Fraternity

by Diane Brady

  Eddie Jenkins was battling his own doubts about an athletic career. Between injuries and hepatitis, he had played perhaps twenty games over his entire four years at Holy Cross. It seemed unlikely that National Football League teams would even bother to approach him. But after practice one day Coach Doherty told Jenkins and his teammate Bill Adams that some scouts had expressed interest in seeing the two of them. NFL officials arrived shortly thereafter to weigh the seniors and test their skills and conditioning in everything from leaping to bench pressing.

  Soon after, Adams was drafted by the Buffalo Bills, but Jenkins hadn’t received any news. The wait was killing him. The other men on the corridor were merciless in teasing him. Any time the one pay phone on the corridor would ring, someone would yell “Jenks, it’s the NFL on the line,” or take the call and insist that it was any number of NFL coaches. One claimed to have told Coach Weeb Ewbank of the New York Jets that Jenkins wasn’t available because he was busy “smoking some weed.” One evening another call came. “Jenks, some guy from the NFL!”

  Jenkins grabbed the phone. The antics were starting to wear on him. “It’s Jenks.”

  “Eddie Jenkins? This is Don Shula speaking.”

  “Yeah, right, man. Who put you up to this?”

  The man sounded confused. “I’m sorry?”

  Jenkins paused. The man didn’t sound like anyone he knew from Holy Cross. “Who’d you say you were?”

  “My name is Don Shula. I’m coach of the Miami Dolphins. We would like to invite you to be part of our team.”

  “Seriously, this isn’t a joke?”

  Some of the other men started to gather around the phone. They were quiet as Jenkins listened to the voice on the other end. When he hung up, Jenkins let out a whoop. He had just been drafted onto a team that had made it to the 1971 Super Bowl. He was an eleventh-round pick, but he was thrilled that he would get at least one season in the NFL. His plans to attend Suffolk Law School would have to be put on hold.

  Father Brooks was pleased when Jenkins told him the news. “Now, what are we going to do with this, Eddie?” asked the priest. Jenkins was in for a wild ride, Brooks suspected, but he advised the young player to save his money and keep his eye on a career after football. His message was clear: A Holy Cross degree could pay off again down the road.

  At the other end of the corridor, Ed Jones quietly packed his bag. He was leaving with little more than he had brought in terms of possessions. Having graduated 150th out of a class of 500, he wasn’t going to receive any special accolades. But Jones still felt relatively happy. He had made some good friends in Gordon Davis and Gil Hardy. For the first time in his life, he’d stayed in one place long enough to form some bonds. Mostly he thought about his mother, the one who “could have done so much more in a better world,” as he wrote in the dedication of his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Known World. On the day of the graduation ceremony, his mother arrived at Holy Cross for the first time, and as Jeanette M. Jones caught a glimpse of the college’s brick spires, she burst into tears. Her son had made it through college.

  Four years after they had arrived, the men stood together on Mount St. James for their graduation ceremony. Many of their fellow recruits hadn’t made it. For the men who had persevered, it was a moment of intense pride.

  When Father Brooks saw Eddie Jenkins’s outfit at the ceremony, he had to laugh. In accordance with his flamboyant personality, Jenkins was wearing a colorful dashiki to the ceremony as a substitute for the traditional cloak and gown. Jenkins obviously couldn’t resist one last chance to make a statement. Brooks wished him luck in the big leagues. Ted Wells was going to Harvard on full scholarship, while Stan Grayson had been admitted to the University of Michigan to study law.

  That year the BSU produced a literary magazine called Black Thing, which included a statement from Father Brooks. “I can honestly say that I have learned much in the last decade from Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and others,” the president wrote. “But I have learned much more from our own Holy Cross black students: for they are my fellow learners in this community of learning which is Holy Cross.”

  Stan Grayson, Eddie Jenkins, Ted Wells, and Jaffe Dickerson at graduation

  While the class of 1972 was leaving the college behind, Brooks’s role as president was just beginning. By the time he stepped down as president more than two decades later, he had balanced twenty-three budgets, successfully transitioned the college to coeducation, and mentored several generations of black students. But he never lost his ties to those men who had arrived in the fall of 1968 and had become leaders in law, literature, and finance. He presided over their weddings and over the funerals of Gil Hardy, who died in a diving accident at the age of thirty-eight, and the toddler daughter of Malcolm Joseph. When Clarence Thomas needed support during his acrimonious confirmation hearings in 1991, Brooks drove down to Washington to testify that the Supreme Court nominee was “a man of compassion, good judgment, and intelligence,” with a “zeal for justice, freedom, and equal opportunity for all Americans.” He often called the men to say how proud he was of their accomplishments and how sad he felt for their losses. And ultimately he asked many of them back to the college, to serve as trustees and speakers and role models for the next generation of leaders. In 1980, Ted Wells, at the invitation of Father Brooks, would become the first African American to serve as a trustee of Holy Cross. Two years later Clarence Thomas would join Wells as a trustee, and the two of them would serve together for almost a decade. Stan Grayson would also later serve on the board.

  Years later Brooks discounted his own role in helping shape and inspire the group. Much of it was God’s providence, he said, noting that he could not have succeeded in any of his roles without the presence of God in his life every day. And he felt that he had learned as much from the young recruits as they had learned from him. They had carried the burden of expectations—high and low, their own and others—with grace, humor, and courage. The debt, he insisted, was one that he owed to them. “These men took the risks, not me,” he said, looking out at the campus from his office. “They were the pioneers. They did the work. They took a chance on us.”

  EPILOGUE

  In the spring of 2008, more than four decades after they had enrolled at Holy Cross, Ted Wells and Clarence Thomas stood together outside the hall where they had once protested against an administration that was now welcoming them back with open arms. The campus that had seemed so white to a handful of black men in the 1960s was now home to student groups dealing with issues ranging from eating disorders to the exploration of multicultural identity. The world had changed. Wells put his arms around the shoulders of his old debating foe as they stood together, looking at photos from their Black Student Union days. It was the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the BSU, and the first time that the group of men, whom Father John Brooks had largely recruited, was gathering at the school since graduation.

  The current BSU members entertained the roomful of alumni by staging a debate. One young African American turned to the audience and, with emotion in his voice, talked about how affirmative action was undermining progress and made the rest of the world believe that minorities couldn’t succeed without special help. The other young man shook his head. Without a process to gain entry to an exclusive and typically homogeneous club—be it a university or some other institution—the club would remain just that: exclusive. It was about getting the opportunity to compete, not about being handed a prize.

  It was a valid debate, if hardly an unfamiliar one. The scene could have taken place four decades earlier and, in fact, it often had. But neither Wells nor Thomas was in the room to witness it. Just before the two students stood up to present their sides of the argument to attendees, Wells had walked over to Thomas and invited him to head out into the hall. The gesture was meant to allow Thomas to avoid any embarrassment, since Thomas had famously devoted much of his career to speaking out a
gainst affirmative action. After receiving a full scholarship to Holy Cross, he went on to reject the belief that any ethnic minority should have the same opportunities that he had received. He didn’t see his life as a testament to the benefits of affirmative action; he saw it as an example of its perils. He felt that instead of being praised for what he had accomplished when given the opportunity, the fact that he had been given an opportunity because of his skin color had overshadowed the accomplishments. It had negated the hard work and the intelligence necessary to capitalize on whatever breaks he’d had.

  Wells, on the other hand, had maintained a strong commitment to helping African Americans rise educationally and professionally, in part through affirmative action and diversity programs. He had served as chairman of the board of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the iconic public interest law firm that had litigated the Brown v. Board of Education case. In fact, the two had come in direct opposition with each other in another Supreme Court case: the 2003 decision that narrowly upheld the Univeristy of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action program. Wells had personally filed the amicus brief on behalf of law students at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford; Thomas had written the dissenting opinion. And yet, that day, as an auditorium full of their old roommates and fellow alumni listened to the arguments that Wells and Thomas had once used against each other, the two stood arm in arm in the hall, laughing at old photos taped to a bulletin board.

  Neither of them wanted to talk about their differences anymore. Long ago the two men had reached an unspoken understanding: they simply did not discuss their different views concerning the merits of affirmative action, how the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted or the philosophies that had made Wells a liberal Democrat and Thomas a conservative Republican. What they shared now was their love of Father Brooks and their shared experiences at Holy Cross. They came to the reunion to laugh about their old Afros and to connect with their brothers. Most important, they were there to honor Father John Brooks. Now slightly stooped at the age of eighty-four, Brooks was president emeritus of the college—one of the most revered and longest-serving presidents in the history of Holy Cross. After the debate, Wells and Thomas walked back into the room.

  That night, more than 500 people gathered for a dinner to celebrate the anniversary of the BSU. Wells and Thomas sat with Father Brooks at the head table. Jenkins then introduced Wells to give a speech, in which he attempted to put their shared history and Father Brooks’s efforts to integrate the college into a wider perspective.

  He started, not with the group of young men who were recruited to an unfamiliar place in 1968, but with the history of a country that had embraced slavery to the point where the concept was embedded as an institution in the Constitution. He talked about Holy Cross’s early and all-too-brief experience of integration with the admission of the Healy brothers. He spoke movingly of civil rights, of the impact that desegregation and the words of Dr. King had on a boy growing up in Washington.

  These men, his friends and brothers at Holy Cross, were the first generation to grow up after the Brown decision took effect. A generation that had nurtured hope for change even as the violence and assassinations of the late 1960s brought some of those dreams crashing to the ground. Against this backdrop, Holy Cross had engaged in a noble experiment, led by Father Brooks, to integrate its student body and to return to its multicultural roots. Despite the anger and resentment and miscommunication, they were all working to make the messy transition to a better society. They were all willing to take deeply personal risks to get there, even at the expense of their own education. To Wells, at least, was no surprise that many of them had gone on to become leaders in different fields. That was what a great education was supposed to do.

  What struck Wells was not just how far racial relations in the United States had progressed since 1968, but how much was still left to be done. For that to happen, he said, the world needed more men like Father Brooks, who had the courage and foresight to integrate the college and had stood as a visionary and friend to the black students at Holy Cross. “I love this man,” said Wells, prompting the entire room of people to stand up and cheer. As Brooks looked at the men who had worked so hard to carve out their own success and pave the way for others, he had tears in his eyes. The education, he felt, had truly been his.

  WHERE THEY ARE TODAY

  The Reverend John E. Brooks is now president emeritus and Loyola professor of humanities at Holy Cross. During his tenure as president, from 1970 to 1994, Brooks oversaw a substantial expansion in the school’s endowment and twenty-three years of balanced budgets while helping to build Holy Cross into one of the country’s top liberal arts institutions. He also made Holy Cross a more vibrant center for the arts, playing a key role in the founding of a gallery on campus and a concert hall that now bears his name.

  As president, Father Brooks continued to take bold and controversial actions, including the transition to coeducation and his decision in 1986 to make Holy Cross a founding member of what is now the Patriot League. The league, founded on the principle that scholar-athletes would be academically representative of their class instead of recruited specifically for their athletic talents, firmly moved Holy Cross away from high-stakes sports in favor of what Brooks has called a “more balanced” approach. It also eliminated the cherished football rivalry with Boston College.

  More important, Brooks has influenced generations of Holy Cross alumni with his vision, compassion, and wisdom. His quiet devotion to God has been an inspiration to many who have found their own vocation, and he is celebrated as a model of the Jesuits’ continued commitment to social justice, excellence in teaching, personal, spiritual, and intellectual growth, and the courage to question the status quo. He continues to teach a seminar in Christology and has never relented in his mission to nurture the next generation of leaders.

  Stanley Grayson earned a law degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While there, he met an undergraduate named Patricia McKinnon; the two married and had two children. After graduation, Grayson went to work in the law department of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York City. After a few years, he moved into city government, becoming chairman of New York City’s Financial Services Corporation. In the late 1980s, under Mayor Ed Koch, Grayson served as the city’s finance commissioner and then as deputy mayor for finance and economic development.

  Grayson has spent most of his career on Wall Street, first as a vice president at Goldman Sachs and then as a managing director at Prudential Securities, where he headed up the public finance department. Since 2002, he has been president and chief operating officer of M.R. Beal & Company, one of the country’s oldest minority-owned investment banks. While Grayson shunned formal roles in the BSU, he has since become very active in public life, serving on the Port Authority Board of Commissioners and on the boards of the March of Dimes, Marymount College, and, of course, Holy Cross.

  Gilbert Hardy graduated with distinction from Yale Law School and clerked for U.S. District Court chief judge Almeric Christian for two years in the Virgin Islands before moving to Washington, D.C. He was a partner in the law firm of Wald, Harkrader & Ross when he introduced his colleague Anita Hill to Clarence Thomas, who hired her to work at the Department of Education and later the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hardy had recently started his own law firm when he died at the age of thirty-eight in a scuba-diving accident off the coast of Morocco in August 1989.

  Eddie Jenkins’s career in the NFL was short-lived but dramatic. After graduation, he immediately became a running back with the Miami Dolphins, who that year became the only team in NFL history to go undefeated for an entire season. After the Dolphins won the 1973 Super Bowl, Jenkins played two more seasons in the NFL before entering Suffolk University Law School in 1975.

  Despite his initial dislike of Worcester, Jenkins ended up spending much of his career in Massachusetts. He has worked as a prosecutor, an arbitrator, and a mediator, first joining the U.S. Labor Departm
ent before setting up his own practice for fifteen years and running for district attorney and Boston city council, though he was not elected. In 2003, he became chairman of the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission. He later became director of enforcement at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Jenkins’s son Julian, one of two children from his first marriage, was drafted to play with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2006.

  Jenkins is an adjunct professor at Suffolk Law School and a leader in several organizations, including Outward Bound. He ran a youth basketball program at the Roxbury YMCA called No Books, No Balls, which encourages young athletes to keep up with their studies. Jenkins also helped to start a mentoring program for former gang members and was chairman of Urban Edge, a community development corporation that assists small businesses and works to increase affordable housing around Boston. He and his wife live in Boston, where he is currently working on a history of Da’Ville, the Queens neighborhood where he grew up.

  Upon graduation, Edward P. Jones moved back to Washington to help care for his mother, Jeanette M. Jones, living paycheck to paycheck as he wrote for various publications and worked odd jobs. Shortly after Jeannette died in 1975, Jones sold his first short story to Essence. He didn’t realize he’d sold it until about fifteen months after the fact because he was homeless at the time. In 1979, he enrolled in graduate school at the University of Virginia to focus on his creative writing, and he received his MFA in 1981. A year later, he found steady work as a proofreader at Tax Notes, where he would work for the next two decades.

  His first collection of short stories, Lost in the City, came out in 1992 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The book was the realization of Jones’s dream: to capture the lives of people in his city as James Joyce had done with the people of Dublin. The book also earned him the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Lannan Literary Award, as well as some prize money that proved helpful when he was laid off from Tax Notes in 2002. Living on a combination of savings, his small severance, and unemployment insurance, Jones then sat down to write a story that had been unfolding in his mind since he learned about black slave owners in a class at Holy Cross.