by Diane Brady
Brooks would forever recall how uncharacteristically sheepish he felt as he walked into Swords’s office to give him a report of his trip. The school’s finances were hardly robust, and it was hard to argue that offering so many scholarships was fiscally responsible. He immediately blurted out to Swords that he had spent eighty thousand dollars of the schools’ money. For a moment Swords said nothing. Then the president responded that he hoped it would be money well spent and quickly went back to his work. The onus was now on Brooks to prove that his gamble would pay off.
Brooks was grateful for his colleague’s support, however stoic it might be. He knew that several alumni had already told Swords that they wouldn’t take kindly to a special recruitment drive for black students. But Swords had become used to controversy during his eight-year tenure as president. Since taking the position in 1960, he had replaced a number of his fellow Jesuits with so-called lay faculty. His goal had been to improve the quality of teaching by tapping a wider and more diverse academic pool to fill tenured positions. The task had been a painful one, made more awkward by the fact that the priests shared a common residence. Every time Swords removed one of the brothers from an academic post, he knew he’d have to face that man every day in the dining room or the lounge of their shared home. Spending thousands of dollars on a drive to bring in black freshmen was just another one of the difficult choices he had to make.
Swords, a cerebral and sometimes aloof academic, had come to the president’s job reluctantly. Although he had little desire to be in the public spotlight, he wasn’t afraid to break with tradition when he felt it was necessary. Swords had done his best to raise the school’s academic standards, for example, going outside the Jesuit community to hire professors with strong research and teaching credentials. He was a quiet man, often seen walking around campus with a set of rosary beads in his hands. His instinct was to share power, not hoard it, and Brooks had become, in many ways, his right-hand man. Brooks clearly had a greater appetite for conflict and dramatic change than Swords. Along with pushing to admit black men, Brooks had vigorously argued for the need to admit women, a move so radical that the school’s trustees hadn’t given it too much consideration in 1968. Brooks was so tenacious that even some of his sympathizers warned him that he risked sabotaging his own causes. Where others might work to persuade opponents, Brooks had an uncomfortable tendency to simply announce what needed to be done. He didn’t feel he had time to worry about what others were thinking.
Barely a week after their Philadelphia trip, Brooks tapped Gallagher yet again, this time to help bring some of the men they had interviewed in the city up to Worcester for Spring Weekend. Brooks knew whom he wanted, and the recruits had confirmed their interest in attending Holy Cross, but there was still time for them to change their minds or be recruited to other schools. Acceptances would have started arriving in the mail; scholarship offers would be forthcoming and likely enhanced in the wake of King’s assassination. The only way to make the men fully appreciate what Holy Cross could offer, Brooks believed, was to invite them to the campus to look around. A few might be willing to come with friends or parents, but he knew that many of the young men didn’t have the money to make their way to Worcester on their own. The best thing would be to pick them up and bring them back himself.
Spring Weekend was the highlight of the Holy Cross year, with a headliner concert, Junior Prom, and a campus that would be in full bloom. It was a chance to show off Holy Cross at its best. For those recruits who were firmly committed to Holy Cross, Brooks believed that showing them the campus might reassure them. For those who might be quietly wavering, Spring Weekend might win them over.
Brooks asked the admissions office to see which of the men were interested in a free ride and weekend on campus. About half a dozen said yes. He inquired about other black students who might have an interest in Holy Cross. There was one young man in Washington, Ed Jones, who had been referred to the college by a Jesuit priest. Brooks hadn’t met Jones himself but the D.C.-based Jesuit had spoken highly of the teen’s work ethic and intelligence. If they could arrange for a way to get Jones to Philadelphia, Brooks said, they could bring him as part of the larger group. With so many men to transport, they would need more than Gallagher’s car, so Brooks borrowed an old station wagon from a colleague on campus. On the day they had agreed to meet, Brooks and Gallagher left early, arriving in central Philadelphia at the agreed-upon pickup spot before midday.
Back in Washington, Ed Jones left his home early to catch a bus to Philadelphia, where he would meet up with the priest who had offered to drive him to Worcester. The notion of a “spring” weekend was so foreign to him that it felt almost quaint, yet the idea that he was being invited as a guest of the college was hard to resist. No other school was courting him. Jones couldn’t help wondering why Holy Cross was bothering to go to such an effort.
By the time Jones got to the pickup point in Philadelphia, a group of black teens was already milling around a broad middle-aged man with a clerical collar and another white man who didn’t look all that much older than the students. The priest introduced himself as John Brooks.
Jones climbed into the backseat with teens Gordon Davis and Harvey Wigfall. As they drove off, he settled in to listen to the conversation. The men were discussing the recent social upheaval. On the outer edge of Harlem in New York, students at Columbia University were embroiled in what would turn out to be a dramatic and violent protest. Their main grievance, along with Columbia’s ties to companies profiting from the war, was the university’s treatment of residents in the surrounding neighborhood, many of whom were black. In particular, the protesters had targeted a ten-story gymnasium under construction in nearby Morningside Park that they said offered limited—and segregated—access to locals while taking up precious public space. In reaction, they had taken over campus buildings and held the dean hostage in his office. News of the takeover, which ultimately ended in a bloody clash with police and the suspension of classes, was playing on the radio as the Holy Cross recruits traveled north to get their own taste of college life. Cities were no longer burning, but the country was still on edge. Shortly after King’s death, on April 7, Eldridge Cleaver had been wounded and a black teen was killed in a shootout with Oakland police. Jones admired Cleaver, in part because of his provocative statements as a spokesman for the Black Panther Party, a revolutionary group that had formed two years earlier in California to give blacks more power and control in their communities, especially against the actions of white police. More important, Cleaver had just released his searing Soul on Ice, a collection of essays he’d written in prison. The New York Times had praised it as a book about “the imprisonment of men’s souls by society.” That Cleaver had been shot and arrested so soon after the book’s release somehow validated its message that the black experience was ultimately an anguished one. It felt like an odd time to be taking a field trip to a white Catholic college.
Jones liked to listen, and Brooks certainly liked to talk. He asked the young men what they thought of the Columbia students’ demands. Jones could tell that the priest was the type who liked to keep people on their toes. Gallagher jumped into the conversation from time to time, but if the other young men had provocative views on what was going on—and Jones knew that he certainly did—few were eager to share them. Expressing sympathy with student radicals seemed like a sure route to getting a scholarship offer revoked.
Brooks told the men stories about the school while questioning them about other issues ranging from the war to bell-bottom pants. He clearly possessed a useful personality for winning over young minds. Although it didn’t come naturally to him, Jones tried to engage in conversation with Davis. He felt he had no choice; the two of them were practically sitting on each other’s laps. Davis had only just heard about Holy Cross the previous week. His plan had been to go to a state school until a guidance counselor at his high school had called him into the office to meet Brooks and Gallagher. Gordon didn’t know
much about Holy Cross, but he was interested in a weekend away from home and the prospect of a concert.
With the exception of a trip to Brooklyn in the summer of 1965, Jones hadn’t spent any time in the North. To him it would always be the land of abolition. These were the descendants of the people who had fought to end slavery, whereas the white folks he saw while staying with his mother’s family in Virginia were, he assumed, descendants of those who had fought to keep it. Jones was quietly impressed with Brooks and with the fact that he’d driven more than 250 miles from Massachusetts just to bring them up for a campus visit. None of the men in the wagon was a star athlete. There wouldn’t be a dollar of revenue coming to the college when they enrolled. He wondered what Brooks saw in them.
The students reached Holy Cross as the sun was starting to set. The campus flowers were in bloom and the manicured grass had yet to endure the constant onslaught of Frisbee games and sunbathers that would arrive when the weather got warmer. But Jones and the other men were more interested in the students they saw wandering around the campus than in the landscaping. The students looked fresh-scrubbed and conservative with their short hair and sport jackets. Black or white, any of the students on campus would have stood out on the streets of Philadelphia and Washington, where the youth movement had inspired a much looser and more colorful look.
Stan Grayson had flown in from Detroit for the weekend. Holy Cross was one of several schools considering him for a basketball scholarship, and Jack Donohue, the Holy Cross basketball coach, had arranged for his trip. As Grayson walked across the field, he took in the beauty of the campus. It was undeniably pretty—a word he hadn’t used all that often in his hometown, except perhaps to describe the girls in his neighborhood.
While Brooks was chatting with Jones, Donohue was eagerly wooing Grayson to come play for Holy Cross. The college had a solid team—they had won 15 of their 23 games the previous year—but they had a tendency to choke near the end of the season. Donohue saw great potential in Grayson. At six-foot-four and 205 pounds, Grayson would not be the biggest player on the court, but he was versatile and strong. And he was good at the tough stuff, like getting offensive rebounds and playing tenacious defense. Donohue knew that Grayson’s skin color would be a bonus in securing the young man a scholarship, especially with Brooks’s mission and mandate.
Although Grayson had been recruited by a number of schools, Holy Cross seemed to be the most eager to have him come. He wasn’t sure why, since it hadn’t really been a force in basketball since the 1940s, when George Kaftan, one of Brooks’s best friends, and Bob Cousy had helped lead the team to an NCAA championship victory. But Donohue was trying to revive basketball at Holy Cross, and Grayson had come to believe that the college could offer him more than just an opportunity to hone his basketball skills. During a meeting with some alumni, one asked him what he wanted to do when he finished college. Grayson mentioned his interest in law. He didn’t really see himself in a courtroom, but he knew that a career in basketball wouldn’t last forever. Later, one of the interviewers sent him a list of law schools that the graduates of 1967 were currently attending. Nobody from any other school had sent a list of successful graduates. The alumnus who sent the list had also offered to help him pick the right classes to get into law school.
The more Grayson thought about it, the more he liked the idea of attending a school that boasted a reputation for academics as well as a decent team. In his view, a law degree would remove any doubts about ability and race. Lawyers didn’t have to go begging for a chance to get through the doors of corporate America. They could make things happen. Basketball was going to be his ticket to college but Grayson didn’t want to make it his only bet for getting ahead in the world.
Grayson found himself liking Coach Donohue, who had a wicked sense of humor and often joked that the Jesuits might have taken a vow of poverty, but he was being forced to live it. Donohue had come to Holy Cross from Manhattan’s Power Memorial Academy, where he’d coached a much-buzzed-about player—Lew Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Donohue had sheltered Alcindor from the growing media frenzy and had helped him pick the University of California at Los Angeles for college.
Grayson toured the Holy Cross campus with a black sophomore named Art Martin as his guide. Martin had recently returned from representing the college at King’s funeral in Atlanta. Grayson was enjoying the company of his chatty companion, unaware of Martin’s reservations about having to show another black athlete around Holy Cross. Brooks had asked Martin to help with recruitment, and the sophomore felt an obligation to the priest. Martin hadn’t told Brooks about the “Martin Luther Coon” jibe he’d heard on the night that King died, nor was he going to tell any potential recruit that they could find a much easier place to spend the next four years of their college life. Martin could tell that Grayson was an immensely likable man. The basketball player was walking around with a smile on his face, as if he already knew he would enjoy life at Holy Cross.
To Grayson, the campus felt miles away from the turmoil of Detroit. He would have a chance to work with the man who had coached Lew Alcindor in high school, and he would be getting a quality education that nobody could question. That said, he wasn’t oblivious to the drawbacks of enrolling at Holy Cross: After four years of being the black guy at his high school, he wasn’t eager to spend another four in a similar role at college. But he figured he could live with that. He made friends easily, black or white.
Martin was pleased that Grayson seemed so confident about Holy Cross. On a gut level, Martin desperately wanted more black men on campus. He was tired of classmates coming up to him any time they saw a black female to tell him they’d found a woman for him to date. There were so few black people living in Worcester—a little more than a thousand, by most counts—that there wasn’t much relief in a night out in town. It would have been nice to have had a few more black peers to socialize with. He sometimes felt like the invisible man, accepted as part of the crowd because he wasn’t radical or the kind of dangerous black man who might harbor ill will against whites. He was not, as one classmate had said that year in apparent admiration, “a nigger.”
While he would have loved to have someone like Grayson for a friend, Martin also felt an obligation to make potential recruits like Grayson understand how tough Holy Cross could be. The only reason Martin had enrolled was that he was awarded a scholarship, and his parents couldn’t afford to send five kids to college on a postal worker’s wages. But Holy Cross wasn’t always the tolerant and welcoming environment he had hoped it would be. For Martin, one event spoke volumes about the mind-set at Holy Cross. In February he had asked that the team boycott an annual track-and-field meet sponsored by the all-white New York Athletic Club. If the prestigious club wouldn’t let someone with his skin color join its ranks, he told his coach, he didn’t want to run in its event. Teams from other schools were dropping out of the meet for the same reason, as outrage mounted over the club’s racist policies. But Holy Cross refused to drop out. While his coach told him that it would be fine for him to sit out the meet, the rest of the team showed up at Madison Square Garden. The New York Times even ran a photo of the Holy Cross bus arriving. Months later, Martin still felt sore that not one of his teammates had supported him.
There was no real sense of community among the eight black students already on campus, though Martin didn’t really want to share that fact with the amiable recruit he was showing around. He was trying to help Father Brooks. In Martin’s freshman year, the priest had been his religion class professor and had made a point of complimenting him on every track-and-field victory. Brooks was the one who’d found the money to fly him and another black student to Atlanta for King’s funeral. While they didn’t actually get inside the church where King’s body lay, they had been inspired by the atmosphere. As Martin later wrote in The Crusader, the school newspaper, “I saw co-operation between white and black. I heard speakers encouraging the brotherhood of men.… The on
ly way out is to work together.” Though part of him had wanted to give Grayson a realistic view of campus life, Martin’s overwhelming instinct was to encourage Grayson and the other black athletes who came his way. The reasons were personal: He hoped there could finally be a viable community of black students at the school.
Martin also found it heartening to see that Eddie Jenkins was back on campus for the weekend. He had met Jenkins earlier in the year when the high school football player was considering a number of different schools. While Jenkins had told Martin that Massachusetts had held no allure for him, his father had pressured him to visit both Boston College and Holy Cross. Jenkins immediately preferred Boston College. A friend of his had told him about the parties, the football, and the easy courses he could take at BC. But Jenkins had worked too hard in high school to settle for easy. When he visited Holy Cross a week later, the prop plane flying into Worcester made so many turns on the windy landing that Jenkins looked like he was about to throw up when he and Martin had met at the airport. And at the time Martin was feeling so bitter about the New York Athletic Club event that he hadn’t been in a mood to sugar-coat his pitch to the potential recruit.