“I am sorry I must write you that we are not authorized to consider for admission a member of the negro race.”
This message contains the reasoning behind Marion Hood’s 1959 rejection from the Emory University School of Medicine, an act for which the university recently issued an apology. The apology, though no doubt provided in good faith, inaccurately portrays Emory as having been a morally contemptible segregationist institution. In reality, Emory stood against state-imposed racism, an endeavor it ought to celebrate rather than wallowing in this manner.
It is, of course, detestable to prevent an individual from attending an institution on the basis of race. But in 1959, DeKalb County, Georgia, prohibited racial integration at schools, including Emory University. If Emory had admitted an African American student, the county would have revoked the university’s tax-exempt status, hurling the school into financial turmoil and potential ruin.
Emory could have let the issue remain there, continuing to refuse black applicants. That would have been the safest and easiest choice in a state that handily awarded its electoral votes a decade later to George Wallace, a candidate that practically ran on preserving racial segregation. Instead, Emory sued DeKalb County officials, intent on defeating policies that prevented the university from implementing racial equality in its admissions procedures.
The university’s efforts made it to the Georgia Supreme Court, where the justices, reversing a lower court’s decision, found that the county could not revoke Emory’s tax-exempt status as retaliation for admitting black students. Emory University thus won a victory for racial equality on that day and in a high court, no less.
At the time of Hood’s application, Emory could not have feasibly accepted Hood into its medical program as the penalties imposed by government were too great. But in order to ensure that such injustice would never again be permitted at the university, its trustees engaged in a long and reputationally risky legal battle to achieve integration. Hood’s inability to attend Emory was truly unfortunate, and on the surface, there is nothing wrong with issuing an apology for it. But to paint Emory as morally culpable is simply inaccurate. In fact, the school played a heroic role in changing an unjust status quo — a role that the university ought to hold up proudly as an example of the lofty ideals that its founders strove toward. Unfortunately, the focus of administrators seems to be more on the sort of historical masochism that has become all too common in the American psyche.
During the Civil War, 359,528 Union soldiers died for the cause of preserving the Union and ending slavery — roughly 6% of all men living in the northern United States.
The nation atoned for slavery in blood. Still, our ancestors are being unjustly and universally vilified as having been universally complicit in America’s shortcomings, in spite of all they sacrificed.
As people celebrated the anniversary of the effective end of slavery in the U.S. last weekend, much of the discourse centered on negative aspects of America’s past and the allegedly persistent legacy of racism in the country. Disappointingly, little was said about the achievement of ending slavery or about the hundreds of thousands of (overwhelmingly white) men who suffered through some of the worst conditions in human history to bring about the very thing being celebrated.
Using broad strokes to categorize every American from a given period as complicit in its evils is not only historically questionable but deeply disrespectful to those who stood for what was right at times when it was not easy to do so. As a nation, we have a lot to be proud of. Where it is appropriate, we ought to honor the nobility of those who preceded us, not conspicuously wring our hands to prove how much more virtuous we are today when, thanks to earlier sacrifices, one can oppose certain historical evils without making any sacrifice at all.
