Embracing Audacity

Introspection is a uniquely human experience which allows us to add perspective to our behavior and pivot as demanded or required; the lessons of the past inform the future, allowing us to avoid pitfalls and build on those inspired encounters with success. A sixty-year partnership between two great American institutions of higher learning—Brown University and Tougaloo College, which endured a tenuous beginning, defied critics and detractors, and claimed a place of importance as a model of institutional collaboration—is worthy of and benefits from the discipline and grace of thoughtful reflection.

We in the academy do not have the luxury of existing outside of the social, cultural, and political zeitgeist. While our core purpose is cultivating the life of the mind through teaching and scholarship, the broad contours of our existence are shaped by the societies we inhabit. In many ways, the idea of the ivory tower of academia is a wishful aspiration that seeks to shield us from the gritty truth of our social and cultural environments; we are our institutions of higher learning, and we come to these spaces from the sociocultural places that define, support, and sustain us. Brown University and Tougaloo College are underpinned by the administrators, staff, faculty, students, and alumni who are shaped by the experiences that bear them, whether in America or beyond. This is the indisputable context from which an incredible institutional collaboration, the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, was formed and has endured for more than half a century. What is remarkable is that such a partnership could emerge from the tumult of mid-century America, at a time when bruising racial animus hung so heavily over this nation. Brown University and Tougaloo College were an unlikely pair of institutions to form a partnership. Their differences, in many ways, reflected the division that existed in the nation at the time: Brown, an institution defined in the minds of many by wealth and privilege, represented the status quo which needed to be upended; resource-challenged Tougaloo College—one of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, located in Mississippi, a state rife with racial strife with a rich history of African American resistance—represented resilience against formidable odds.

America in 1964 was a nation in crisis, having just endured a presidential assassination and the uprising of its Black citizens, who, long dispossessed of their dignity and humanity, flexed their evolving collective agency by demanding equal footing on American soil and fair access to the American dream as any other person in the United States. History-defining moments captured on the news such as racial unrest in Harlem and Philadelphia; the mistrial of Byron de la Beckwick for the murder of Medger Evers in Mississippi; the killing of Freedom Riders Michale Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney; and the sight of dogs tearing into the flesh of Black Americans created a dark and foreboding mood in the nation’s imagination. However, this was simultaneously a hopeful time, during which President Lyndon Johnson introduced his idea of the “Great Society,” Martin Luther King, Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act was signed into law. Against this backdrop, fearless men and women of goodwill with personal connections to the states of Mississippi and Rhode Island began to think audaciously about how they might do good work in the service of two institutions of higher learning, Tougaloo College and Brown University, with which they had affiliations.

It was indeed prophetic that these two radically different American institutions of higher learning would defy the times and forge this improbable Partnership. Early threats to the Partnership’s success were mitigated by ideas rooted in basic decency, a belief in fairness and equality for all Americans, and commitment to this bold and audacious idea. There was an honor in the notion of being fearless and in having the courage to reorder conventional thinking and action for a common good that was recognized at the time. In recalling the early provocateurs who initially began imagining what this Partnership might become and who persisted and withstood early criticism as it developed, I evoke the names of Irving Fain, a member of the Tougaloo Board of Trustees, and his wife and Marcie Fain; Tougaloo College Presidents Adam Daniel Beittel and George Owens; Reverend Larry Durgin, a member of the Tougaloo Board of Trustees and Minister of Providence’s Central Congregation Church; Brown University President Barnaby Keeney, also a member of Providence’s Central Congregation Church; and Charles “Charlie” Baldwin, Chaplain at Brown University. Later, Presidents Vartan Gregorian of Brown University and James Wyche of Tougaloo College lent their passionate advocacy to championing the Partnership. I cite these names with full recognition that I have likely omitted the names and memories of countless others who worked tirelessly for and on behalf of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership.

It has been said that vision is easy, execution is tough. Beyond this lofty idea, the real work of making the Partnership sustainable had to commence. The collaboration had to be financed, and a practical question loomed: What would this collaboration look like? How would the idea of a Brown-Tougaloo Partnership become a reality? Early discussions of student and faculty exchanges emerged as viable program components offering exciting opportunities for real-world institutional engagement. This, of course, meant the mingling of Brown and Tougaloo students and faculty at a time when de facto segregation existed in Mississippi. The idea of integration was thus brought into bold focus through these conversations, revealing many strong, deeply-held divergent opinions. On the one hand, the prevailing thinking of the established Civil Rights Movement leadership was that integration was a viable strategy for the empowerment of Black Americans. On the other hand, emerging Black voices began to repudiate integration as a strategy for the advancement of Black people. 1 1 See Stokely Carmichael, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), introduction by Michael Ekwueme Thelwell (Scribner, 1993); James H. Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Orbis, 1992); Martin Luther King, Why We Can’t Wait (Harper and Row Publishers, 1967); Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (Harper and Row Publishers, 1967). Rather, these advocated self-agency and determination as core strategies for building and strengthening Black communities and their institutions.

The idea of a revered institution like Tougaloo collaborating with Brown felt, to some, like a betrayal and continuation of long-standing attitudes of colonization and paternalism. There was no shortage of early missteps in the choice of program initiatives that seemed to confirm those condescending and patronizing assumptions when an early, Brown-led project to teach Tougaloo students standard English was understandably met by critics with great consternation and disbelief. Ultimately, the power of relations and the connections that result when human beings interact with sincerity became the glue that allowed the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership to persist and endure. No doubt, the early founders understood the significance of what they were proposing and its potential disruption to the prevailing social order.

Audacity is the abiding theme that runs through the enduring relationship between Brown University and Tougaloo College. It was audacious to imagine such a partnership at the time it was conceived, and that two vastly different institutions of higher learning might forge a workable and sustainable collaboration. There was nothing about the social and cultural environment at that time that could have predicted its success. Yet, this partnership has become a model of collaboration, and it continues to redefine mutually beneficial, interinstitutional relationships in American higher education. Those of us who are fortunate to work at colleges and universities are blessed with the gift of our vocation; we are welcomed into the lives of young people and invited to guide their intellectual and emotional development just as they stand at the cusp of their full flowering. It is, at once, an awesome honor and an incredible responsibility. We should not indoctrinate, but instead lift and illuminate the highest ideals of kindness, tolerance, and civility within our communities and beyond. At its core, the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership achieves this by bringing together people from different places and challenges them to find, celebrate, and build on their shared humanity through the rigorous interrogation of ideas, beliefs, and values.

Might we dare to imagine another six or more decades of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership? What have we learned from the past that might fortify and sustain its future? In many ways, our nation today is not unlike 1964. We are a nation divided along racial and cultural lines, in which intolerance, incivility, and an intractable unwillingness to embrace, understand, and appreciate our differences exists. An unprecedented and unwelcome intrusion into our colleges and universities by narrow-minded idealogues with intentions to undo decades of racial progress and reconciliation has heightened our collective anxiety and call to action. While many lament the reactionary tone which seems to have overpowered the national consciousness, this is not the time to become weary; it is certain that more work is needed to create the more perfect union. It may seem lofty to assign the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership with the responsibility for remediating America’s racial divide, but we cannot discount the ability of this work and collaboration to make a difference in the lives of young people who will one day take their positions in leading the planet; one life at a time transformed by a program that affirms human diversity and our capacity to behave with honor, civility, and kindness toward each other.

We have learned as a society that audacity, fearlessness, and courage are enablers that give us the capacity to power through when stagnation and stasis threaten a common good. We have learned that we need focused, formidable, and honorable leaders to passionately articulate the value of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership and bravely confront and counter opposition. We have learned that despite the unevenness in available resources, we must see each institution as equal partners, capable of contributing the special richness that makes each institution vital and whole. We have learned that beneath the trappings of our gender, race, religion, regional identity, and institutional affiliation, we stand together as members of a human family intentionally made wonderfully diverse: it is the divinely-ordered human tapestry that highlights our unique talents and gifts.

In 1964, a group of disruptors and agitators—though they likely would not have referred to themselves as such—set out to make a difference in the nation they loved. They started small, forming the Rhode Island Friends of Tougaloo to support a small but mighty Mississippi college. They brought to bear the wealth and power of Brown University, resulting in the formation of a time-honored Partnership. We owe it to these visionaries, and to all who followed, to continue to commit to and benefit from the work of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, and to ensure this Partnership endures in perpetuity.