. . . Summer 2002
By Linda
Robinson Walker
Cultural diversity was not a goal of 1950s America. Most institutions openly discriminated by gender, race, religion and national origin. At Michigan, as at most other schools, the first line of division was sex. Male students lived in their own dormitories and could come and go as they wished. But female students, who made up about 25 percent of the student body at the time, were strictly cloistered and hedged about with hours and obligatory sign-outs for every evening and weekend absence. At Michigan in the '50s, women were under the authority of Deborah Bacon, the last person to hold the title Dean of Women. (See accompanying article.) Students were further segregated by race in dorms, fraternities and sororities and off-campus housing. How many African Americans were at the University in the '50s? Eve Tyler Wilkins '55 thinks that in her senior year, with about 8,000 women in the student body, "50 Black women would be stretching it." An unscientific survey (official statistics were not kept) based on Michiganensian yearbook photos suggests that from 1950 through 1961, of all graduates—medicine to LSA—no more than 1 percent each year, ranging from about 10 to 40 individuals, were African American.
The University required all freshmen to live in dormitories and matched roommates by preference for sleeping with windows open or closed and so forth. But it also asked freshmen to provide a photograph and to state their roommate preferences by race, religion, nationality and language spoken in the home. (When the state NAACP later asked Gov. G. Mennen Williams to take action against this practice in 1958, it cited a "discriminatory pattern of roommate assignment.") The intention was to pair whites with whites and African Americans with African Americans, with sometimes comical results. Roger Wilkins '53, '56 LLB, '93 Doctor of Laws (Hon.), is a former journalist who is now a professor of history and American culture at George Mason University. In 1950, Wilkins was assigned an African American roommate with "light skin and straight hair" the second semester of his freshman year. The previous semester his new roommate had been placed with "a very rich Pakistani from Karachi whose father represented GE in Pakistan and a rich Indian from Bombay whose father was the GM distributor in India. It was just after partition and they had political arguments—in Hindi." Eve Tyler Wilkins's photo was so washed out that, uncertain of her race, the dean's office had assigned her to a single room to avoid, as she puts it, "the mistake of putting a Black woman with a white one." Most Blacks were assigned to Fletcher Hall on Sybil St., down and away from Central Campus residence halls. (In the early 1930s, the University attempted to establish a separate dormitory on campus for Black women, a plan quashed by Gov. Fred W. Green, who cited state anti-discriminatory laws, according to historian John Behee in his 1974 history of Black athletes at Michigan, Hail to the Victors!) About one in 25 junior and senior class women chose to live off-campus in private homes called League Houses that the dean of women's office supervised. But African American women were at the mercy of homeowners' prejudices: If the householders didn't want to rent to Blacks, the University accommodated them. A 1952 form letter from the dean of women's office welcomed transfer students to the University. There were two versions, however. The standard (white) version urged women to visit in person because "personal selection is always the best way to assure yourself that you will be satisfied." But the other version of the letter, labeled "Referral letter to negro [sic] students," directed African American women to segregated housing where the "owners have indicated to us that they have a definite vacancy." A couple of white homeowners did rent to African American women. Throughout the 1950s, Elizabeth Leslie, assistant dean of women, oversaw League Houses and kept frank notes. In 1952, she noted that Mrs. R. W. Hodges at 502 Elm St. and Marie Baker at 724 Church St. had integrated houses that she described as "happy" and "highly successful." Minutes of a Housing Division, Board of Governors meeting in March 1954 state: "Miss Bacon referred to the problems of housing negro [sic] and Oriental women and stated it had taken four years to gradually break down the barriers in League Houses, but that it was being accomplished gradually, through a slow method of individual education." The University allowed homeowners to discriminate against Jewish students as well. Leslie's notes refer to a householder who refused to rent to two girls "she assumed" were Jewish, but weren't. Most Jewish women in off-campus housing (89 women in 1952) resided in houses on Baldwin Ave. and Washtenaw Ave. run by Mrs. H. W. Freeman.
For African Americans the segregation went well beyond housing. Roger Wilkins remembers being barred from the Union's barbershop. Eve Tyler Wilkins recalls that Cousins dress shop, long a target of protest, wouldn't let African Americans try on dresses, and that when she called to make hair appointments at Jacobsons, they "asked what my nationality was."
Joseph R. Moore '55 worked with the Student Government Council testing local businesses for discrimination. Volunteer white couples in the test would be served, then African Americans would follow and be turned away in places ranging from Howard Johnsons to the Arthur Murray Dance Studio.
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