Harris, Wilder helped shape university

L. Douglas Wilder is a VCU professor and the first elected African American governor in the U.S. Photo courtesy of L. Douglas Wilder school of Government and Public Affairs.

Janeal Downs
Staff Writer

Many students walk into Grace E. Harris Hall or hear about the L. Douglas Wilder School without knowing the notable African Americans who influenced both the university and the Richmond community.

In 1967, one year before the Medical College of Virginia and the Richmond Professional Institute merged to create VCU, RPI hired the school’s first three African American faculty members, all women, including Grace Harris, said Cabell Library archives coordinator Ray Bonis.

“Now, even though VCU in the ’70s and ’80s was always well ahead in the number of African American students, compared to the other traditionally white schools in Virginia … they weren’t especially great at attracting African American faculty,” Bonis said.

After becoming a member of the faculty in 1967, by the early eighties, Harris was chairperson of the School of Social Work, Bonis said. During former VCU president Eugene P. Trani’s presidency, which began in 1990, Harris also became the provost and acting president when Trani left for research purposes, Bonis said.

African American professors at VCU have not always considered the university a welcoming environment, Bonis said he thinks things have changed.

As of 2009, VCU had employed at least 100 African American faculty members, according to a list made by the Black Educators Association. The highest number of African American faculty in the 33 listed departments was the School of Social Work, with 15 African American employees.

“I can tell you, in the 1980s I don’t remember too many African American professors and there weren’t too many even international students,” said Bonis, who is a 1988 VCU School of Mass Communications graduate. “The school has totally changed, we used to think it was diverse then … but now it’s really internationally diverse.”

With Jodi Koste and Curtis Lyons, Bonis wrote a book on the history of Virginia Commonwealth University. This book includes information on other notable African Americans who attended or influenced the university.

One such person is Jean Marie Harris, who was admitted in 1951 and became the first African American medical graduate of MCV. Not only did she struggle at the school because she was a woman, but also because she was African American, Bonis said.

“It was an adjustment as you might expect for someone coming into a school that had not admitted African Americans in the past,” said university archivist Jodi Koste.  “There were no African American role models here for her and she had to work in the hospital or clinical setting that was still segregated.”

Koste also mentioned physical therapist Carlton Jones and Herman D. Melton who both worked in MCV labs and now have awards named after them.

“Nursing, that’s the one kind of outlier in this story,” Koste said. “There were African American nurses that were working (at MCV) from the ’20s forward.”

There was, however, a separate school of nursing for African American women. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the institution hired African Americvans in other departments, Koste said.

Others mentioned in the book include social work student Jim Elam, who in 1970 became the first African American president of the student government, and L. Douglas Wilder.

Lawrence Douglas Wilder is another African American who contributed to the university. Wilder was not only a professor in his self-named Government and Public Affairs school at VCU but also the first elected African American governor in the U.S. In 2004, he became the first African American Richmond mayor “elected at large in six decades.”

“There certainly have been others in more contemporary times, those were some of the initial pioneers of the institution who pretty much segregated and had to break down the initial barriers,” Koste said.

Though she became an honored alumna, when RPI “integrated” the school in 1952, Grace E. Harris was not one of the four African Americans to be admitted. After her denial, she studied at Boston University for two years before applying again and being accepted into the school.

Richmond did not have major conflicts like other cities farther south, such as Birmingham, Ala. Segregation and white flight is an example of how “the civility of Richmond masked deeper racism” in the 1970s and 1980s, said professor and chairperson of the history department John Kneebone.

“(RPI) was of course segregated (until) the early 1950s,” Kneebone said.

During the Civil Rights Movement in Richmond, local activist community members had the courage to step up “all along the way” to fight for their rights, Kneebone said.

“One of the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement is every day people can do amazing things … What might seem like in the big picture a small thing, were important rocks in the pond; and they had ripples that went out in directions that people could notice them, Kneebone said”

To honor Harris and her more than 40 years of service to the university after her retirement, in 1999 the VCU Board of Visitors created the Grace R. Harris Leadership Institute, said Susan Gooden, Executive director of the Institute and professor in The Wilder School.

The institute conducts research and offers four leadership programs: HIGHER Ground Women’s Leadership Development Program, Minority Political Leadership Institute, Department Chairs Certification Program and VCU Leadership Development Program.

“I think the main thing (people) should take away from her story is that Harris is just a model of leadership success at all levels within higher education,” Gooden said.

Gooden, who is also the vice president of the Black Education Association at VCU, said there has been a lot of positive change for black faculty over the years and with VCU’s Quest for Distinction she expects more.

“However, there’s still a lot of work that remains to be done,” Gooden said. “In terms of increasing the number of African American faculty and … African American senior administrators, (such as) provost, deans (and) presidents of universities.”

Gooden suggested for students to go to Grace Harris Hall and “to really understand the magnitude, ” learn more about who Harris was.

“It’s rare that students have the opportunity to interact with a living legacy, and Harris is a living legacy that’s available,” Gooden said.

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