Alli Camp ’14: In junior year American History class EA students learn about Brown vs. Board of Education and the ensuing chaos. As our textbooks depict black students being protested by crazed white parents as they walk into school, our hearts twinge. Well what about EA? In the age of activism, when did The Episcopal Academy decide that it was time to integrate? Scholium sat down with EA’s director of diversity, Courtney Portlock to ask some of these questions.
“There was never anything explicit that said you had to be white to apply to EA,” Portlock explained. “I think it was more just a part of the school’s founding. Especially when looking at a school like EA that was founded when slavery was legal. If you think about it, in 1785 we were still a good 80 years from the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and then the 13th Amendment in 1865. EA got its start in a time when black people weren’t considered people; they were considered property. And Episcopal was not necessarily unique in taking about a hundred years to warm up to the idea of integration. There was never a written rule about EA being all white, but it’s the unwritten rule, the unspoken rule, which is sometimes more powerful because that means it’s actually ingrained in the culture.”
In 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared segregation in education to be illegal. “And then we waited about twelve more years before actually integrating,” Portlock explained. “That time frame was about right for a lot of the independent schools, and really also for public schools. The idea of blacks and whites going to school together was not seen as a priority or a necessity.”
So where were we really in the timeline of integration? Portlock and a few other interested faculty members roughly pinpointed the first black student around the mid-sixties, likely 1966-1967.
The first African American and person of color to graduate from Episcopal is Darrel Francis ’71. After speaking with Francis, he relayed to Scholium that it was “primarily his parents” who encouraged him to attend Episcopal. “And I was a participant at the Nicetown Boys Club where Rich Borkowski was on the Board of Directors. Dr. B used to be the Athletic Director at Episcopal. He took the initial interest in me coming there and then he handed me off to George Greenwood who was the track coach. Rob Williams ’72, Sam Dell, and I were the three African American students at the time and we were all athletes.” Francis ran track and played football.
When asked about experiencing racism, Francis relayed that “I came from North Philadelphia, which is all black. There was no contact with Caucasians in any large number. I won’t sit here and tell you that it was all peaches and cream. The three of us, frankly, let everyone know that we weren’t little kids. We became leaders of our sports. There were a few instances where there would be a party and the grandmother wouldn’t let any black people into the house. It was a learning experience.”
According to a Main Line Times article, The Haverford School’s first African American student was an Ardmore native by the name of George Smith in 1964. Germantown Friends School was ahead of the curve for racial integration. As stated on its website, “Joan Cannady Countryman entered GFS in 1948 as a third grader and graduated in 1958.” EA comparatively would not accept women until 1972. As this was all happening, Germantown Friends was only right down the street from the Episcopal Academy’s Merion Campus. “Germantown Academy and Penn Charter had also integrated before us,” Francis told Scholium.
Francis’ daughter, Darra, is also an EA graduate from the class of ’84. Another African American student at EA, Paul Hayward ’83, was the first to matriculate through EA, Kindergarten through Twelfth grade. Francis and Hayward visited EA seven years ago in order to speak in chapel. Francis said they spent the day looking in on classes, interacting with the students, and sitting in on a Diversity Awareness Club meeting. Their speeches, Francis noted, incorporated a shocking sentiment.
“What they talked about in chapel,” Portlock divulged, “that was particularly compelling was that things haven’t really changed that much. And actually in some ways they thought things were better when they were students. One of the things that [Francis] intimated was that in his day, there would be racist jokes, but they would talk about it, really have a conversation, and then they would move on.”
Francis expounded, “In 1969, the school wanted to have a dialogue because they wanted to bring Afro-Americans in. EA was a lot smaller then; there were sixty boys in a class.”
When asked if he had the choice to do it again, would he still have attended Episcopal, Francis responded, “Absolutely. There’s no gain without sacrifice. In a generality, it is very easy to dislike or hate somebody. But it is very difficult once you get to know them because people are relationship driven. That was one of the first things that I learned at Episcopal. There were certain families, like the Zugs, that I became very close with, particularly Graham Zug ‘70. I’d stay at his house a lot. George Greenwood drove me home damn near every day. There were certain instructors; Jim Crawford was one of them. All these people they started to look out for me. Not everyone in the community was excited about us being there. One of the big things back then was that they absolutely refused to drop any academic standard to allow us to attend. And that became an issue coming from my public school in North Philly. It was a shock to say the least. In my case I had to repeat freshman year.”
Francis concluded that he’s “a big supporter of the school, and so is [his] daughter although she lives in France now.” He added, “I do think that they don’t emphasize the integration of the school enough. I’d like to see more of that history preserved somewhere because it was such a unique time. EA was one of the last ones to do it.”
Hayward asserted, “I don’t think the school is for everybody. It was a good fit for me. I learned to think on my own. Socially it was a little handicapping because the Mothers’ Association, now EAPA, planned social activities and I was not included. From my more recent visits to campus I think you guys have more racial tension than we did. It was really interesting for me to see how a school takes steps backwards. Darrel is the only black alum who has sent his child to EA. I know some white alums don’t send their kids to Episcopal because they think racial relationships have gone backwards as opposed to other local private schools that have much more openness and diversity. I don’t know how you fix it.”
Many people today, Portlock believes, think that being politically correct means not discussing racial issues at all. Portlock explained, “I would argue, actually, that being politically correct is not supposed to stop us from saying something, or if that is what being politically correct means then I don’t agree with it. I think that there should be a conversation. [Francis] was alluding to the fact that there used to be conversation. Today, everyone is afraid to speak because if I say this then I’m going to offend him and if I say that I’m going to offend her. And that’s part of the reason that students who go to these diversity conferences want to bring their experiences back to the school and talk about it. And then all of a sudden no one’s afraid anymore.”