Fighting for Change Without Burning Bridges

In Cabot House this April, Mecca J. Nelson '92 saw a poster announcing a speech sponsored by the conservative magazine Peninsula The speech, whose subject was the relationship of white liberalism in the 1960s to Black sexuality. was titled "Spade Kicks," and the poster portrayed a silhouette of a Black woman stripping for a white audience.

Appalled by the title of the speech and the picture on the poster, Nelson set out to do something about it. The day after the poster went up, Nelson had talked to a Peninsula staff member about it, and met with Assistant Dean of the College Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle and Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57. Within another two days, Nelson and another student had written a letter to The Crimson explaining why poster was offensive to Blacks.

That Nelson protest was both public and private is representative of her Harvard career. As president of the Black Students Association (BSA), but also in a vast variety of other activities, Nelson has struggled to educate other students about issues of race and gender and fought for change without burning bridges.

Nelson grew up in Flint, Michigan, a blue-collar automobile city whose decline was vividly documented in the film Roger and Me." She attended magnet public high school in Flint, and her experiences there helped spark her interest at Harvard.

"My school was the most racially balanced in the city, but by the time you are in middles school the division of the races is already established," Nelson says.

"It's very difficult to cross those lines, and for people like me who tired to, it was a very difficult experience justifying myself to black students and white students at the same time," Nelson continues. "So I came here because I wanted to be free of those boundaries."

Nelson lived in Straus Hall during her first year, and after several months growing close to other students in her entryway, Nelson found another community through the Freshman Black Table (FBT). "I think that like may other Black students who come here, a lot of times I felt like some strange person who dropped out of the sky," she says. "At high school, I didn't have any other Black students who were up to my level academically. And that was a problem. I was often ostracized, criticized for doing this much hard work."

"I felt like I found my comrades in Freshman Black Table, because these were all people who had a similar experience feeling like they were the only person who is alive," she continues. "Just being able to talk to them, to share experiences with them, was wonderful. I knew they were out there. I just didn't know where they were."

Nelson was elected as one of the FBT's liaisons to the BSA, and for the next two years she grew more and more involved with the larger organization, serving as the BSA's recording secretary during her sophomore year. At the end of that year, Nelson was not planning to run for another BSA office because she wanted to take a semester off. But she was persuaded to run for president, after one of the other officers convinced her that the BSA needed her experience to survive as a productive organization.

"I reluctantly agreed to run," Nelson says. "I think that has been my feeling about the group. it's something I felt I had to make a sacrifice for, and I did. It's the kind of thing where there is only a really small core group of people who keep the organization going, and I felt that since I had the experience, since I had the committment, why not?"

"We can't possibly not have a BSA one this campus, and I think we were kind of faced with that at that point," she continues. "So I decided to go ahead and to it."

During Nelson's tenure as head of BSA, she guided the organization through two of Harvard's most dramatic recent controversies: the protests to push for a stronger Afro-American Studies Department and the debate over a Confederate flag hung by a Kirkland House student.

In October 1990, the BSA and Afro-American Studies concentrators met with top Harvard officials to discuss the need to revive the moribund department. After an unproductive meeting, the Afro-American Studies concentrators staged a sit-in at University Hall to dramatize their demands for more faculty.

Nelson and the BSA had not know about the sit-in beforehand, and did not participate. Nelson chose instead to try to mediate between the administration and the protestors. The sit-in ended peacefully, and the University's subsequent success in hiring high-profile professors was, many say, a result of the very visible student protest.

Despite the eventual revival of the department, Nelson regrets not having taken a more active position and joined the protestors. "I feel that we [in the BSA] were kind of timid in our action," she says. "We didn't want to sit in, but we wanted to support those who were. Looking back I would have had the board and the membership agree to sit-in with the others because that would have been such a strong showing."

"I think I've gotten more cynical over the years," she says. "A lot of the arguments for not sitting in were that we would lose this, we would lose that, but I don't feel that we have much to lose anyway."

Nelson's actions during the debate over the Confederate flag last year were the best example of how she has used her position of authority both to teach student and change Harvard. Last winter, a white student in Kirkland House placed a Confederate flag in her window. After a few days of protest against the flag, another white protest against the flag, another white student in Cabot House put a flag in his window. A Black student in Cabot then placed a swastika in her window.

Nelson and Daniel J. Libenson '92, chair of Harvard/Radcliffe Hillel, wrote a joint letter to The Crimson condemning the flags. The BSA, led by Nelson, and other groups conducted a series of eat-ins in Kirkland an Cabot Houses in an effort to explain to other students why the flags were painful and hateful to Blacks and Jews. At the same time Nelson led the eat-ins, she met with administrators and tried to persuade them to use the University's racial harassment guidelines to force the students to remove the Confederate flags.

"What we tried to do last year was to educate people about why this is a hurtful symbol," Nelson says. "It was educative in the sense that you can't assume that all student know [what the flag means to Blacks], and it was activist in trying to get the administration to do something,...which failed."

What impressed Nelson's admirers during the flag controversy was that she was able simultaneously to put pressure on the administration, and educate students, and to maintain communications between administrators and student groups.

Says Jurij Striedter, master of Cabot House. "As master, it is crucial to have individual students like Mecca who can fight for the rights of groups that are disadvantaged and at the same time accept others as individuals and mediate with other groups,"

"During the flag debate..Mecca was able to speak up for group without breaking up the communication," Striedter says. Streidter awarded Nelson a Master's Citation at the Cabot senior dinner in recognition of her efforts to improve race relations during the flag debate and throughout her time at Harvard.

The "Spade Kicks" and Confederate flag controversies have convinced Nelson that the University needs to regulate hate speech to prevent increasingly frequent racial harassment. She argues that University policy restrictingracial harassment should allow the administrationto limit certain speech that is hurtful tostudents.

"Somehow this free speech thing overrideseverything, and I think that's very dangerous forthe community," she says. "it's another source ofour race relations problems. A lot of students,particularly Black students, are feelings, arehurt, it our feelings are hurt, it doesn't reallymatter in the end."

Nelson's academic work has in many waysmirrored her activism. She began as a Governmentconcentrator, moved into History, and Literature,and this year transferred into the Afro-AmericanStudies Department where, she says, "everythinghas come together." A tutorial with Phillip BrianHarper, assistant professor of English andAmerican literature and language and Afro-Americanstudies, a course with visiting Professor PatriciaJ. Williams, and a course with visiting LecturerSpike Lee have convinced Nelson that sheeventually wants to go to graduate school.

Nelson hopes to study for a joint degree in lawad American civilization, but for the next twoyear she wants to work perhaps in the Bay Area orWashington, D.C.

Nelson's recent academic work has particularlyspurred her interest in the connections betweenrace and gender. In lee's course, for example,Nelson has spoken out regularly about sexism infilms by Black directors. Lee challenged her towrite a move about Black women, and Nelson iscurrently working on a script based on her ownexperience as a Black woman at Harvard.

"At Harvard, with the absence of Black womenfaculty and administrators, you kind of feel, notthat you can't find role models and mentorselsewhere, but that there's this really weirddynamic....[because other students have theopportunity to see other people like them. So I'dlike to deal with that issue, with what it is liketo really feel alone."

In addition to BSA, Nelson has taken on a rangeof other activities that is, to say the least,extensive.

Drama and dance have been the most important ofNelson's other activities. She acted in "A ChorusLine" in her sophomore year, and in "Crossroads,"a student-written play about a Black college atthe beginning of the Civil Right Movement, duringher junior year. This year, she acted in "OurHusband Has Gone Mad Again," an African play inwhich she played the youngest of three wives whocomes to lead a women's political party. Nelsonalso co-directed Expressions Dance Company for asemester and co-produced Jazz for Life.

Add to drama and dance her extensive work withthe Harvard Foundation, a summer with theCambridge, Youth Enrichment Program, and threeyears as a minority recruiter for the admissionsoffice and you have a woman who has been awfullybusy.

Nelson's says she copes with her academic workand multiple commitments by using her dramaticactivities to release the pressure of herpoliticial ones. "Culture is a way for me torelease, to get out of the political realm, to besomeone else, to be in a totally differentsituation," Nelson says. "Going to play rehearsalis like therapy for me in a lot of ways.

Nelson says that her work with the admissionsoffice has been particularly important to her.Each of the last three years, she has spent a weekin the fall at home in Detroit and Flint as aminority recruiter in area high school, "As muchas I have criticism about this place, I probablywould not have gone anywhere else," Nelson says."I feel like I have a responsibility to go backand share what I have experienced here."

Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial AidRichard I. Melvoin '73 travelled with Nelson inMichigan on her three recruiting trips: "I thinkwhat students and parents most appreciated aboutMecca was that instead of some some agingadmissions officer trying to tell them whatHarvard was like, she was not only a reallivestudent, but one who was remarkably active, onewho does not see Harvard with rose-coloredglasses, yet one who represents the place well inall its complexity."

"The positive side she would present to studentis that this is a college that providesextraordinary opportunities for students to pushin the direction they choose," Melvoin says. "Theflip side is that she also saw it as a place thatneeds to improve...She's not shy about talkingabout those kinds of issues. What ultimately wascompelling is that she was not just talking, shewas doing it, and she was doing it in a way thatdid not alienate the people she was confronting.

"Somehow this free speech thing overrideseverything, and I think that's very dangerous forthe community," she says. "it's another source ofour race relations problems. A lot of students,particularly Black students, are feelings, arehurt, it our feelings are hurt, it doesn't reallymatter in the end."

Nelson's academic work has in many waysmirrored her activism. She began as a Governmentconcentrator, moved into History, and Literature,and this year transferred into the Afro-AmericanStudies Department where, she says, "everythinghas come together." A tutorial with Phillip BrianHarper, assistant professor of English andAmerican literature and language and Afro-Americanstudies, a course with visiting Professor PatriciaJ. Williams, and a course with visiting LecturerSpike Lee have convinced Nelson that sheeventually wants to go to graduate school.

Nelson hopes to study for a joint degree in lawad American civilization, but for the next twoyear she wants to work perhaps in the Bay Area orWashington, D.C.

Nelson's recent academic work has particularlyspurred her interest in the connections betweenrace and gender. In lee's course, for example,Nelson has spoken out regularly about sexism infilms by Black directors. Lee challenged her towrite a move about Black women, and Nelson iscurrently working on a script based on her ownexperience as a Black woman at Harvard.

"At Harvard, with the absence of Black womenfaculty and administrators, you kind of feel, notthat you can't find role models and mentorselsewhere, but that there's this really weirddynamic....[because other students have theopportunity to see other people like them. So I'dlike to deal with that issue, with what it is liketo really feel alone."

In addition to BSA, Nelson has taken on a rangeof other activities that is, to say the least,extensive.

Drama and dance have been the most important ofNelson's other activities. She acted in "A ChorusLine" in her sophomore year, and in "Crossroads,"a student-written play about a Black college atthe beginning of the Civil Right Movement, duringher junior year. This year, she acted in "OurHusband Has Gone Mad Again," an African play inwhich she played the youngest of three wives whocomes to lead a women's political party. Nelsonalso co-directed Expressions Dance Company for asemester and co-produced Jazz for Life.

Add to drama and dance her extensive work withthe Harvard Foundation, a summer with theCambridge, Youth Enrichment Program, and threeyears as a minority recruiter for the admissionsoffice and you have a woman who has been awfullybusy.

Nelson's says she copes with her academic workand multiple commitments by using her dramaticactivities to release the pressure of herpoliticial ones. "Culture is a way for me torelease, to get out of the political realm, to besomeone else, to be in a totally differentsituation," Nelson says. "Going to play rehearsalis like therapy for me in a lot of ways.

Nelson says that her work with the admissionsoffice has been particularly important to her.Each of the last three years, she has spent a weekin the fall at home in Detroit and Flint as aminority recruiter in area high school, "As muchas I have criticism about this place, I probablywould not have gone anywhere else," Nelson says."I feel like I have a responsibility to go backand share what I have experienced here."

Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial AidRichard I. Melvoin '73 travelled with Nelson inMichigan on her three recruiting trips: "I thinkwhat students and parents most appreciated aboutMecca was that instead of some some agingadmissions officer trying to tell them whatHarvard was like, she was not only a reallivestudent, but one who was remarkably active, onewho does not see Harvard with rose-coloredglasses, yet one who represents the place well inall its complexity."

"The positive side she would present to studentis that this is a college that providesextraordinary opportunities for students to pushin the direction they choose," Melvoin says. "Theflip side is that she also saw it as a place thatneeds to improve...She's not shy about talkingabout those kinds of issues. What ultimately wascompelling is that she was not just talking, shewas doing it, and she was doing it in a way thatdid not alienate the people she was confronting.