Black Students at Kenyon in the 1960s
It's not an easy sell. A costly rural college with limited scholarship money and an overwhelmingly white student body and faculty…has the odds against it. P.F. Kluge in Alma Mater
During the early 1960s, Kenyon began to experience both high attrition and low enrollment in terms of its black students. Throughout the entire decade, only 4 black students would graduate. While the majority of earlier black students from the 1950s had found Kenyon on their own initiative, toward the late 1960s, the College began to seriously recruit blacks. According to Ruben Pope (K70), "...the school began to invest more time and money in its football team. Kenyon wanted to revamp the team, and this entailed scouting for prospective players, several of whom were black."
For the first time, Kenyon was admitting black students from the inner city, many of whom had limited prior experience with whites and were unaccustomed to being in the minority. In 1969, the same year that would see women admitted to the College, a class of 6 blacks entered as well, the first class to come after heavy recruitment efforts. Among this group were not only the first black women to attend Kenyon, but the founders of the Kenyon College Black Student Union.
Kenyon's Black Graduates During the 1960's
Charles A. Bronson Kenyon Class of 1960 Harold E. Bragg Kenyon Class of 1961 Charles H. Lynch III Kenyon Class of 1964 Victor H. Sparrow III Kenyon Class of 1966
(Please note that other black students attended Kenyon during this period, but did not graduate) Click on the name for each individual student's story.
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