Recent Race Relations History at Johns Hopkins University

Written for the January edition of the Charles Villager Community Newspaper

There were twenty seven African American students who entered Johns Hopkins in the fall of 1970: women and men, locals and out-of-towners, some with huge afro hairstyles and others more buttoned down.  We heard as we, the members of the class of 1974 hit the campus, that we were to that point the largest class of Black students Hopkins had ever admitted at one time.  We knew we would be watched.

We took our classes, had our parties, held an occasional protest and participated in the Black Students Union.  At graduation, where twenty three of us survived the four years of rigor and were in attendance, we delivered a statement reflecting on our four years at Hopkins from a Black student’s perspective.  We selected New Yorker, Dale Saunders, now an attorney, from among us to speak.  I remember his words very clearly, because I wrote them.  He intoned, “The writer, James Baldwin, once said ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed.  But nothing can be changed until it is faced.’”  And he went on to describe the reality of there being practically no Black administrators or faculty members on staff while the overwhelming members of the housekeeping and food service staff were Black.  He decried the limited number of courses devoted to Black subjects, issues or concerns and the great divide between the Homewood campus and the city in which it sits.  Incidentally, immediately after our graduation ceremony a huge hale storm developed and we all ran for cover, some of us never really getting a chance to say goodbye.

Fast forward the tape to the fall of 2006, some 32 years later.  After an embarrassing fraternity so-called prank on line detailing a Halloween party, feelings resurfaced about the need for appreciation of race differences and the desire for more harmony at Johns Hopkins.  My good friend and college classmate, Erich March and I attended a demonstration on Charles Street one noon hour in November that called for the hiring of more African American staff, that coursework be provided that focused on Black concerns and on the issue of racism and that Hopkins be more positively involved in the city of Baltimore.  Yes, the concerns raised by the BSU last fall, seemed like old hat. Yes, they seemed like “déjà vu all over again”, as the philosopher-poet once reminded us.

When I was a student at Johns Hopkins, there were great faculty members there who seemed to be connected to a strong sense of diversity or who worked to keep Hopkins in touch with the community.  Dr. Ron Walters taught American History and included African American history in his lectures.  Dr. Matt Crenson in the Political Science Department had us read Alexis de Tocqueville for example and learn what he had to say about race relations in America, among other his other observations. And Dr. Chester Wickwire,  longtime Chaplain and one of my personal heroes in life, taught diversity in religion, urban affairs and presided over the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, an organization comprised mainly of African American ministers in the city.

Perhaps we need more persons of vision on the campus now as we once had.  Perhaps Hopkins needs to take seriously the commitment to the persons of color the university’s founder and namesake made in his will.  Perhaps race relations could be improved if more Hopkins students were trained to use their brains as well as their hearts as they became educated at Johns Hopkins University.

A few years ago, when I was with the Center for Poverty Solutions, a statewide organization dedicated to the elimination of poverty, I was invited to join Hopkins students, from an organization called the Student Labor Action Committee (SLAC) in their efforts to bring living wages to the staff of the Homewood campus.  I went to the campus one afternoon only to arrive too early for a meeting, so I went into Levering Hall to get a quick sandwich.  While there I encountered a woman named Ms. Mamie Brown who served food in the Levering Hall cafeteria thirty years earlier when I was an undergraduate.  I recall getting a daily bowl of chili and conversation from her the four years I was there as an undergraduate and the two years I served as the Assistant to the Chaplain, two years after I graduated. 

Well, there she was, Ms. Brown, practically standing in the exact spot where she stood when she served me chili decades earlier.  I asked how she was and eventually asked her how long she had worked at Hopkins.  And even though Hopkins food service was then being provided by a private vendor, as far as she was concerned, she was working for Hopkins. She informed me to my utter amazement that she had been working at Johns Hopkins for 55 years!  I was floored.  So many thoughts came rushing into my head, among them: how much does she earn and why is she still working?  I later found out from someone she was probably earning somewhere between $8 and $9 an hour or $16,000 to $18,000 a year, after 55 years on the job. 

The JHU Gazette (August 16, 2004/ Vol. 33, No. 42) carried her obituary entitled, “‘Miss Mamie’ Brown, JHU’s Longest-Serving Employee, Dies at 83”.  The opening line of her obit read as follows,” Mamie Brown, who came to Johns Hopkins in 1945 as a part-time bus girl at Levering cafeteria and stayed at the university for nearly sixty years, died July 26 at the age of 83.

Miss Mamie’s situation is one of the best symbols of the difficult race relations that have long existed at Johns Hopkins.  Insensitive frat boys aside, the institution dragged its feet when we asked them to divest of its holdings with companies that did business in South Africa during Apartheid and was slow to acknowledge the need for providing the housekeeping, food service and security staff with suitable wages to live on. 

Johns Hopkins is a world renown institution.  Its staff have received world wide recognition for its work, some attaining Nobel prizes.  It is a very influential presence in the city because of its scholarly nature and just as important because it is the largest private employer in the state.  It can do better.

It can look around the world’s underdeveloped nations for problems to solve in health and human services or it can look under its own perhaps upturned nose at its many workers, epitomized by Mamie Brown, who do the day to day work that helps Hopkins shine before the world.  It can look at the city where the campuses sit and use its wealth (last I heard its endowment was approximately $2 billion) and its brains to help solve some city problems: improving education, financing micro-enterprises (perhaps thru a version of Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank) to help eliminate poverty in Baltimore City or whatever.   

The best thing that Hopkins can do to improve race relations is, in Mamie Brown’s memory, to opens its eyes as an institution and begin to see the Black persons on its campus as human beings no less than themselves.  No monuments, no names on buildings, no annual ceremonies in her honor would be more meaningful.   Just treat the workers and the students at Hopkins with dignity: pay them well, respect their history and culture and include them in all levels of the staff.  When the administration commits to doing the right thing, we wont have to worry about the pranks of the fraternity boys and there will be Hopkins truly living up to its potential.

Ralph E. Moore, Jr.

1/22/07