President Obama's White House beer with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley was good for garnering headlines. But let's have no expectations about its worth or reach as a "teachable moment" when it comes to complicated social issues. Why? Because Gates appears to be a product of his institution and, like Harvard professors who preceded him, mired in the past and unwilling to move beyond his assumptions. I believe I can make the comparison. My family played a pivotal role in race issues at Harvard.
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On race, Harvard still must learn
In 1941, the university permitted discrimination against my father and found itself on the wrong side of history. In the controversy surrounding Henry Louis Gates Jr., it's making another mistake.
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My father, Lucien Alexis Jr. (Harvard 1942) helped spark the great race awakening at Harvard when he and fellow members of the Harvard lacrosse team arrived for a match at the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1941. The academy insisted that my father, the only black team member, be removed, declaring that no midshipman would take the field with a colored man.
Tempers boiled, and the Harvard lacrosse team prepared to forfeit the game. William J. Bingham, the university's athletic director, intervened, ordering Harvard's coach to send my father back to Cambridge. Harvard played the scheduled match.
Almost 70 years later, it's clear that the Harvard-Navy lacrosse game of 1941 offered a near-perfect teachable moment for the cause of equality (a cause Harvard claimed to espouse) had the school so chosen. Early on, Harvard could have shattered the grip of racial hatred by standing firm. But Harvard didn't seize the moment. Instead, it chose the easy path.
To save the Harvard lacrosse coach and team members the embarrassment of asking him to leave, my father, quietly, caught the night train back to Cambridge, telling the team it was his idea.
George Hanford, Harvard's All-American goalie and son of a Harvard dean, knew that something awful had occurred. "I get tears in my eyes when I think about it," he said. Navy went on to clobber Harvard, 12-0.
Word of the Annapolis happenings spread, and the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, championed my father, heaping scorn on the Naval Academy and Harvard: "Those officials here who asked the negro to return to college should explain the reasons for their actions," went one article, "by which Harvard has kow-towed to Jim-Crowism. Navy bigwigs should also be taught that when this country, this college and the navy itself declare their faith in democratic equality, they mean to practice what they preach."
