Affirmative Action, Activism, and Afro-American Studies: The Class of 1974 Looks Back on Racial Progress

The Supreme Court wouldn’t declare affirmative action constitutional until 1978, four years after the Class of 1974 graduated. But conversations around race-conscious admissions and merit began much earlier, when Harvard’s Class of 1974 was still on campus.

Between debate over affirmative action, the inception of an Afro-American Studies department, and the rise of student activism and groups like the African and African American Resistance Organizations, the Class of 1974 went through Harvard at a pivotal time in the history of race relations and Black students on campus.

‘An Overhang’

In 1974, Harvard declared it was firmly on the side of race-conscious admissions.

Marco DeFunis had sued University of Washington Law School and Charles E. Odegaard, the university’s president, alleging that the school had denied him admission unfairly as he had higher test scores than white applicants. Odegaard v. Funis would find itself at the Supreme Court — and Harvard would be a force on Odegaard’s side.

The University would file an amicus brief with 25 other institutions in support of Odegaard, and its top law professor Archibald Cox ’34 — who Richard Nixon had fired as the Watergate special prosecutor in the “Saturday Night Massacre” months earlier — would be giving the oral arguments.

But while Harvard’s commitment to affirmative action in Washington was strong, its Black students on campus still had to contend with adversity on multiple fronts.

For one, the Black student population was dwindling, despite a promise from the University in 1968 to increase the representation of Black students in the College’s admitted class.

From 1969 to 1971, Harvard admitted around 100 Black students every year. But from 1972 to 1974, the number of Black students at Harvard decreased by about 25 percent.

Those who were on campus said their experience was also tinted by critics of affirmative action who said the students Harvard was admitting were “unqualified.”

“The idea that we weren’t qualified was kind of an overhang while we were there,” said Steven C. Pitts ’74.

Wesley E. Profit ‘69 speaks at a meeting between AFRO members and Harvard faculty By Courtesy of Lee S. Smith

But Pitts said that undergraduates widely recognized that the lack of Black students was more a “function of racism” than it was evidence that they were unqualified to attend Harvard.

The hostility toward affirmative action wasn’t just from outside Harvard’s gates. Martin L. Kilson, Harvard’s first tenured Black faculty member, argued that elite schools had lowered standards to increase Black student enrollment.

Richard J. Herrnstein, a Psychology professor, went even further, publishing an article in The Atlantic that argued a person’s I.Q. is genetically determined. The subtext of Herrnstein’s argument was that Black individuals were inherently less qualified than their white counterparts.

Herrnstein did not go without objectors; in fact, the article sparked immediate backlash from students and faculty at Harvard and elsewhere. The Progressive Labor Party protested Herrnstein’s employment and the employment of other Harvard professors who shared racist beliefs.

“We would have educational programs, we would have demonstrations and try to get those people out of Harvard,” said Esther V. John ’74-’76, a PLP member.

Other organizations, such as the Organization for the Solidarity of Third World Students, took matters into their own hands. In its time, OSTWS developed an affirmative action task force to analyze racial diversity and equity in Havard’s hiring processes in the face of affirmative action controversies.

Still, such criticism increased the pressure that many Black students at Harvard felt to justify their standing at the university.

A’Lelia Bundles ’74 said that she never felt as though others looked at her and said she was “unqualified” to attend Harvard. Still, she said “there were always people who wanted to derail” actions Harvard had taken to increase the Black student population and make them feel welcome on campus.

Bill G. Fletcher Jr. ’76, a member of OSTWS, said that “most of us felt that we had to always demonstrate that we really were worthy of being at Harvard.”

‘A Questionable Status’

As students protested the views of their professors, Harvard itself also expanded its academic offerings in African and African American Studies — then called Afro-American Studies. In 1969, Harvard established its Department of Afro-American Studies. The College then first offered a field of concentration in Afro-American Studies in 1972.

Chris H. Foreman ’74 said the department had a “fragile status” on campus — in part because of the opposition of Kilson.

Kilson criticized the Afro-American studies department for a lack of academic structure and discipline, affirming that students should gain a core academic background before delving into the field.

He also believed that the department’s head, professor Ewart G. Guinier ’33, was the “wrong person to run it.”

The two professors would argue relentlessly, taking out pieces in the New York Times and even debating the structure of the department in December 1973 on “Positively Black,” a New York TV program.

“We must redefine Black studies so that it is not just an ideological tool giving Blacks a new sense of their worth,” Kilson said during the debate.

Guinier countered: “We study the Black experience from the point of view of the people who have lived that experience.”

A poster as part of the campaign for Afro-American Studies at Harvard. By Courtesy of Harvard University Archives

Foreman said the contentious debates over the department put its legitimacy into limbo.

“There was a sense that maybe it wasn’t as rigorous or wasn’t as high quality as other departments,” Foreman said. “Most departments don’t exist because students want them, they exist for other reasons, so Afro had a questionable status for a while.”

The new department had difficulty recruiting faculty members because of its lack of credibility and stature at the time. For that reason, many faculty members in the department were jointly affiliated with other academic departments at Harvard.

“I think that was kind of the bureaucratic compromise that was arrived at as a way of luring traditional scholars,” Foreman said.

For Rita P. Nethersole ’74, who concentrated in Afro-American studies at Harvard, the fact that the department only had joint disciplinary professors had both positives and negatives.

“I became somebody who wasn’t bound by disciplinary studies,” Nethersole said. “Although I think it also undermined the legitimacy of the department in the sense that it wasn’t enough to be a professor in Afro-American Studies.”

Despite the debates over the department’s pedagogy, Bundles said that its academic offerings helped her fill gaps in her knowledge of Black history and culture.

“There was a lot of unlearning I needed to do, and some of the Afro Studies literature and history courses compensated for that,” Bundles said.

She said that the department’s existence was testament to the efforts of years of advocacy from Black affiliates.

“I know that there’s so many people who came before and now thousands of African American students and alumni who have come afterwards who really have made Harvard a better place,” Bundles said.

—Staff writer Avani B. Rai contributed reporting.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves or on Threads @elyse.goncalves.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.