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The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever
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About This Book
The untold story of the Harvard class of '63, whose Black students fought to create their own identities on the cusp between integration and affirmative action.In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited an unprecedented eighteen "Negro" boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some fifty years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, would begin to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives, and what their time at Harvard meant. Garrett and his partner Jeanne Ellsworth recount how these eighteen youths broke new ground, with ramifications that extended far past the iconic Yard. By the time they were seniors, they would have demonstrated against national injustice and grappled with the racism of academia, had dinner with Malcolm X and fought alongside their African national classmates for the right to form a Black students' organization. Part memoir, part group portrait, and part narrative history of the intersection between the civil rights movement and higher education, this is the remarkable story of brilliant, singular boys whose identities were changed at and by Harvard, and who, in turn, changed Harvard.
Reviews
"Rueful reminiscence sometimes shades into anger, but for the most part, these extraordinary men chart life journeys that were full of challenges...but also full of accomplishments."
"The Last Negroes at Harvard captures remarkable changes in these men's perceptions of themselves, of Harvard, and of the white world to whom Harvard introduced many of them (including Garrett) over the brief four years in which they were students."
"Garrett is a keen observer of his fellow students ..."
"Garrett's memoir offers an instructive peek at a Harvard that has been transformed ..."
"Expertly blending memoir and cultural history, this outstanding retrospective deserves to be widely read."
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