George Henderson, OU professor emeritus, poses for a photo March 8.
Beginning in the 1960s, generation after generation of Black students at the University of Oklahoma have publicly protested racial segregation and discrimination that existed in the university community. Most of the time they protested quietly and nonviolently. But sometimes they were loud and violent. The nonviolent protests were excellent examples of an old English common law called “standing.” Because it is impossible for all the aggrieved members of a community to be heard by the leaders of their respective communities, an individual — or, better yet, a group of individuals — who possesses great understanding of the community’s grievances, can speak to the leaders on their behalf. In 1969, the Afro American Student Union, which was later renamed the Black Student Association, became an approved student organization. It spoke on behalf of the University of Oklahoma’s Black students, who were treated, literally and figuratively, like second-class members of the university community. I was one of their first advisers and one of their most ardent supporters.
Forty-six years later, a group of Black students at the University, who called themselves Unheard, posted online an infamous video showing members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity on a bus chanting a racial slur and saying Black men ought to be hanged. When I saw the video, I thought that a lot of people at the University of Oklahoma were going to have hell to pay. Prior to the incident, I had three meetings with the Unheard students. They had read my book titled “Race and the University: A Memoir,” and they asked me to give them more details about civil rights tactics and strategies that might help the Black Student Association members to better fight campuswide racial segregation and discrimination of Black students. They came to me because they were totally dissatisfied with the civil rights activism by the Black Student Association, or lack of it, on campus. We talked about ways that they might reenergize the Black Student Association. The SAE incident prompted them to not wait for the Black Student Association to do something about it. The night before they issued a public clarion call for like-minded people to meet with them on the North Oval, a member of the Unheard group called me at my home and asked if I would personally support them by attending the meeting. Without hesitating, I said yes. Several hundred people gathered at the meeting and listened to passionate speeches that were given by the Unheard students. They implored us to join them in a silent protest walk. Dozens of us joined them and had our mouths taped shut by an Unheard student. Printed on each tape was the word “unheard.” Then, we walked silently to the Student Union, where the Unheard student leaders gave Clarke Stroud, the dean of Students Affairs, a list of retribution demands. Retribution came quickly. Within a few days, President David Boren had summarily expelled the two SAE students who had led the chant on the bus. That was a good beginning, but it was not total retribution. More changes came later. And some of them were challenged legally.
As part of legal settlements, Boren and the SAE attorney asked me to conduct a mandatory weekend race relations workshop for all the SAE students who were on the bus. I agreed to teach it in the Henderson-Tolson Cultural Center, and all but two of the 26 students attended. The two who led the chant had transferred to another university. Truth be told, I had harshly prejudged all of them as being hardcore racial bigots. Early on during the workshop, they did nothing to persuade me otherwise. Most of them tried to rationalize chanting the hateful words. Fortunately for all of us, there were some seminal moments. The first one occurred when I asked the students, “How would you feel if you learned that members of a Black fraternity had chanted something similar to yours but about white men?” There was a long eerie silence. Judging by the students’ facial expressions and body language, most of them were beginning to seriously think about the downside of their hateful and physically threatening words in the chant. Breaking the silence, a student said in a soft voice, “My parents taught me to not say ugly or threatening things to or about other people, including Black people.” Nevertheless, he had chanted with his fraternity brothers to get along with them.
Midway through the third and final scheduled hour of the workshop, a student who was sitting in the front row said forcefully that words can’t hurt people. His response reminded me of a childhood rhyme I learned when I was growing up: “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” I recited it to them. They grinned and cheerfully nodded their heads in agreement. “Wrong,” I said, wiping the grins off their faces. “Words have hurt me like the dickens — emotionally and psychologically.” Then I told them about me exchanging racial slurs with white boys. Their hateful words created emotional sores in my mind that festered and traumatized me. “And some of those words,” I concluded, “culminated in fisticuffs between us. We punched wildly at each other until both of us were bloody.” Before I could say anything else, a student sitting in the back row stood up and said, “Now I get it! And I am sorry!” The other students nodded in unison. Enough had been said, so I ended the workshop by forgiving them for their reckless behavior. They forgave me for prejudging them. Before leaving the room, all but two of the students shook my right hand and thanked me for our time together. A few of them asked for and got a hug from me.
The final challenges for the Unheard students and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon students were to find ways to neutralize their adversaries and to turn bystanders into allies. I believe the Unheard students accomplished exactly that. Some of them became campus heroes. And a few of them garnered a lot of positive media coverage. But after about two academic years, the Unheard protests ended. Those students and their allies were ordinary people who joined together and did some extraordinary things. They overcame the incalculable horror of being ridiculed by their critics and pseudo-friends and being demonized by some of them. There were numerous instances when their adversaries were wrong about them. I would describe their accomplishments thusly: They did not accomplish all the things that they wanted to; they did not accomplish all the things that they could have; but thank God, they accomplished enough good things that gave the next generation of protesters much to build on.
Conversely, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon students became campus pariahs, and most of them were portrayed as hardcore racists in various media stories. They deserved better treatment. I often wondered what the bus incident ultimately cost the Sigma Alpha Epsilon students, especially educationally, and what they gained from it. I also wondered the same things about the Unheard students. As for me, I gained a greater appreciation for standing on behalf of neglected and othered people. If you want more insights into my beliefs and practices as they pertain to my standing on behalf of aggrieved students and othered people, I refer you to my book “My Mother’s Dream: The Story of a First-Generation College Student”.
