I have a short review of Kornblith and Lasser's Elusive Utopia: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Oberlin, Ohio, in the current issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Here is the gist:
The stories of Oberlin’s [abolitionist] past are repeated and celebrated today, as though school and town have always been models of progressivism (even if nowadays in a caricatured incarnation), but that portrait is not actually true. As Kornblith and Lasser relentlessly document, Oberlin became increasingly segregated—sometimes de facto and sometimes intentionally—from the end of Reconstruction until the advent of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-twentieth century. . . .
Kornblith and Lasser write affectionately about Oberlin (they are emeriti professors there) while unflinchingly exposing the extent of its biased past. None of the many episodes would be particularly surprising in another locale—say, Cambridge, Evanston, or Palo Alto—but it is truly upsetting to read about them in Oberlin.
Here is a link to the entire review (behind a paywall, but accessible from most university networks).
I have also posted the penultimate draft after the jump.
Elusive Utopia: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Oberlin, Ohio. By Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2018) 324 pp. $48.00.
Oberlin is renowned for two periods in its history, both firmly associated with the ideologies of the left. From the 1830s until the end of the Civil War, it was the most racially progressive place – both college and town, which I will use interchangeably unless noted otherwise – in the United States. In the 1960s, Oberlin College was at the leading edge of the so-called counter-culture, which has almost uniquely survived there, and even intensified, to this day. Many readers, if pressed, will recall something about Oberlin’s anti-slavery history. Almost everyone will recognize it as the alma mater of Lena Dunham, and the place where students protested the inauthenticity of Asian dishes in the dining hall as instances of “cultural appropriation.”
If Oberlin’s reputation for contemporary political correctness is exaggerated, its involvement in the abolitionist movement is beyond question. Beginning in 1835, the Oberlin Institute (as the college was then known) was committed to the admission of students “without regard to color,” making it one of the first two integrated colleges in the United States. For the next thirty years, Oberlin faculty, students, and townspeople were at the forefront of the struggle against slavery, welcoming fugitives, resisting slavecatchers, and eventually taking up arms. Two Oberlin African-Americans fought and died with John Brown in Virginia.
The stories of Oberlin’s heroic past are repeated and celebrated to today, as though school and town have always been models of progressivism (even if nowadays in a caricatured incarnation), but that is not actually true. As Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser relentlessly document, Oberlin became increasingly segregated – sometimes de facto and sometimes intentionally – from the end of Reconstruction until the advent of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-Twentieth Century.
Kornblith and Lasser write affectionately about Oberlin – they are emeriti professors there – while unflinchingly exposing the extent of its biased past. None of the many episodes would be particularly surprising in another locale – say, Cambridge, Evanston, or Palo Alto – but it is truly upsetting to read about them in Oberlin.
For example, the Oberlin Kindergarten Training School graduated 711 teachers from 1894 to 1923, of whom only 6 were African American, and none of whom were ever hired by the Oberlin public schools (221). In 1913, College president Henry Churchill King endorsed residential segregation and encouraged an early form of redlining by a local real estate firm (236). Even the dormitories and students activities were sometimes segregated, often at the insistence of white students (248).
Kornblith and Lasser pile incident on incident, leaving no doubt that Oberlin strayed badly from its egalitarian mission, beginning in about 1880. The Oberlin public schools had no black teacher until 1939, and the college did not appoint an African-American professor until 1948 (244). The accounts of prejudice are so many and so convincing that they almost become numbing. The authors might have done better by omitting some details; we do not need to know the names of every person who endorsed each petition or attended each meeting.
Elusive Utopia is somewhat less convincing when it comes to explaining Oberlin’s transition to segregation. It seems undeniable, as the authors point out, that some of the change was related to the nature of Oberlin’s dwindling black population, as many of the most successful African-Americans relocated after the Civil War, when economic opportunities became more widely available elsewhere. On the other hand, it is harder to credit their claim that the town leaders’ increased involvement in the temperance movement led to diminished commitment to racial justice. The two phenomena were clearly concurrent, but, as always, that does not imply causation.
Nonetheless, it is bracing and important to read the full story of Oberlin’s history in Kornblith and Lasser’s impressively researched and closely argued book. (Disclosure: My son took a class from Prof. Lasser in the early 2000s.)
Allen and Temperance Jones, freed slaves who fled North Carolina with their children, arrived in Oberlin in 1843. Observing the comfortable relations between whites and blacks, Allen exclaimed that he had “found Paradise” and was “going to stay” (43). The Joneses prospered in Oberlin; four of their sons graduated from the college. But as Kornblith and Lasser powerfully show, the utopia turned out to be far more elusive than they could have imagined.