Hello I’m Sheryl McCarthy of the City University of New York welcome to one to one each week we address issues of timely and timeless concern with newsmakers and the journal is to report on them with artists writers scientists educators social scientists activists government leaders we speak with each one to one
I’m delighted to welcome journalist Diane Brady to the program and her new book fraternity which has just been published by the Spiegel & Grau imprint of Random House the Bloomberg Businessweek writer goes outside the box of financial writing fraternity is not a book about frat life but an account of
The Brotherhood that existed among the african-american students who arrived at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester Massachusetts in 1968 and about the Jesuit priest who brought them together welcome your business writer so why write a book about a group of black men who go to a white Catholic College
In the late 60s and the priest who brought them there you know it was serendipity because I happened to be out to lunch with Stan Grayson who’s one of the men in the book he’s the former deputy mayor of New York and it was the
Day that Ted Wells was on the front page of the New York Times and he just he happened to refer to that fact and then started mentioning the other men that he not only gone to school with but actually lived on the same Hall with and then mentioned father Brooks so I became
Just intrigued by what was it that made them so successful and who was father Brooks and the fact that he was still alive and still in their lives I think sort of intrigued me and sort of drove me into writing the story and ultimately into writing the book you smelled a
Story I did Dorothy you decided to focus on five there were there were 20 black students who entered in the fall of 1968 one was Clarence Thomas who was a transfer student a sophomore and 19 freshman why focus on five is just sort of I was interested first of all in in
I’m interested in leadership I was interested in what made these men successful so I wanted to focus on to me an interesting cross section of the menu obviously Edward P Jones won a Pulitzer you had Ted Wells who’s one of the top um criminal attorneys in the country
Justice Thomas Clarence Thomas was very interesting and then you had Eddie Jenkins who was football started coming on athlete athletic scholarship so I was in I found them very interesting characters I was interested in their interaction with father Brooks there’s no question there was a bigger group of
People in fact I spoke to many of those men they had very interesting lives too but partly for the sake of the reader it made sense to focus on five now father Brooks who was a professor was a professor at Holy Cross at that time why did he pick 1968 to try to
Recruit black students at this College well he had been like a lot of colleges across the nation he had been trying to increase the number of African Americans at Holy Cross it is a very Irish Catholic College on a hill in Worcester it’s not an attractive place for a lot
Of people but he’d been out there and what happened was after dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s death he secured some money so now he was able to go out and actually offer full scholarships actually offer a living allowance that enabled him to get more people but I
Think it was a sense of social justice I think it was very much the era obviously civil rights and very much the reality that there was a huge swath of leaders out there that they weren’t even beginning to touch and also I mean the fact I mean what happened at Holy Cross
Happened at you know I went to Mount Holyoke one of the Seven Sisters and what happened to Holy very popular with the men at Holy Cross oh I wish I met someone I was there it had happened three years earlier in I believe in Seven Sisters you know had made it we’ve
Got in almost all of those schools the first class with a significant number of accidents whether it was 14 or 20 or 30 and part of it you know also I think part of it was just wanting to be with the times and be progressive but also
The fact that to get federal funding you had to show they had been to civil rights laws passed and to continue to get federal funding and that your students get student loans you had to show that you were open and I think that was part of the impetus now there was
Resistance you know from the administration and alumni to to father Brooks plan to recruit these black students and this was school that didn’t have much money almost no endowment and you’re talking about 20 fully paid scribes and and the following year in fact the class was twice the size which happened again
Across the country when dr. King died there was a very big push so I think it was there was resistance on a couple of levels one is anytime you go outside the typical process where you’re personally sitting down recruiting people and admitting them these were not men who
Went through the regular process so there’s this bias in a sense that well are they meeting our standards are they are they people that we would admit anyway then there’s the fact of course that that’s putting a lot of power in the hands of one man right right and so
There were and then I think there was also you know in some cases racism I think in some cases who knows it was partly some of the professor’s I talked to resented Brooks somewhat because he’s not exactly a gentle fuzzy man I mean he’s got a strong personality and you
Know especially when he ultimately became president he was somebody who you know when his when he had made up his mind and had his opinion he kind of went with it so you know rubbed some people the wrong way but so I think there are a
Lot of reasons but I think it also was emblematic of the times these were tense times and people had mixed views about how much change they were willing to put up with or felt comfortable with these students also were admitted after the admission cycle had closed you know so
It’s like you know in the springtime you’re recruiting father after they’ve already sent out the acceptances they’ll regatta class you’re recruiting for the next fall what was the criteria for Tooting well you know in the case so there’s if there was a mix because first of all you’ve got you know Ted wells
Stan Grayson Eddie Jenkins a lot of men had come through in fact it was very common to come through on athletic scholarships Brooks had been pushing the athletics department to also diversify the football team had been all-white prior to that now all of a sudden they
Had not only two they had three black players coming on to the team so there was first of all the criteria he had was he started with the Catholic schools when he was recruiting like Edward P Jones and many others Gilbert Hardy Thomas Clarence Thomas and so what that
Did was he understood that it’s a very rigorous environment it’s a Jesuit school and so he wanted kids that he knew were used to the you know sort of the workload who were used to also the religious atmosphere even though that was fading at Holy Cross and he was
Looking for academic standards he wanted people that he felt could cut it so he wasn’t just looking to diversify he was looking for the best and the brightest at these places that they hadn’t typically recruited from of the students that you interviewed whose backstory surprised you the most or who did you
Find most interesting what did you like well it took a long time to get just as Thomas as you can imagine it took me a year actually from the time that I had lunch with Stan Grayson there was real resistance on his part I think in in
Part because you know he assumed I was coming in with an agenda other than you know what were you doing in 1968 once I got in there I was surprised by you know how warm and how emotional he felt about this experience because you’ve often heard about how he felt about Yale right
And the negative feelings don’t often hear but the very positive feelings he had about his other college experience which was Holy Cross so you had Clarence Thomas but but which one was was who did you find especially interesting uppity you know I have to say I found them all
Interesting Eddie Jenkins is a very sort of you know colorful funny dynamic man Stan Grayson I thought it was very interesting to get perspective on on his life in in Detroit where he was quite a you know athletic star and sort of the middle-class existence of all these
Families that had come North to work in fact well he had friends black and white and less he was on the basketball team and he just it seemed to be maybe a slightly easier experience for you he’s a personable he’s a personable guy he was also very used to being you know all
White setting Ted wells on the other hand had grown up in a very much an all-black neighborhood in Washington DC he was a football star you know he was as ambitious as smart in a very kind of you know in a setting where he’d felt very comfortable so he was suddenly out
Of his element I think it was a harder transition for him coming to Holy Cross but you know I’m not I’m not gonna say it’s like taking children cuz they’re not but but I found them all very interesting because like they were you know in many ways sort of a microcosm of
A lot of different groups of people that were coming into the system at that time I found the women who are not in the book the women that were you know sort of around these men the women who were dating these men who were at the other
Colleges a lot of whom I spoke to I found their experiences very interesting there’s only so much you can put into narrative where you start to confront people right I found it interesting to learn about Clarence Thomas’s relationship with his grandfather because basically his grandfather basically thrown him out of the house
Because he had withdrawn from a Catholic seminary decided he didn’t want to be a priest and his grandfather said that basically I’m through with you yeah yeah very harsh very strict upbringing in fact when I first met Justice Thomas this was before his memoir came out and
You got the sense of an incredibly strict almost mean-spirited man but at the same time when you read his memoir when you talked to him he felt that he got a lot from his grandfather but there’s no question this period of his life he was incredibly at odds with this
Man and you know becoming a priest was a source of pride for his grandfather when he rejected that I think it was game over and basically I mean Thomas went to Holy Cross partly because he didn’t have anywhere else to go nowhere else to go he was also angry and bitters and and
Very much against the Catholic Church I mean this was an experience on infamous at this point where he’d been at the seminary the night that dr. King died you know and and somebody who was also on route to becoming a priest had said you know he got what he deserved so what
To think that he then went to a Catholic College after this incredible bitter experience of being part of the Catholic Church I think is very interesting and the fact that he connected so much with father Brooks the theology professor when he himself couldn’t bring himself
To go to church after one or two times at Holy Cross I think says a lot about sort of the depth of the relationship those two men had you know like my me and my fellow students at Mount Holyoke and the black students I knew at the
Other Ivy League and other you know northeast colleges at that at that same time the black students at Holy Cross found no social supports and cameras no black faculty few are no black people who lived in town no significant black social life isolated isolated and that’s one thing I think
That you know Brooks recognized I think at other colleges they recognize they did not get any special academic support you kind of had to make it or not based on that they did get special social support Brooks paid for them to get a van to go to drive off campus because he
Recognized you know they were not necessarily gonna have a good time in Worcester on a Saturday night he gate he let them live in the same residence which the black bear very controversial you know form of you know self imposed segregation Clarence Thomas was against it and then moved in once everybody
Voted yes let’s do it so I think there was an a recognition on his part that it was uncomfortable and whatever could be done by the college to make it a more comfortable community for these men was important and that is very different than making it a more comfortable community academically there
Was no break there but there were some significant breaks in terms of you know perks that they got that other students didn’t get because they just you know didn’t have the community that the other students had we’re gonna take a short break then we’ll be back with more with
Diane Brady author of fraternity traditional light bulbs actually generate nine times more heat than light switch to energy star light bulbs and you’ll realize just how much cash you are really burning through saving energy saves you money learn more at Energy Savers gov welcome back to one to one I’m Sheryl
McCarthy of the City University of New York and I’m talking with Diane Brady author of fraternity it’s just been published by the Spiegel & Grau imprint of Random House we’re talking about the the evolution of the black Brotherhood on on campus there was the Black Student
Union we all had one yeah the the black corridor which was a floor in one dorm which is highly controversial but probably helped create help the black students to survive by creating this sense of community I think I think it was a level of comfort I asked you know
Clarence Thomas who had voted against it very openly and loudly in the Black Student Union and then moved into I said why did you go he goes well you know to be honest it was comfortable and and it was a place where they could hang out they could bring their girlfriends and
What was happening at Holy Cross at that point was they very much changed you were allowed to bring women on campus more freely you didn’t have to go to Mass every day so a lot of the 60s had sort of come on to campus perhaps it’ll belatedly but I think what was happening
Was there was more awareness and I think that just having that sense of community and having a place where they felt that they belonged and they didn’t have to explain themselves or feel noticed was important a lot of the other demands sound familiar the demands for Black Studies program for black faculty for
Black meeting and reading room for the ban you talked about the the van for transitional year for entering black students to help them bridge the academic gap but you know very controversial with a lot of people but Brooks supported the students on most of these he did and you know there are real
Difficulties for example everybody wanted more black faculty at that time and there simply you know in many cases it was not that easy you know to recruit them Oh Greta Oh Greta McNeil who I spoke to in the book who was a very important figure in these men’s lives as
Well she talked to me about how difficult it was for her because she was trying she was one of the first faculty members she was trying to get more black faculty members as well and it was partly Holycross it was partly the neh sure that these people were in high
Demand and hadn’t necessarily had as many you know there weren’t as many of them for various reasons and so I think that there was this desire and there was this almost kind of goodwill as well that happened after dr. King’s death that’s where the door opened wider they
Discovered that you know it wasn’t so easy to get everything they wanted yeah and then they there was their takeover Benwick I have everybody had fantasy to actually through the table about Holyoke happened right after I graduated but probably around the same time as a taker
Fen we call what was that about and the thread and walk out while the walk out so that they were they were quite it they’re quite different so that you know the first incident was first of all they were taking over the gate there was the you know students for a Democratic
Society which had morphed into the I think revolutionary Students Union so there were other groups on campus that were also almost serially taking over buildings because you had civil rights he also had the Vietnam War which was a very power was so funny when the black students went into this hall it was
Already know there was a rival yeah so they had to kind of split up the building for who gets what they were fighting for you know again a list of Rights with for the black students the faculty members that but the the walkout was very interesting because what that
Was the Marines had typically come to campus to recruit quite a bit because Holy Cross was one of the schools that had you know very active ROTC they recruited a lot for the military they targeted GE in part because of again they were making weapons for the Vietnam
War a lot of these companies were targeted what happened was am a student demonstration v you know five black students in that group they weren’t organizers the organizers were singled out the black students were singled out and that was you know clearly racist and that was when the black student union
Voted essentially to walk out on mass so you know this education that they had fought so hard to get they essentially all quit school at once out of the black students were not if but they had but yeah they had been suspended and if they were not reinstate
And father swords who was the present the time said no no special treatment but there’s no question that had they not been black that the in fact the rationale was they were easy to pick out in the crowd well that’s not why you’re supposed to be that’s not how you’re
Supposed to identify the offenders in these situations so that became a very powerful statement was also a very powerful connection at that time to Brooks because it was Brooks that fought very hard to get them back and it was Brooks that kept the men together while they were negotiating to try and change
Father swords mind and he also Brooks also served as a real kind of mentor to the to the black students that he’d brought in along the way he did and I think you know I think it wasn’t so much that he was giving them you know pithy
Advice I think in some cases it was simply that he listened in the case of Clarence Thomas you know this was a man who didn’t have a lot of people to talk to he would come and talk to father Brooks quite a bit I think with Ted
Wells he you know very much encouraged him in terms of his leadership Wells was a prodigious worker the two of them in fact Clarence Thomas and Ted wells were always the last two people the library at night it would close down but I think in terms of what he did was he basically
Showed them that people at the highest level the administration really cared cared about their success cared about them understood that it wasn’t easy and I think simply having somebody acknowledged that somebody check in on them it meant a lot because a lot of people didn’t have that about half of
The 20 black students who entered Holy Cross in the fall of 68 graduated 50% attrition rate did that prove Rafal the Brooks right or wrong you know it’s it’s I think there were multiple factors some of them did kind of come back and you know but I think what ultimately
Happened was some of them were did not fit in well some of them transferred and because it was not a comfortable environment you know yes there were maybe one or two before they came but you know having 2526 a total on a campus of 2,000 does not make you feel that
Much at home so for some it was a comfort level for some it was the attraction that happens to every kid at college they they start cutting classes they can’t keep up with the workload they end up dropping out for AK dama creedence not that they weren’t
Smart but that they just couldn’t sort of cut it and that happens but so I think there are a lot of reasons I don’t think it proves that he was wrong to do it I think that a lot of those students did go on to be successful they weren’t
Necessarily successful there but you know it’s something that I think the failures in many ways are as important as the successes and to look at why those students um didn’t do well in many cases it was a very uncomfortable environment and I think it was also a
Very dramatic time in their lives so tell us about what happened to the five students that you focused on what they went on to do Clarence Thomas we sort of know we know him report done Ted wells Ted wells went on to get an MBA a joint
MBA and a law degree from Harvard and became one of the top trial lawyers in the country he basically has represented Scooter Libby Eliot Spitzer Citigroup ExxonMobil me he’s he’s been named loyal lawyer of the year and B and wanna thank you one is it the Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Legal Defense Fund very interesting cuz his life is overlapped quite a bit with Clarence it emerges as a real leader on campus did he did and Nina his wife who’s a character in the book was also Secretary of State for New Jersey so she’s done it there quite a powerful
Family Stan Grayson went on to get a law degree University of Michigan he went into Investment Banking broke a lot of ceilings there first man to head up the municipal bond department at Goldman Sachs deputy mayor of New York and now he is head of the largest minority-owned
Investment bank mr beal he’s president chief operating officer Eddie Jenkins went on to did get his NFL career he was in the Miami Dolphins you know the perfect season 1972 he played there so spent some years in the NFL also became a lawyer and has worked after going to
The Super Bowl after going the Super Bowl showing up with your Super Bowl waiting at Law School probably is a good conversation starter so he’s been very active he actually stayed in the Worcester area he lives in Boston now and he’s been involved in a lot of different sort of public
Service jobs and working a lot actually in the community as well to sort of make sure that disadvantaged youth go on to college and the like and then Edward P Jones actually did not have a roaring success story in fact he was homeless for a part of the 70s his mother was ill
He ended up going back to take care of her before she died became a writer what a Pulitzer Prize for the known world and I think is one of the greatest writers of this generation does Brooks maintain relationships with with the black students he brought in today today very
Much yes in fact he sees them on a regular basis he’s presided over their weddings their funerals in some cases their daughters I’m Gill Hardy who was a very introduced Justice Thomas to Anita Hill he died very young in a scuba accident father Brooks was you know preside over
The funerals so he’s been very involved and they men have been very involved in the college many of them have been trustees and they come back including Justice Thomas to sort of talk about their experiences and to encourage the next generation of black students to to
Reach for the same height how many black students as Holy Cross have now you know it’s a very you know overall I think there minority diversity count is like 25% but I think it’s still four or five percent for you know when it comes to black students so it’s or certainly
Maybe black men it’s it’s still a low number it they fight and in fact there’s also you know a lot of questions there have been times when why isn’t this next generation feeling the same sort of weight on their shoulders to really push and achieve some people have done very
Well this was a remarkable group of men they’ve had many success stories but I think they also have had periods where they’ve had to sit and think you know what can we do to be helping bring more people here be helping them succeed so it’s been a mixed record but I think
Overall this is a college that has first of all really striven to create excellence across the board they were also the last group of students that were all men Brooks pushed for women to come and so they left in June of 70 to fall of 72
Was in first class that was co-ed and I think that was also very powerful firm do you think any of those if you look at just those five any of them would have come to – holy cross if your father books hadn’t gone looking for them you know they would have
Certainly Ted wells I mean there was father Brooks was behind the scenes for some of them Ted Wells Stan Grayson they came through athletic scholarships and in fact Ted Wells was very much in demand from many different colleges he picked Holy Cross because he felt it was the right mix of academics and
Sports he did not want to go to a sport school he didn’t want to be diminished as just simply a jock so he chose that of his own volition Edward P Jones says he would not have come in fact he feels his SAT scores were so bad that he they
Wouldn’t even have looked at him so you know I think that some of them would not have Clarence Thomas initially it was suggested by a nun that he looked at Holy Cross because father Brooks had been reaching out and another student suggested it Brooks you know got him in
But Clarence you know found other ways to get to Holy Cross so I think some of them would have come questioners would all would they have stayed yeah think that’s the question they’re a fascinating story and the convergence of these young men and that priest and that
Particular point in time we’re out of time I want to thank ayan Brady for joining me today fraternity has just been published by Spiegel & Grau for the City University of New York and one to one I’m Sheryl McCarthy
source
