Class News

Rich Peck ‘64 reflects on 1960s racism

Journey from Racism

November 30, 2018

In the early 1960s, Dean of Admissions Arthur Howe Jr. was already spearheading a trend that led to an identity-changing decision for Yale University: the admission of women, starting in 1969. He had already witnessed a significant change in admissions policy with increased emphasis on public-school applicants, of whom I was one starting in 1960. Now another challenge was upon him, one in which he had a direct personal stake, and he was ready to step up.

His family had co-founded, in 1897, a rustic resort on the shores of Squam Lake not far from Manchester, New Hampshire, which quickly evolved into the combined Rockywold and Deep Haven Camps. Every summer, the Camps hosted elite business, government, and professional families all ready to “rough it” in rustic cabins with iceboxes, woodburning fireplaces, and communal dining, along with gloriously scenic walks, swims, and boating expeditions near and on Squam Lake. Staff supplied every need and, for over 60 years, consisted of students of leading African-American universities, most particularly Hampton in Virginia, founded by the Howe family as a contribution to African-American advancement.

Then came the early 1960s. According to the Camps’ carefully maintained historical archives, “Following the Brown v. Board of Education case and the integration of public elementary and secondary schools across America, the management of the Camps became increasingly uncomfortable with the image of a totally black workforce and a totally white guest clientele. The time had come for change.”

Which is where I came in. Having sought summer employment through Dean Howe’s office, I was informed of an opportunity to work on the staff of an upscale resort camp in New Hampshire. Sounded good to me! Along with seven other Yalies I signed up, and was soon on my way to a profound surprise ...

The bus pulls up at a modest little stop in Holderness, New Hampshire. For several hours now I’ve been uncomfortably aware that I am the only white kid on a bus full of African-American boys and girls of about my age. My discomfiture turned to real concern as we all got off at the same stop. I’m a definite minority in the group waiting for someone to pick us up and take us to Rockywold Deep Haven Camps. This is where, unbeknownst to me, I was to be part of a 1963 experiment in racial integration.

A few other Yale University juniors and I were to be the first white staffers at this high-end resort camp in more than 60 years.

My views on racial equality at that time were conventionally liberal: Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man and the Civil Rights movement was righteous. Racism was bad and befuddling to me. I remember that during a pre-freshman year religious retreat sponsored by Yale and its famous — some would say notorious — Presbyterian social activist chaplain William Sloan Coffin, I had been exposed to the shock and bewilderment of a South Carolina classmate when he came up to me and said:

“Did you see who I was sitting with at lunch?”

“Uh, there were a bunch of guys there, so who?”

“The black kid, I don’t remember his name?”

“OK, I don’t know him, what about it?”

“Don’t you get it? We just don’t do things like this at home! I mean, all us folks get along fine at home, but we don’t eat together, we just don’t do those things. What is going on here?”

He went on similarly in that vein, as all the while I’m going, “It’s OK, Hank, it’s OK,” (and, under my breath, “what is with you?”)

Now it was my turn to experience shock, bewilderment, and a little fear, as about a dozen black kids and I marched from the bus stop to the dorms where we’d be staying.

Where did the fear come from?

Well, I had grown up in an all-white, frankly racist, environment in inner-city Buffalo. Not that my parents were overtly bigoted, but I must have picked it up somewhere. A story my mom would tell on me in later years, quite ruefully, was how I had walked down the street one day, a cheerful five-year-old, waving a friendly greeting at a passing black kid and calling out, “Hi, nigger!”

Later on, when I worked a summer job at the factory where my dad put in 68 hours a week as an ice-cream mixer, I would leave the building with him in the evening and peer with trepidation at the black faces seated on porches all around us in the building’s fundamentally African-American neighborhood. Did they hate us, I wondered? Would they come after us? Would this turn violent? It felt good getting out of there.

In short, by the time I got to college I had good ideas but bad feelings — feelings that were starting to surge as I trudged toward the dorms, suddenly a “minority” on a nearly all-black camp staff.

As it turned out, the experiment was an arrangement between the camps and Yale to try out the various integration theories that had been flying about during the heyday of the civil-rights movement. The “time had come,” and the question was, just how would these six or eight Yalies fit in with the black camp staff — not kids from the inner city, mind you, but students of recognized black universities like Howard, Hampton, and Talladega.

They took the first step. As we were unpacking and straightening out our neighboring bunks, my slender, soft-spoken roommate, Nat Daggs, said, “You know, any time you want to go for a swim you can borrow my fins and goggles.” Then entered one of our neighbors, Paul Rier. Slight of build and lightly mustachioed, but with a stiff-shouldered swing to his walk and an air of natural leadership, he must have sensed something: “There’s no problem if you want to change the arrangement here, we can get that done.” Fortunately for my immortal soul, I declined.

The summer of 1963 turned out to be three months of hard and varied work — setting up tennis courts, cleaning windows, building docks, gathering firewood, chopping and delivering ice by wheelbarrow to renters’ cabins, and performing minor repairs on docks and cabins.

Interacting with these kids on a daily basis, I felt my bad feelings gradually dissipate. It wasn’t that I liked everyone, that’s not humanly possible, but I responded to different kids in different ways. Not only the good and gentle kids like Nat and Paul, but to stocky, humorous Moses Wilds, always ready to deliver an impromptu lecture as he sat on an upended log; husky, steady-going Robert Smith, pointing us to our next “job of work;” handsome, wisecracking Robert “Talladega” Chase, the resident ladykiller; pretty Jean Megginson, with a soft smile and even softer eyes; and sexy, obstreperous Gail Wyatt — lanky, loudmouthed, upon whom I developed an unaccountable crush.

Though I was a reclusive sort by nature back then and spent many an evening reading in my bunk, I got to know each of them pretty well. I discovered that their characters and personalities mattered more than their skin color, which in fact mattered not at all.

A banal insight, if ever there was one, but painfully achieved.

Not that racial issues weren’t front of mind for us — they could emerge at any time. There was a famous August evening with Paul strutting about chanting “free at last, free at last,” echoing Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech delivered earlier that day. Turned out, Paul had spent several years as an elementary-school pupil riding a bus 30 miles each way to school, passing all-white schools all along the way.

There were the times when the racially mixed group of us, walking the streets of nearby Manchester on our way to catching Saturday-night performances by the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, would provoke uneasy stares from white passersby. My black buddies: “Oo-eee, look at them look at us!” I felt oddly targeted.

Once during a work trip when a bunch of us had to hop on a truck, with me bringing up the rear, I felt free to joke, “Look at me, back of the bus!”, eliciting a few quiet chuckles from kids who knew all about it.

Over time I realized that something strange was going on, a transformative feeling. The fears were still there, perhaps always would be, but now if I faced them directly and gave them their proper name, they no longer ruled. I had gained enough perspective to control them, and found myself responding to these kids as I did anyone else. Some I liked, some I didn’t.

I reflected upon this transformative experience not long ago when I heard assertions that the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin encounter had “nothing to do with race.” I heard claims that, somehow, with Barack Obama as President, we had entered a post-racial era. I never believed any of this for a moment.

And then the uproars over police shootings of unarmed black men and children, as well as the horrendous massacre of black church attendees in a Charleston, South Carolina church, resulted in a broad exploration of endemic racism in this country, the existence of which surprised me not at all.

President Obama had it right. Speaking at the recent tragic and uplifting funeral of the Charleston church shooting victim Reverend Clement Pinckney, he said: “Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don’t realize it, so that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs, but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal.”

Right on, Mr. President. Thanks to a small social experiment in rural New Hampshire 50-some years ago, I left feeling cleansed but forever vulnerable to the pain of racism. I’m not “cured,” but I suppose I couldn’t expect more.

I hope others will somehow experience the epiphany I had when I met kids named Nat, Paul, Robert, Moses, “Talladega,” Gail, and Jean.