Brown and Tougaloo

A Dynamic Institutional Relationship

by patrick clark

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Illustration by Josh Lerner
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In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Brown University President Ruth Simmons teamed up with Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman to publicize an Ivy League effort to help our "southern sisters" rebuild. In an October 9th Boston Globe editorial titled "Colleges Helping Colleges," Simmons and Tilghman offered themselves a pat on the back for Brown and Princeton's joint financial effort to aid Dillard University, a historically black college and Simmons' alma mater. The editorial was a call to action: Privileged schools owe a moral debt to colleges that, in Simmons words, offer "a dependable source of support in the struggle to overcome disadvantaged backgrounds."

This editorial is a modified form of the familiar rhetoric Brown employs in discussions of privilege. In 1964, Brown initiated a relationship with Tougaloo College—a historically black college in rural Mississippi. Originally forged to support Tougaloo in the face of racist adversity, the connection persists today without the overt paternalism that characterized the early relationship. While an association with Brown has proven integral to Tougaloo's reputation, very few Brown undergraduates are aware of their school's relationship with a historically black college. Brown's general neglect of its relationship with Tougaloo illustrates an overall problem with maintaining ties to the University's past—a problem most recently manifested in the slavery reparations debate. In contrast, Tougaloo, is a school that has held to a consistent mission and memory since the time of its founding. The divergent paths that Tougaloo College and Brown University have taken since the establishment of their relationship illustrates the paradoxically enduring and volatile nature of Brown's institutional identity.

Brown University And The Death Of Institutional Memory

Forty-one years after its establishment, the relationship between Brown and Tougaloo remains vibrant only in obscure corners of university life. An early identification program for the Brown Medical School admits promising Tougaloo students, Brown historians are archiving the history of Tougaloo, and a network of deans remain knowledgeable of the relationship. Yet walking through the main green on a fall day and asking undergraduates about Tougaloo yielded results such as: "What is Tougaloo?" "I don't know what you're talking about," and "That's the historically black college, right? How are we tied to them?"

The tensions that drew me to Brown—the school's simultaneous embrace of and casual disregard for tradition—have caused contradictions in identity that are detrimental to the maintenance of Brown's institutional memory. It's no surprise that many of us don't know about Tougaloo. The Brown of 2005 has fundamentally disconnected itself from the Brown of the sixties. The New Curriculum, the admittance of women into the university, and the development of non-traditional academic disciplines have isolated older generations of alumni from their alma mater. Yet old sports uniforms in the archives at the John Hay Library and the tradition of marching through Van Winkle Gate remain as conspicuous evidence of our heritage.

Tougaloo College: Memory And Mission

In the northern outskirts of Jackson, Mississippi, Tougaloo College has constructed its identity in vastly different ways than its northern sister. Founded after the Emancipation Proclamation to educate former slaves and their children, Tougaloo remains intensely aware of its past. The main administrative building is a former plantation house, informally called "the mansion." Karen Baxter Allen, director of the Rites and Reason Theater at Brown and former chair of Brown's Tougaloo Advisory Committee, describes it as "grand in scale but functional in furnishing." The Woodworth Chapel, a national historical monument, is a three-minute walk from the mansion. Until the chapel was restored in the early 1990s, its walls were riddled with bullet holes and shotgun blasts, the legacies of violent episodes throughout the sixties.

Beyond material reminders of the past, institutional memory lives through tradition: a Mr. and Mrs. Tougaloo College are crowned annually and, unlike Brown, Tougaloo openly embraces its Baptist heritage. Tougaloo's relationship with Brown has added to its rich history and defines the way the college conceives of its own identity. Angel Byrd, a devoutly religious MD/PhD student at Brown who graduated from Tougaloo in 2004 with a degree in chemistry, said "I went to Tougaloo for two reasons: its history in educating African Americans and its affiliation with Brown—I went there with the expectation of coming here for graduate school."

The Great White Father?

Tougaloo builds on its founding tradition while Brown has systematically abandoned its own, which explains why Brown forgets its ties to Tougaloo while Tougaloo emphasizes and reveres the affiliation. This highlights a series of contrasts in schools that are nevertheless connected by dedication to social justice, a Baptist founding and shared academic values. Financially, Tougaloo's students pay a full tuition of approximately $13,330 while Brown charges a full tuition of $42,303. Tuition at Tougaloo covers 90 percent of the cost of education; full tuition at Brown only foots about 60% of the bill. By these numbers, Brown is able to spend roughly 4.7 times more per student than Tougaloo. "More than anything, what Tougaloo is up against is poverty," chaplain Janet Cooper Nelson said.

It's no surprise then, that the relationship between Brown and Tougaloo was forged on financial terms. When the state of Mississippi threatened Tougaloo with foreclosure because the college was actively participating in Civil Rights enfranchisement efforts, the college's financial solvency was jeopardized. Two trustees with Providence roots encouraged Brown to financially support the embattled southern college. Initially playing "the great white father," Brown pledged its superior resources to Tougaloo in exchange for a promise that the college would abandon, or at least tone down, its radical politics. At one point the University engineered the appointment of a former professor as President of Tougaloo College—a decision that reeked of academic colonialism.

A New Era: Necessary Reform Or Cosmetic Changes?

Proponents of the Tougaloo/Brown connection claim that although the relationship was once abused, it is one of healthy symbiosis now. Baxter Allen, from her office in the Rites and Reason theater, contemplated the current condition of the relationship and self-consciously erased the word "needs" from her explanation—financial need has been replaced by a wealth of benefits in her estimation. Brown University's careful self-reflection and the foundation of an Africana Studies program have sensitized the school to issues of racial power, causing the policies towards Tougaloo to shift dramatically.

The way Brown conceived its relationship with Tougaloo changed. In the mid-1990s the committee that oversaw the partnership was disbanded in favor of centralizing power in the trustees office. Donald J. Reaves, the CFO of the Brown Corporation who is African-American, took control of the financial reins until he took a position at the University of Chicago in 2002. In 2003, Simmons named Dr. Valerie Wilson, the coordinator of the Leadership Alliance, a consortium of elite research universities and historically black colleges dedicated to encouraging minorities to pursue PhDs in the sciences, as the overseer of the Brown/Tougaloo partnership. Cooper Nelson said that shifting the power to African Americans within Brown was intended to equalize power gradients between Brown and Tougaloo.

Exchange trips continue to be offered: more students from Tougaloo opt to spend a semester at Brown than vice versa, but Baxter Allen observed that Brown students at Tougaloo, unwilling to return to their home institution, have feigned illness to stay for longer periods of time. The trend for Tougaloo to send students to Brown while Brown students rarely venture to Tougaloo is counterintuitive on many levels: Brown offers curricular flexibility while Tougaloo students can only take three electives over the course of their entire undergraduate education. Oftentimes Tougaloo will not accept Brown classes towards general education or major requirements. Conversely, Brown students who visit Tougaloo often come back north with a transcript full of C's. Cooper Nelson attributes this difference to an attitude of accountability present at Tougaloo and absent at Brown, saying, "Tougaloo assumes that accepted students have nothing except unlimited potential. Brown does not make that assumption."

A Self-Sustaining Relationship

The results of Tougaloo's attitude towards its students have been astonishing: 40% of Mississipi's African American doctors, lawyers, and teachers are Tougaloo graduates. Of historically black colleges, Tougaloo ranks fourth in the number of alums with science PhDs. Courtni Newsome, a PhD candidate who is specializing in diabetes research and Byrd, who is researching cancer, explain that every student is encouraged to be a leader and to contribute to societal change with sense of genuine joy and duty. Recruited by Brown Med School's Early Identification Program, the two have reached a logical next-step they planned on before even entering Tougaloo.

Both Byrd and Newsome participated in Tougaloo's Summer Science Program for high school students and began working in labs immediately as undergraduates. Byrd capitalized on a chance to spend a summer working in the lab of Brown University chemist Rena Wayne. She said that the lab experience helped modify her career goals: rather than becoming simply an MD as she planned, she decided upon an 8-year PhD/MD dual degree program.

Newsome said that despite being consumed by her studies as she is, she and other Tougaloo students at Brown will have the time for others coming from Mississippi next fall. Sustaining Tougaloo's traditions and institutional memory is important, she said. In the spring, Tougaloo grads will help the next crop of the Early Identification Program find housing. Fall will bring trips to Wal-Mart for cold weather supplies and house furnishings. The elder students will join the younger ones for dinner and Baptist fellowship.

The affiliation between Brown University and Tougaloo College remains strong in this context. Although it is formally a partnership between two institutions, one a liberal northern university and the other a small historically black college, it is shaped by human connections. This human chain is what has kept the relationship strong enough to endure the considerable fluctuation in how each institution has conceived of its identity and purpose.

Patrick Clark B '07 is institutionally limber.

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