Editor’s Note: This is the third installment in a series to celebrate black history month that will look into influence and achievement from Baker University’s black community throughout campus history.
Baker University students were no exception to the mixed emotions collegians experienced and exhibited about civil rights and foreign wars in the 1960s and ’70s. However, the Baker community proved to be a diverse place for intellectual growth, turning out its first black Pulitzer Prize winner, Harold Jackson, and welcoming its first black professor, Jesse Milan, in 1969.
Jackson entered Baker in 1971 on a journalism scholarship from the National Newspaper Publishers Association and Coca Cola U.S.A. He graduated in 1975 and returned to his hometown of Birmingham, Ala., to work for The Birmingham News, but took what he learned from the small university in the Midwest with him. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for editorial writing.
“When you attend a small college like Baker, sometimes you don’t appreciate it while you’re there,” he said. “You don’t appreciate all the learning and experience you’re having.
“Not everything was smooth sailing; there were times when there were conflicts between Mungano and sororities and fraternities, or between professors and students or student government. It’s only when you get away from college that you realize the value of having that type of setting where you can interact with so many different people – different types of people – and learn something from them and grow as a result.”
Jackson said he attended college during a period when students had strong opinions and were really interested in getting involved in campus activities. He was an active member and chairman of Mungano, a member of the Baker Orange staff and a representative in student government.
“The Vietnam War was still going on, and the civil rights era was in a different mode in the early ’70s. (Martin Luther King) had been assassinated in 1968, so a lot of the emphasis was on trying to find a direction of the movement – black power movement was strong – and Mungano was the campus organization for African-Americans most associated with it in that we tried to seek empowerment of minorities on the Baker campus as well.”
Jackson said differences arose among many people and organizations, but conflicting issues about ethnicity and dissimilarity was an essential part of the educational process.
“My sophomore or junior year we actually decided to have a day of dialogue where classes were suspended for a day, and we just actually had small groups and large groups that gathered around campus and talked about different organizations to try to get a better understanding as to black and white, foreign and native born, and sort of get to know each other better,” he said.
“I thought that was very good and something that could only happen on a small campus where you could just say ‘We’re not going to have classes all day; We’re just going to devote the whole day to dialogue and understanding,’ and it happened at Baker,” Jackson said.
Baker’s first black professor, Jesse Milan, brought experience and two new organizations to the university less than a year after starting in 1969. He was the first black teacher in the Lawrence Public School District after the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education ruling in 1954, which forced schools to become integrated. He was the only minority for four or five years and remained there for 15 years before coming to Baker. From 1969-2002, Milan served as an assistant professor of education.
“During that time at Baker, when I came, African-American students were not participating in extracurricular activities,” he said. “So I established an organization called Mungano. I created it on the basis of the purpose of bringing black students together to have them make things relevant to them, help them move into other aspects of the campus life and learn some leadership roles so when they go back to their respective communities they have some leadership skills and are able to take advantage of situations for improvement.”
He also created a movement called “Project Reach Back,” in which black students and members of Mungano promoted the value of a college education to elementary students.
“That was reaching back into the community and bringing children up on campus to see what it is like to be on campus – what colored students do – and observe their behavior in the classroom, how they adhere to the professors,” he said. “It made the university relevant to black students who were in Mungano, and … we had other students who became a part of Mungano who were not African-American.”
When he was chosen to be part of the Baker faculty, he said he was prepared to accept the challenge of being the only black professor on a campus where the majority of faculty and students were white.
“That did not puzzle me because I was the first black teacher in the Lawrence Public School system for 15 years,” he said. “I had experience in working in that arena; I knew how to protect myself and keep focus on what my responsibilities were. I didn’t care whether they liked me or not – I didn’t give a damn about that – I had a job to do.”
But Milan said he had the full support of the faculty when he started teaching at Baker.
“I didn’t have a problem being accepted as a faculty member,” he said. “(Former Education Department Chair Lowell Gish) really paved the way for bringing me on campus so I had open arms and good relationships with faculty members. He wanted to integrate the faculty, and with my background, he thought I would be an added asset to the faculty at Baker.”
Multicultural Affairs Coordinator Ron Holden entered Baker as a student in 1991 and graduated in 1995. He said he took a majority-minority relations class taught by Milan, which left a lasting impression on him.
“He really had a huge impact on campus because he was a mentor to many students,” he said. “I think that’s the key – it’s about the love for Baker. You don’t have to be black, white, Mexican, Asian to love Baker; when you love something, you’re going to give your heart and soul to it, and that’s what he’s done.”