Her oldest son, Berthold, enrolled at the University of Idaho in 1919, the second Black student to ever enroll and one of two students in that class whose parents were alumni (also a first). Not much is known about Berthold and his time at the university. He was enrolled in the School of Mines, most likely to pursue a similar career path to his father’s.

A small Argonaut article announced the news of Smith’s passing on January 12, 1920 (he died on January 9th). A quote from Dean Thompson, head of the School of Mines, was noteworthy in that Thompson described Berthold as “a very bright and industrious student…(who) undoubtably had a very good future before him.”¹⁷ It is hard to say exactly how Smith’s life would have turned out, although based on the article he was probably just as bright as his mother. Two things stand out about this article and its appearance in The Argonaut. First, it mentions that Berthold’s body was escorted by the ROTC back home to Spokane, which begs the question, was he involved in the military while at the university? No conclusive evidence has been discovered so far, although further research on the history of the ROTC at the University of Idaho may yield greater information. Even as it came after the last big wave of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, the circumstances surrounding his death are mysterious.

Secondly, it is important to point out that nowhere in the article does it mention that Berthold or his mother were Black. His only description relates to his mother’s status as an alumna. Obviously, it would be easy here to insert the racial descriptor to either or both, but that terminology was omitted, either because people who would find the announcement of importance already knew the family and consequently knew they were Black, or because race was not an important factor in the article. This period (1919 and 1920) in the United States saw increased racial tension, deadly and destructive riots, and an increase in lynching.¹⁸ Race was at the forefront of life across the country during this time period, yet it played no role in reporting this news to the university community. Whether this was intentional or truly not an important thing to include, we may never know; however, reports of Jennie’s death a mere twenty years later would not be so ambiguous.

The September 19, 1939, edition of the school newspaper was not only the first issue for the 1939-1940 school year, but it represented the first issue of The Argonaut that covered news after the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Not quite three weeks had passed, and while armies were still marching through Europe, and college-aged students were preparing for war across the pond, The Argonaut was catching the university community up on summer events, changes brought on due to war preparedness, and everything a student would need to know about the beginning of the semester. As the first edition of the school year, the paper was larger than normal, and buried on the front of the third section, below the fold, was a small obituary. It read, “DEATH TAKES NEGRO WHO GOT FIRST DIPLOMA,” and was very brief.¹⁹ While not as in-depth as her son’s obituary twenty years earlier, it does provide a glimpse of the time and place in which she died.

The first and most obvious difference between the two is that that race does play a significant part in the complexion of this obituary. Focusing on her position as the “only colored student ever to receive a degree from the institution,” the obituary frames her importance not in that she was an early graduate of the university, but that she was the first and only Black student to reach that point.²⁰ There is no apparent malicious intent behind this change. Not coming across any other obituary postings in this time period of The Argonaut, it is unclear whether this is a case of highlighting an early trailblazer as the first Black graduate, or a combination of that and drawing attention to the loss of a link to the beginning of the university. It might very well be both, although by the fall of 1939, there were much larger issues on the minds of university students than whether or not there was going to be a second Black graduate.

The Argonaut and the 1950s

Today The Argonaut continues to be a presence on campus, but it exists more in the digital realm than the physical realm. Reduced to a weekly issuance, by the time the weekly print edition is distributed around campus, many students have heard about the news already. Looking back over the decades, it is apparent that in some respects, one could describe The Argonaut as the heartbeat of the university, a window into life on campus. It represents the closest anyone can get to understanding what was happening at Idaho and how it was affecting students. As the university went, so went the newspaper. It comes as no surprise then, that this would be a perfect place to check the pulse of campus life and see whether the University of Idaho was a racist place, whether bigotry and persecution, intolerance, and hate, made their way into this publication. If this place was intolerant of Black people or was outright racist, it would appear within these pages.

One student who stands out during the early 1950s, and who over the years has spent a fair amount of time on the pages of the student newspaper, is Reginald Reeves. The University of Idaho’s first Black graduate of the College of Law hailed from Greensboro, North Carolina, was in the military, and was known for his philanthropic and giving nature while on campus. After high school, Reeves attended North Carolina A&T and graduated in 1947 as a part of the “first four-year class of A&T’s Reserve Officer Training Program.”²¹ Reeves spoke to a large group of University of Idaho students during a Black History Month celebration in 2017 and recalled a story about his time at North Carolina A&T that was a foundational experience to how he approached life at the University of Idaho and beyond. Having decided early on in his life that he would never sit in the back of a bus unless he made that decision, he was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus he was riding in 1947.

Many years before Rosa Parks became famous for a similar situation, Reeves described how, after spending the day in Charlotte, North Carolina, he took a bus back to Greensboro. The driver did not force him to move from the front until they reached a small town, and upon Reeves’ refusal to comply, the local sheriff was called. They tried to talk him out of his decision, but staying true to his beliefs about the stupidity of the Jim Crow laws in the south, he refused to give in. Arrested and hauled off to jail, Reeves was eventually released after a professor he knew at North Carolina A&T paid his bail. This act of kindness the professor showed Reeves was a pivotal moment in Reeves’ life.²² Many years later, Reeves reconnected with Dr. Withers and properly thanked him for what he did for him. It was this kind of act that led Reeves to dedicate his life to service for those in need. Not only does this story illustrate the kinds of things Reeves would have been subjected to on a daily basis in the South, it also illustrated the kinds of things Reeves had prepared himself to deal with when he was looking to continue his educational journey. He had big plans to become a lawyer, and no amount of racial prejudice would get in his way.²³

A couple of years removed from North Carolina A. & T.; Reeves decided to go to law school. He had a particular set of criteria for the school he was going to choose. “It had to be in a state that did not have legalized segregation, it had to be inexpensive, and it had to be an old, established school. The University of Idaho met all his requirements.”²⁴ Reeves did not say much about his time at Idaho, joking that “Two days after I enrolled, they changed the application form to require a photograph. They did not want to make that mistake again.”²⁵ He was instrumental in helping Duane Lloyd set up a university-wide blood drive in November 1950 that netted almost 500 pints of blood to be sent to the troops fighting in Korea.²⁶ Reeves recalled a time in which he went down to the Moscow train station “where students had gathered to see off the university football team.”²⁷ Grabbing the megaphone of the cheerleaders, he led the crowd over to the student union to have as many people as possible participate in the blood drive.²⁸ Reeves was very active on campus, participating in numerous organizations, and represented the law college quite well.

For a predominately white university in the early 1950s, Reeves’ experiences on campus with the blood drives and other campus involvement provide examples of a tolerant campus that allowed Reeves to excel at his giving nature. However, not all was rosy for Reeves while he was at the university. Experiencing prejudice and racism during his time in Idaho, several businesses in Moscow and around the state of Idaho refused to serve him due to his skin color.²⁹ Graduating in 1952, Reeves went on to spend twenty years in the Army reserves.³⁰ Reeves spent time at the University of Idaho before much of what would become the Civil Rights movement really took off, and his experiences with places in the community and state are a stark reminder that every part of the country was touched by racism, segregation, and bigotry. Reeves’ experiences were not uncommon, and probably not unique to Idaho.

Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of democracy in the United States. However, freedom of the press was not always guaranteed on a college campus, specifically if it had to do with racial issues. University presidents and administrators often had quite a bit of say when it came to publishing certain kinds of topics in student newspapers. At South Carolina State College, a Black public institution, President Benner C. Turner told the student body in 1956, “while it is not forbidden that comments on controversial matters be printed in the college paper, final authority as to what shall be printed must rest in the President’s office and not in the faculty adviser of the college paper.”³¹ White institutions in the south enjoyed more leniency and greater first amendment rights when it came to controversial topics being published in the school newspaper. The University of South Carolina saw students “register a variety of perspectives on a host of topics, including the black freedom struggle.”³² The University of Idaho seemed to fall into the latter category, as no evidence has been found to indicate that university administration held sway over what was published in The Argonaut. Even up through the late 1960s and early 1970s, when student activism regarding civil rights and the Vietnam War were highest, there are no indications that university president Ernest Hartung ever felt the need to step in and censor content that was published.

One thing that becomes readily apparent after looking through decades upon decades of student newspapers is that there was a true commitment to the members of the university community and a desire to focus on their needs first. Many of the opinion pieces or letters to the editor touch on national or world issues of the day, but most actual content found within the pages centers strictly on keeping students informed about everything going on at the university that would be of interest to them. Just because a national or world event does not make it onto the front page does not mean the students were not aware of or did not care about these events. One could imagine that many students got their national news in other ways, flipping on a radio or seeing newsreels before a movie at a local theater, (since dorm rooms would not have been set up for television, and telephones were only installed in individual rooms in the mid-1970s), print news media forms like The Argonaut, combined with radio, would have provided all the news and information a student could have access to while at school.

Events surrounding the Civil Rights movement in the United States provide a particularly interesting lens with which to look at how the students at the University of Idaho were reacting to these changing times. One editorial published on May 25, 1954, by The Argonaut editor Al Dieffenbach, was not only surprising but very telling in terms of revealing how students might have been feeling after seeing the United States Supreme Court strike down racial segregation in public schools with the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ruling in May 1954. Dieffenbach writes:

“A salute is due the members of the United States Supreme Court for their recent action in deciding 9-0 that racial segregation in public schools is not kosher. Their action was another in the series of moves which have been going on for almost 100 years. These side actions have gradually worn away most of the South’s racially intolerant concepts.”³³

He goes on to chastise southern leaders like Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge and South Carolina Governor James Byrnes on their continued opposition to desegregation efforts, saying that if this is to be viewed as a political move, then “this country needs more political moves-the South particularly.”³⁴ Dieffenbach’s feelings are quite strong in the article and leave no room to interpret anything different when it comes to his views on racism and desegregation. This piece was truly a shock to read, most notably for the progressive and anti-racist views being expressed in 1954. Did the entire university feel this way? Since Dieffenbach was the editor of the newspaper, did it make it easier to get an article like this published? No follow up articles, rebuttals, or anything else related to the Supreme Court’s decision appeared in latter issues, and the wrap up of the semester not long after this was published meant a break of a few months would move the news on to other topics. Obviously, this piece cannot be the mouthpiece for an entire student body, but it does give an insightful glimpse into the possible current of student feeling at U of I. Sports at the University of Idaho

Athletics have played a prominent role in the university’s development since the start, often providing the most prominent source of interaction between the university and the surrounding community. Success breeds interest and interest breeds greater scrutiny from those who have a vested interest (or those who feel that they do) in keeping that success going. Decisions also must be made, some much easier than others. The 1953-1954 athletic year saw the most dramatic shift in Vandal athletics since their inception. Not only did the football team hire a new coach (not in and of itself all that unique, as Idaho had gone through many head coaches up to that point), but the Athletic Department was detached from ASUI (Associated Students of the University of Idaho).

Black athletes only began competing for Vandal athletics around 1954. As far as the information available, there was never any sort of color line or restrictions on Black athletes competing in University of Idaho sports. Previously stated issues with university demographics compared to state demographics more than likely contributed to the absence of Black athletes from the university playing fields. Skip Stahley’s hiring in 1954 as the new football coach, after previously spending a year on the coaching staff of the Chicago Cardinals NFL team, seems to be the catalyst for getting the first Black football players to Idaho.³⁵ Seasons filled with futility had led up to that point, and Stahley was tasked with turning around the Vandal football program in a hurry. Not only was this a daunting task, but seeing other western schools have success with Black athletes could have been a motivating factor for the ways Idaho had been recruiting players up to that point. To have a chance at competing on a higher level, programs needed to recruit nationally and look for the best players out there, regardless of skin color.

So, in addition to academic issues, sports stories were also covered in The Argonaut. As is the case for most universities, sports have played an integral role in campus life since the inception of the university. Sports at the University of Idaho have always been up and down, with small spurts of success followed by long doldrums of ineptitude. The single greatest catalyst for bringing Black students to Idaho has been sports. Beginning in the mid-1950s, men’s sports at the University of Idaho, such as football and basketball, began recruiting Black players from all over the country. This endeavor signaled an early foray into a movement that during the 1960s saw both “collegiate and professional sports (begin) to open to African American athletes.”³⁶ This in turn brought a little more diversity to the Idaho campus.³⁷

In 1960, The Argonaut chronicled this phenomenon at Idaho, mainly looking at Black student-athlete success rates at the university based on academic performance as well as their contributions to the success of the sports programs in which they participated. Written by the associate editor, Dwight Chapin, it represents an important early retrospective on an area where little has been written beyond the ultra-successful athletes who came later such as Gus Johnson and Ray McDonald.

In “The Negro Athlete at Idaho: A Story of Ups, Downs, Successes and Flops,” Chapin quick to point out that the intention of the piece was to “show the special application at the University of a growing trend in sport and pay tribute to some former Vandal greats, of a particular race.”³⁸ Not only does it let the reader know his intentions behind the piece, but it attempts to remove any negative racial connotation that might be construed by the reader during this time and place. Using a story about Johnny Sullivan’s heroics against the University of Washington’s basketball team in February 1955 as the hook, it made quite a bold statement on behalf of the university community.³⁹ Chapin wrote that, “Sullivan was among the first of Negro athletes who have written their names indelibly on the pages of Idaho athletic history in recent years. And the Idaho campus, to its credit, has shown that the color of a man’s skin matters little. The only criterion, usually, is whether the man can pass a football or dunk a basketball through the net.”⁴⁰ This was really a bold and somewhat shocking statement to read, not because it called out racism and projects that the campus community did not see race and only saw athletic ability, but that the statement was being made in February 1960. The recognizance that a change had happened and that Black student athletes were at the center of that change was extremely interesting.

Focusing on the growing trend of “the continuing predominance of the Negro in athletics in the U.S., both professionally and in the amateur ranks,” Chapin compares Idaho’s lack of stars to another western university, UCLA, who had considerable success with Black athletes.⁴¹ Citing Wilbur Gary as the first, “and perhaps greatest of Idaho’s recent Negro athletes,” Chapin describes him as a “whirling dervish” who played fullback for the football team in 1954-1955.⁴²⁴³ Johnny Sullivan also competed in football, baseball, and basketball during the same time period as Gary, and while Herb Hill was on the freshman basketball team during this time, his career at Idaho was cut short by poor grades.⁴⁴ The “Go-Go Boys” were the next big stars at Idaho, as “Jumping John Liveious and Whaylon Coleman” came west from Kentucky in 1955 to be a part of the Vandal basketball squad.⁴⁵ Chapin write

Together they helped draw capacity crowds to Memorial Gymnasium to watch frosh hoops games, putting on a show reminiscent of the Globetrotters. Coleman moved on to three years of stardom for the senior Vandals, being selected to the PCC All Star team in both of his last two years.⁴⁶ Liveious, after sitting out a year because of scholastic problems, performed ably for two years.⁴⁷

The year 1955 also saw the addition of two football players from out of state: Kenny Hall from New Jersey, and T. J. Owens from California. Both were integral components of the freshman football team.⁴⁸ Owens did not make as much of an impact as Hall did in their Vandal careers, with Owens playing only sparingly in 1956. Chapin wrote glowingly about Hall’s athletic ability (Hall started for three Vandal football seasons) , and said that, “his booming quick kicks still bring back memories. When he wanted to, the little man could really fly with the football too. His only handicap was lack of consistent desire.”⁴⁹ Chapin’s characterization of Kenny Hall, saying he lacked desire, presented a typical racist description of Blacks individuals in the United States as people that do not have any drive, desire, or want to succeed, and that their laziness is their greatest handicap (beyond being Black). It also plays up the idea of dumb athletes, especially Black athletes, and how they are either smart and not good at sports or good at sports but not smart, that intelligence and athletic ability are mutually exclusive.⁵⁰ The willingness to say in the beginning how not racist this piece is going to be and then using racial stereotyping on a Black football player speaks to how ingrained these ideas were in 1960 America. It also singles out these Black athletes in a token manner, as if almost trying to prove that we are not racist, we are inclusive by highlighting the small number of athletes that have contributed over the past five years. Players such as Kenny Hall led the nation in punting in 1957 and 1958 and went on to work on the Vandal coaching staff after he graduated in 1959, possibly serving as the first Black football coach for the Idaho Vandals.⁵¹

Players such as J. D. Lawson (Football 1957, 1958), Hal Fisher (Football 1958, 1959), Wes Glover (Football 1958, 1959) played important roles on varsity squads, while Ted Collins and John Henry Jackson only made it through the freshman team campaign in 1957. Another native of Kentucky, Philip Waters, “failed in a frosh basketball bid last year (1959).⁵² In the 1959-1960 school year, Gene Marrow starred for the football team while Howard Brown was on the freshman team and “Jumping Joe King” was the next great Black hoops player for Idaho.⁵³ Chapin summed up the article by saying that “without them there would have been a lot more empty seats in Memorial Gymnasium and Neale Stadium in recent years,” really driving home how important these athletes were to sparking interest in Idaho athletics.⁵⁴ His position is not an uncommon one and has been at the core of the debate between student athletes’ roles on campus. Did the campus community support these student athletes because they were fellow students, or only because they gave Idaho a better chance at being successful in sports? This is a question that may never be answered, as articles like the one just discussed give glimpses into the social current but never fully divulge campus sentiment. One could surmise that a welcoming and inclusive campus community opened their arms to embrace these transplants from out of state and showed them the respect and dignity they deserved. There were no doubt issues during their time at U of I, but in February 1960, there seemed to be only praises sung for their athletic contributions to the Vandal programs.

The 1960s saw tremendous growth and success for the Vandal athletic programs. Two important athletes who contributed to this success were Gus Johnson in basketball and Ray McDonald in football. Johnson was only at Idaho for one year but averaged 19 points and 20.3 rebounds per game in route to helping the Vandals to a 20-6 overall record. After he earned All-American honors in 1963, Johnson was drafted in the second round of the NBA draft by the Baltimore Bullets. He went on to spend 11 years in the NBA, garnering five NBA All-Star selections and four All-NBA selections. He was inducted posthumously into the Vandals Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.⁵⁵ Ray McDonald played three years for the Idaho Vandals at running back. Due to his size (6-4, 240 pounds) and speed (9.9 second 100-yard dash) he earned the moniker “Thunder Ray.”⁵⁶ Garnering two All-American honors, Ray rushed for 2, 916 yards and 39 touchdowns during his career (which stood for over 20 years as an Idaho record). Taken in the first round (13th overall) of the 1967 NFL Draft by the Washington Redskins, McDonald was the first Idaho Vandal ever drafted in the first round. He was inducted posthumously into the Idaho Vandals Hall of Fame in 2008.⁵⁷ While Johnson and McDonald were two of the most notable Vandals of the 1960s, another student athlete was working in the late 1960s to bring about a better understanding of Black culture and history for the mostly white campus.

Joseph Tasby, a Black student athlete on the Vandal football team, circulated a pair of petitions in the fall of 1968 asking the university to re-activate an anthropology course dealing with race, and the creation of a course in Black (or Negro as it was termed at the time) history that would also have a Black instructor. Both petitions garnered many hundreds of signatures of support.⁵⁸ President Ernest Hartung wrote a letter to Tasby acknowledging the receipt of these two petitions and the importance of these two issues and asking for patience as the university looked into fulfilling the requests.⁵⁹ He ended the letter by saying, “We appreciate your interest in pressing on these matters and feel that if the courses can be implemented in the manner and spirit you have suggested them, the University will undoubtably be a better educational institution as a result.”⁶⁰

The history department responded to the request at a department meeting where they discussed whether they could accommodate the creation of a Black history course and how to go about hiring a Black instructor to teach it. Upon examination of the course load, it was determined by the department that an individual course on Black history was not necessary as all the aspects it would cover were already taught in the various history courses being offered; a standalone course would create redundancy. It was also pointed out that there were not individual courses for women or Jews or other ethnic or minority groups, so taking this stance was not a new position for the department or the goals they had established for how to teach history. In response to the request to find a Black instructor for the department, it was pointed out that there had been times in the past where they had tried to hire or contact Black instructors before, but such instructors did not have an interest in coming to Idaho, nor had other similar universities had much luck in similar circumstances.⁶¹ This was not the final word though, as changes would be happening sooner rather than later.

The historians filed into the cramped conference room at the Administration Building for another history department meeting. It was early February of 1970 at the University of Idaho and, like every year since 1892, preparations for the upcoming school year were already well underway. As Dr. William Greever, department head, called the meeting to order at 4:15 pm, the group’s first order of business was both new and yet strangely familiar.⁶² A topic that had been discussed amongst these very historians around this very table a mere thirteen months earlier, the idea of a dedicated negro history course at the University of Idaho was now a distinct possibility. January 1969 had witnessed multiple meetings amongst the historians as to what kind of response they would have to a petition circulated amongst the students that called for a negro history course to be taught at the University of Idaho. Signed by over 400 students, it was but one piece of evidence that the national pulse on civil rights was creeping onto the Palouse. Much debate had ensued among the old guard, and after multiple hours of discussion, they reached a decision. Elements of negro history were already present in the currently offered American history courses. Surely no individual course was needed, for other races and sexes got no special treatment. Dr. Greever insisted that they would love to provide such a course, but fairness to all topics involved meant that there was neither the time nor resources to pursue the matter any further.⁶³ If the University of Idaho wanted a course in negro history, it would have to wait a little longer.

Playing the waiting game was not something the students would have to do for very long, as the topic these gentlemen historians had no time for in 1969 was back on the docket in 1970. Like blowing on the embers in a dying fire, the memo circulated by Drs. Willard Barnes and Siegfried Rolland breathed new life into the idea of a dedicated Negro history course.⁶⁴ Highlighting substantial student interest and adequate teaching materials, they implored the audience to consider the important experience that such a course would provide for not only the department, but for the university as well. As the minutes ticked by and the professors continue to discuss more details and opinions, only the impending, all-important vote would signal whether 1970 would be any different than 1969. Eventually, a vote was taken, and it was passed by unanimous agreement that such a course would be implemented in the 1970-1971 school year.⁶⁵ The change that Joe Tasby sought, that students on campus had been clamoring for, was now coming to fruition.

The Black Student Union and Recent Developments

The students walked up to the front door at 706 Deakin Avenue, eager to step inside the small wood-frame structure that was their new home. However, this was not a living situation; instead, it was a place for community, a place where Black students could come and discuss the issues of the day, eat and drink in fellowship, and work towards racial equality and understanding. Not a place of exclusion, but a nod towards inclusion and understanding of important issues the country was facing. As they sat on the new furniture, a member of The Argonaut snapped a picture commemorating the open house that was the celebration of the new cultural center on campus.⁶⁶ The house across from the Student Union had recently been renovated, allocated by the University of Idaho Board of Regents as the new cultural center that would serve as the Black Student Union headquarters.⁶⁷ In a document entitled, “The Rationale for the Black Student Union,” the founding members laid out why they needed a spot-on campus. They wrote:

According to the Kerner Commission Report on Civil Disorder of March 1968, the single most important problem confronting America is that of white racism. Recognizing that we the Black Students of the University of Idaho are among the victims of this racism; we have sought to organize the Black Student Union for the purpose of combating and alleviating whatever vestiges of racism that might be incurred. We also recognize that many of the problems resulting from racism arise out of a generalized and devastating ignorance on the part of the white community, we are developing a center for cultural interaction. It is for these reasons that the B.S.U. will function, on the one hand, as a coordinating center for black life on this campus, while on the other, as a Black Cultural Center for the use and education of the dominant culture in this area.⁶⁸

As campuses and the country began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the small population of Black students at the University of Idaho began speaking up, speaking out, and demanding change. Change was a long time coming at the university, a mostly white populated institution in a mostly white area of the country. A Black studies program had recently been adopted, and now the forty or so Black students on campus finally had a space to call their own. That space was not a permanent one, however, and by 1973, the Black Student Union was without a home, bouncing around from place to place on campus. This drive to find a permanent home was still an issue that the Black Student Union faced in 2020. Working toward the goal of having a permanent home on campus once again, they submitted a proposal to gain space in the ISUB (Idaho Student Union Building) on campus. No definitive decisions on space allocation had been made as of the end of 2020.

Other influential African Americans associated with the University of Idaho were Lionel Hampton and Dan O’Brien. Lionel Hampton, one of the nation’s most famous jazz musicians, began collaborating with the university’s music school, helping propel music education and the growth of the annual jazz festival. The university named the jazz festival for Hampton in 1985 and followed up two years later by renaming the music school the Lionel Hampton School of Music.⁶⁹ “The Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival, The Lionel Hampton School of Music, and the International Jazz Collections archives of the UI Library are all designed to help teach and preserve the heritage of jazz.”⁷⁰

Dan O’Brien starred on the Idaho track and field team in 1989 and went on to be “the world’s best decathlete for the next 10 years.”⁷¹ The University of Idaho athletic department named their track and field complex in his honor.⁷² The mid 2000s saw a major step forward in the acknowledgement of the need to promote and highlight diversity on campus. In 2006, Mark A. Edwards was appointed as the first Director for Diversity and Community (a position that reports directly to the university president), and the University of Idaho publicly committed itself to “university and community programs to support enrichment of the learning environment through diversity.”⁷³ This commitment to diversity and to promoting campus organizations that support these endeavors became even more important in the wake of the events surrounding the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement that engulfed the nation in the summer of 2020. This pivotal moment in the nation’s history “triggered a new level of responsiveness for the needs of Black students at the University of Idaho.”⁷⁴ In various levels of organization since its inception in 1971, the Black Student Union (BSU) set about creating a strong organization to serve the needs of Black students at the university, giving them a “unifying place to be seen, heard, and safe.”⁷⁵

Students were not the only ones who worked toward organization. The Black faculty and staff at the University of Idaho also sought to organize and create an organization “to support those on campus who need help having tough conversations about race and sexuality,” as well as providing a safe space for people on campus.⁷⁶ Known as the Black Faculty and Staff Association, the group has aligned itself “with others on campus that are working on issues of equity and justice such as Native American and Indigenous peoples’ groups.”⁷⁷ While they are probably not the first group of this nature on campus, the strengthening of the BSU and overall heightened campus awareness of racial issues have presented the need for these groups to advocate on behalf of the Black students, faculty, and staff at the university. Acknowledging the history, the contributions, and the continued work that African Americans have made at the University of Idaho remains a major goal of the Black Faculty and Staff Association.⁷⁸ There is no doubt that both organizations will only grow in importance and influence as the nation continues to wrestle with its racist past and present.

Conclusion

Looking at this early history of the University of Idaho’s Black population and influences has been a challenging, often daunting, endeavor. Focusing first on the story of Jennie Eva Hughes, the first Black student, and first Black graduate of the University of Idaho (Class of 1899). Her successes in school, as both a woman and a person of color in the late 1890s, represented an important and often overlooked record of Idaho’s early inclusivity. The untimely death of her son Berthol, during his freshman year in 1919, cut short the potential of what would have been the second Black student, and second Black graduate at Idaho. The 1950s and 1960s at Idaho represented a period of growth and change, with athletics leading the way in the mid-1950s in bringing larger numbers of Black students to campus. Reginald Reeves stands apart from the athletic dominance as a tremendous success story for an individual who persevered through racism and bigotry to achieve success both in the military and in private life.

The individuals highlighted in these early days are not the only Black individuals on campus, and there are certainly many more stories yet to be told. What is important, however, especially going into the mid-1960s and the Civil Rights Era, is that students who fought for change at all levels of the university would not have been able to achieve what they did without the sacrifices made by those that came before them. Today’s Black Student Union and Black Faculty and Staff Associations stand on the shoulders of those like Joseph Tasby who dared to step outside the norms, to challenge the status quo and advocate for change across the university. Those students that risked everything in the early 1970s knew that the advocating was not going to happen on its own, they had to be the change they wanted to see. Today we are no closer to figuring out how to stomp out the systemic racism that pervades every aspect of daily life, yet the continued work of today’s Black students, staff, and faculty show that there is hope, and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Notes

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