The Slow Rise of Black Educators on Campus and their Impact
Connection Between Staff and Student
Mary Drier reports on the hiring of James Kilgore, a counselor with an education and administrative career in HBCUs. Kilgore describes his intentions and goals for working at State as he leaves his higher administrative position for the job at MSU. This article was written a few years after the integration at MSU and like the other materials, provides a different perspective of those that witnessed or experienced the changes of integration themselves. In this case, Kilgore shares the perspective of an involved faculty member that was hired to help all students at the time, but often focused his efforts on helping the black students adjust.
How does this affect black student life? Well, this article serves as a close outside perspective on the life of those black students. Because he was a counselor available to both races of students, Kilgore focused on the mediation and communication between both groups of students. This item fits into the theme of faculty members working to facilitate and ease the tensions of campus life for students after the integration. As for black student life, this article shows that many students needed assistance when starting at State, and still had a lack of communication and understanding between them and the white students. Black students may have been allowed to be on campus, but that doesn't mean there was no social divide between them and their white classmates.
Desired Diversity
With this next item, Elaine Graves writes on MSU’s issue with faculty and staff diversity. Dr. Bettersworth and Dr.McKee Jr. comment on the issue regarding the low number of African American professors, particularly women, as well as offering some insight on possible solutions. This article, written a few years after the previous one, takes place a bit further into the integration movement and revolves around adding black professors and staff along with black students. At the time, MSU had a very small percentage of black and/or female faculty members. This was mostly because of the still tense and unadjusted social and educational climate surrounding black educators. This item continues the idea that as more black students were enrolled and active at MSU, the more black teachers followed, but at a slower pace. The fact that there were so few black and/or female teachers present was a possible contributing factor to the isolation many black students felt during the integration period because they still greatly lacked representation in their school’s faculty. Black students, especially the women, often flourish when the person teaching or leading them has a stronger understanding of their struggles, which was severely lacking in the early years of integration.
Complications and Competition
This last article discusses the lack of African American staff at MSU, using quotes from an African American member who believes this shortage isn’t from no effort from MSU, but from the natural competition in the job market. Following 1973, this article takes place after a year of much political and legal change across the nation, which likely caused tensions to rise even further, especially in the south. According to the article itself, there were also various shortages across the nation in several areas, and a year after the previous item, MSU is still dealing with a shortage in black faculty members. Less than one percent of professional staff at MSU are black, but a few sources from the article say this isn’t for a lack of trying, but because of the competition with other schools for job positions.This item dives a bit deeper into some of the reasons there are so few black staff members at State. One point often repeated was that there just aren’t many black students willing to stay and become teachers at MSU. This was likely a combination of the divide between black students and their teachers as well as the better opportunities and positions offered elsewhere, particularly up north. This fits into the narrative of the south still struggling to fully integrate simply because it’s still so new, not because of a lack of trying from State specifically.
The Lesson
Overall, these three articles all work together to show that the uphill battle with diversity, even after the integration, was both for students and faculty members. MSU is one of the few southern universities that had a peaceful integration, but it’s still important to acknowledge the struggles that still followed, even if they weren’t particularly violent or drastic. The articles I’ve selected each add on to the idea that the relationship between black educators and black students was important because of the understanding and relation that isn’t present with white educators and students. They also show how the growth in the black population at MSU was a slow incline that didn’t progress for quite some time after the integration, despite the efforts of the university. Educators are just as important as students when it comes to making up the personality of a school, and the progressive incline of black teachers during the 1970s flows right alongside the increase of black students as well because they helped each other thrive in a new, difficult world of education.